Tap Tap...Is this thing on??

Hello??? Is anyone there? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Just kidding about the Bueller part. But I do wonder if anyone is still reading this blog. Which may now win an award for the most boring blog ever, since I still cannot sign in, add pictures, or do anything really except email things to it. Am I just emailing myself here? Who knows?

The bad news is that someone is here to fix our internet, but they really have no idea what the problem is- just that it hates everyone on this mission base. I am not sure why, though. We have never done anything to offend it. We love it. We love it probably more than most people love their internt since it is our only connection to life outside of this island. And the only way to see the faces of our dear loved ones back in the US, Canada, Australia, etc.

Dear dear interweb,
Oh please don't go! We'll eat you up we love you so!!!

Anyway, just letting you know, that I am still here. Still alive and still in the process of becoming a Tribal Wife. My dear husband, the man formerly known as JMG is soon having his last Pidgin test (hopefully) and I hope to be finished by Christmas. By the way, JMG is "former" because our tribal friend gave him a new name..."3-N-1" and yes they are making fun of the fact that he has 3 first names. I guess some things do cross cultural barriers. They have an instant coffee mix here with coffee, cream, and sugar in it called "3-N-1", so that is where they got it. It was lots of fun to hear them refer to him as "3-N-1" in church and a formal ceremony for Independence Day. The also constantly referred to us all as "3-N-1 family". We pretty much loved it.

That is it for now. I am still holding out hope that the web will be fixed one day and I can post pictures and great stories about our time in the bush. That is if I can remember them by then. I am turning 30 next week, so that is questionable.

Goodbye to the 4 people who are still reading this blog!

Mrs. 3-N-1

Hat Wara

Well, our internet is still down, and we have no idea when it will be back up, so I am still updating this blog from email. I am going to try to attach a picture and see what it does, but someone will have to email me to let me know if it works or not.

This is a picture of me learning how to make "hat wara" or basically just soup. All that is in here is A LOT of greens called "tu lip" and a little bit of sago to thicken it up. But it takes a very long time to cook over a fire. It took several tries to get this picture as I had to educate my friend who was teaching me how to cook, how to take a picture. She took several pictures of my forehead and some without my head completely, but finally got this nice shot. Don't worry, I was a very patient teacher.

She was a very patient teacher as well considering I dumped about half of the contents of the pot into the fire while trying to stir it. It almost put the fire out and she had to work very hard to get it going strong again.

I had many experiences like this one while hanging out with these people. They may not know how to use my digital camera, but they have many skills that I do not posses. If they were to get lost in the middle of the jungle…well they wouldn't be lost because they know their way around the place like I know my way around Target. What I mean is, they have no use for Bear Grylls (is that how you spell his name? I can't google it to find out). They have hard core survival skills.

There were many times this made me feel very incompetent and inferior. Sure, I know where babies come from and how the internet works (sort of) but without all the modern conveniences that I am so used to, I would definitely die in no time.

I think this is the way it should be though. It keeps me humble and protects me from having a paternalistic attitude toward them (treating them like they are totally dependant on me). In fact, I do not want them to be dependent on me at all. I want them to need the Gospel and the Bible translated into their language and that is all. I want them to feel like they are taking care of me and my family while we are in their world giving them the one thing that they truly need. They don't need my wealth and all my junk. They don't even really need my access to health care even though I really want to help in that area. The truth is, I can give them all the materialistic crap I have and the best medicine that money can buy…but they will still die one day.

In reality I am very, very rich. I have the most valuable thing in the world, and I am responsible to share it. It is going to take a lot of hard work. Living in harsh conditions, learning a whole new language, translating the Bible. But the Lord says that to whom much is given much is required, and I got to experience the joy of a group of people who reaped the benefit of some other rich people who took that command very seriously. And it was the coolest thing I have ever experienced in my life.

