Next step

Well, thanks to all of you who helped with our house building fund by either donating money, buying stuff on amazon, or praying we are ready to build a house in the jungle! Woo-hoo!

We also have a complete team of people to plant a church in the jungle!

That is a pretty good looking group if I do say so myself!

So we are totally ready to move into the jungle...we just need a tribe of people (who happen to live in the jungle) to move into now! Please pray for us as we seek the Lord in His will for the people group He wants us to go to.

There is sort of a long process that goes into selecting a tribe that first starts with NTM's leadership here in PNG. I am pretty sure you don't want to hear about all that. It is full of acronyms and a lot of mission jargon. Just know that it is a very thorough process that seeks to make wise and strategic decisions about where we plant churches. So, please be praying for that very thorough process. We are very ready to go!


*** Please no comments about how short I look in this picture. I am standing in front of everyone else, that is why I look so short. Also, I am short and that contributes to the looking so short. But I don't need anyone to tell me that. I can see if for myself, thank you.

3N1 goes on a trip...

So here are some highlights of my husband's trip into the jungle to help some missionaries tear their house down and build it back again in a new place...

First they hiked in. It took them 14 hours. Up and down mountains. Over rapids on very shady "bridges". (thank you Jesus for keeping him safe! Sheesh!) **Also, please notice that is a chain saw blade sticking up out of his backpack. 

This guy got a leech in his eye.

This is the missionary house before they tore it down.

This is the rat poop that they found in between the walls. Yes, it is the size of cheese puffs. *So sorry, that you will not be able to eat cheese puffs after reading that. 

Still tearing down the house. Not exactly a "safe and easy" job.

Some of the tribal people there to help. Or to think all these white people are really crazy. 

Bathroom after the house was torn down. Luckily there were no women there yet.

Helicopter loaded with stuff to take to the site of the new house.

Cutting lumber for the new house.  Where is Home Depot when you need it?

Start of the new house.

This is Susan. She is not letting the fact that there is no "laundry room" keep her from doing laundry.

Or the fact that there was no "kitchen" keep her from cooking. She is a hard core Tribal Wife. 

These are sweat flies. They hung around in Biblical Plague proportions.

They got all this up in 4 days.

Ok, so in keeping with the honesty and transparency of this blog, I would like to tell you that the reasons for this post are two-fold. One, to show you all about this trip cause I know as soon as I wrote the words "leech on the eyeball" in the previous post, you were dying to see it. Two, so that maybe you could see some of what building a house in the middle of the flippin jungle is like and maybe you just might want to help some missionaries out who are about to do this for the first time themselves. Those missionaries may or may not include myself and my husband... and we may or may not have some info for you about that. And it may or may not be right here...

You can give online here:

www.ntm.org/john_george/give

Or you could send a check to:

New Tribes Mission
1000 E. First St.
Sanford, FL 32771
*make check payable to NTM and put "John George- project house" in the memo line

Or you could go to this site and buy some junk:

http://amzn.com/w/2OUZR4OBRR1E2

Or you could just go on reading this blog and not worry about any of that stuff. That is cool too. Just thought I would remind you what we got going on right now. In case all our reminders on this blog, our NTM blog, and both of our facebook pages weren't enough. If this was a tweet, it would end in #overkill.

Signs my husband has been gone too long

1. I have started going to bed at 8:30

2. I opened a package of Maggi (Ramen) Noodles, broke them into 4 pieces, sprinkled the seasoning on those pieces and called it "dinner" last night.

3. I called my house "too clean" today.

4. I have 3 dozen eggs in my house because 3N1 is the only one who eats them.

5. I may have developed a crush on the Blue Wiggle.

Dear husband,

I know you are working very hard. I know you are sleeping in the middle of the jungle and eating who knows what. I know you took apart an entire house, only to build it back again in a different place, and I know you call all this "fun", but please come home soon. Please. I am starting to loose my mind, and obviously my sense of what "hot" it.

Love,

The Future Mrs. B. Wiggle
Your very devoted wife

Just so you know...

Just so you know. You people are amazing. I posted a while ago about our house building fund and the need we have, and we have been overwhelmed at the response to that! We now have 80% of the funds we need for our house, so my husband came up with this great idea to create an amazon "wish list". You see, a lot of people were asking our needs for our house and wanted to actually purchase stuff themselves, which is incredibly cool. We love that people want to be directly involved in this ministry of tribal church planting. We don't want to be a nameless donation to "world missions" or simply a line item in a church budget. We want PARTNERS!!! People who are invested in this work. Who pray for us, and the people. Who care about what is going on in each step of the process. And apparently, we have that. With you. That is cool.

So anyway, we thought we could create this list of needs for our house and if anyone wanted to buy these things then we wouldn't need that other 20%. Does that make sense? So this list is the other 20% of our house building fund. If all this stuff gets bought, then we will be at 100% and ready to start! Well, we put the word out there and some amazing friends of ours set this challenge up where they will purchase all the items over $300 if we can get everyone else to buy everything else by the end of March. They are pretty cool people who love God and love to see His word go out among the nations. I would like to quote them here and I haven't asked their permission, so I hope they don't get mad, but honestly, friends, if you don't want to be quoted, then don't say such cool things. They said to us, "We can't take our money with us when we go, but we can send it forward." How awesome is that?? I mean we have all heard the saying, "you can't take it with you" but they have found a way to! They invest in souls! They won't see their hard earned cash in Heaven but they will see the faces of people who benefitted from that cash by hearing the Gospel. Did I mention that I think this is awesome?

Anyway, so we are about 11 days away from the end of this challenge and I thought I would post it here on this blog, because...well, this is my blog and I can put whatever I want on here. Kidding. But seriously, just some info in case anyone out there in internet land wants to get involved in this. Also, because for some reason I cannot load the picture on facebook anymore. It just sits there with the little blue lines pulsating at the top all day long. 


Again, because our friends/supporters are so awesome there actually isn't that much stuff left to buy. And I just have to say a big hearty THANK YOU for that! Honestly, this life of being a missionary has many cool perks, but one of the unexpected ones is learning through the sacrifice and support of others. Through all those whom (do I use who or whom here? whom sounded better, but I honestly have no idea) I have witnessed joyfully sacrificing their hard earned money to this mission, I have learned to sacrifice joyfully as well. We were always regular tithers, and gave to missions when we had the chance, but we honestly learned to get excited about giving financially ourselves through watching our own friends give to us excitedly. So thanks for teaching us what it means to be a "cheerful giver" and for helping us grow in this area ourselves. We seriously love you all. ***unless you are a weird internet creeper who is reading this blog. we do not love weird  internet creepers. that is not an invitation to come stalk us and kill us. thank you. ***


So check this out, and go to the amazon list if you want to help!

I heart Germany!

Ok, so the last 2 weeks have been crazy. A good kind of crazy, though. Remember when I told you I had 12 people living in my house? Well, that ended Wednesday. My husband was actually the first one to go.

He went into one of the tribal locations here in the Sepik to help some missionaries move their house. That's right. As many of you know, we are currently in the process planning and buying all our materials to build our house in the jungle. Now we know we also need to make it mobile if possible. This is actually the second time these missionaries have had to move. Joy.

Anyway, 3N1 and 3 other guys flew into one location and then hiked like 12 hours to where the house is. He told me that the last 4 hours were almost straight up and he was having to literally climb with his hands and feet most of the way. Oh and it was raining that whole time. What some of you may not know (in fact, we did not know this until we went on our bush orientation) is that in the jungle when it rains it is prime time for leeches to attach themselves to you. Particularly to your eyeball. That's right, leeches like eyes best of all. And one of the other missionaries got a leech in his eye. And if that isn't scary enough, he let John Michael get it out with a pair of tweezers.

He will be gone for about 2 weeks as they take apart the house and move it to the new location.

Ok, so back to my house full of people. I was afraid that this was going to be a time where I was going to pay for all the havoc we wreaked in other people's houses when we had to live with them. You see, missionaries often have to live with other people in the time before, between and sometimes even after their overseas work, and I am pretty sure that most people hated us and never wanted to see our loud ugly faces again after those times. And most of those people were our parents.

But... it was actually quite amazing. I had a family from Germany here with their 4 kids in room, my family in another, and one of the coolest ladies in the entire world in another. I still can't believe how much noise there was NOT. I am telling you these people were awesome. Friendly, quiet and very very helpful. We loved them and hope we can forever be their Conference room mates. Now, I am sure they feel differently about us, since my kids are probably the loudest kids on this entire island of Papua New Guinea, but as far as we are concerned it is Georges + Depners 4 life!

I also had another very pleasant experience with another missionary lady who happens to be German. She came up to me after a meeting and asked me how old I was because she thought I LOOKED SO YOUNG! She said, "I looked at him (3N1) and wondered, is this his wife?" BAHAHAHAHA!! I look so young and he looks like a cradle robber! I am not sure if I have told you this yet or not, but my husband is 9 months younger than me. He loves that fact and rubs it in my face all the time. He treats me like I am some sort of cougar who picked him up at a high school basketball game. So, this was probably the best day of my entire life. And needless to say, I love Germany now!

Shampoo

We are now in the middle of our Sepik Conference. This is simply a time where all the missionaries in our swampy sweltering region of PNG get together to do...something. I am not really sure what yet but I'm new, so I guess that is my excuse. Anyway, there are a lot of people here (12 people in my house alone) and it is a lot of fun...so far. We'll see how everyone feels by Monday when it all ends. With a lot of people comes a lot of work which I should be doing. But instead, I am writing this blog about shampoo. That's right. Shampoo, because I am totally amazed at this.

Marketing FAIL:

Why on earth would you put a picture of a lady with her hair completely covered on a bottle of shampoo? By the writing on the bottle, I can tell that this stuff is probably sold in a majority Muslim country, so I can see that the woman's head would need to be covered. But still, just don't put the picture on there! I mean, leave it off altogether if you can't show the actual hair! Am I the only one that finds this ridiculous??

Then I look a little closer. Maybe this is supposed to be eyebrow shampoo, since that is the only hair that is showing on this woman. And since the bottle is not much bigger than a sharpie, no one could possibly use this more than 3 times on their head hair without running out.

Who would need eyebrow shampoo you ask?

This girl.