We're back

We are still in the land of no internet…ironically, we are back in Wewak. Ever since we got here the internet has not worked very well. Most of the time it doesn't work at all, and occasionally we get a break of about 30 minutes in the day where it does work. Email still works, though (don't ask me how cause I have no idea) so I am again blogging from my email. I really don't know how this works either, except that I write and email and then send it to an address and it sends it to my blog. Weird.

While we were in the tribe we didn't have our own email because something did not get setup exactly right before we left. (I have no idea what…do you see a pattern here) so the missionaries who were hosting us just did any emailing that we needed, and since we didn't want to burden them with one more thing on their already very full plates, we didn't do a lot of emailing. (did I already write about this?? I can't remember and I can't look at my blog to find out, so if this is repetitive, then just ignore it)

I say all that to say this. We are still alive. And one day I will hopefully get a real blog with real pictures out there so there is proof that we were actually in a village for 7 weeks.

We were actually in two villages, since we went to see another place not to far from where we were staying our last week there. We spent some time with our future co-workers and got to see another church in the area. It was really cool. Cool as in neat…fun…interesting…definitely not temperature cool, just in case there was any confusion there.

However, one thing that was quite literally "cool" was sleeping on a waterbed. That was life changing. Waterbed is the new air conditioning. I am trying to figure out a way to fashion some sort of waterbed suit that I can wear around all day. I am pretty sure if I can figure it out all my friends in the deep south will appreciate it as well, so I will keep you updated.

Ok, well, that is all for now. Sorry for one more boring post. Hopefully soon, the computer people will do whatever it is that needs to be done to fix the problem. I would offer my suggestions, but I don't have any. I know that surprises all of you.

We are still in the land of no internet, and I think we will be here until the first of November now. We feel good about it because 1. We are really liking tribal life and 2. We think that it will really help our Pidgin study to stay in here a little longer.  So, I am still updating this blog via e-mail. How do I have email with no internet? Well, we email through a short wave radio. How does that work? I have no idea, but I am sure you can google it.

 

Anyway, the only thing I don’t like about it is that I am writing these blogs with no idea if anyone is reading them. I also don’t like that fact that I can’t get Auburn football scores but that is another subject for another day. Oh, and I don’t like the fact that I cannot add pictures. I wonder, if you are actually reading these, if you are getting bored with just text. I know I would be. But since I can’t add pictures anyway, I thought I would tell you about all the things I really wish I had a picture of and don’t because it was either inappropriate, or I just didn’t have a camera:

 

1.      Me slipping and falling in mud while walking in a funeral procession.

2.      The naked kid, covered with ringworm from head to toe carrying my pillow to the house for me when we moved in. (note to self, when we move out, pack pillow in suitcase)

3.      My baby leaned half way out of a canoe so she could stick her hand in the water as we travelled across the river. (don’t worry, mom, I was holding on tight)

4.      A kid sitting next to my five year old in church (himself also being about five years old,) handing her a knife to use to carve the sick she was playing with.

5.      The Sunday School teacher using a spear as a pointer when teaching the kids the memory verse for the week. (I actually thought this was pretty cool)

6.      The hundreds of termites we just found in the top of the closet. (I wonder if anyone has told the missionary family whose house we are in about this blog?  If so, are they reading this right now and freaking out??? Just in case, this message is for them…Hi, H family! Don’t worry about your house we are taking good care of it for you! We just saved it from total termite destruction!)

 

 

 

 

We have almost completed two weeks of our bush orientation and I am proud to say that we are all still alive. Barely. Just kidding, mom.

 

Our days are filled with learning all kinds of new things like how to deal with an electrical system when your batteries are going bad, and how to conserve water when you are going into the dry season and your water tank leaks. These are all very real and very important parts of the training for tribal church planters.

 

We are also trying to continue our Pidgin study, and learn more about village life and culture in general. Monday we went with some of the people to harvest “saksak”. The English word for it is “sago” but I am sure that doesn’t help you much either.

 

Basically it is a huge tree that grows in the swamp. The people cut it down open it up, scrape out the pulp to make a starchy substance that is the staple in their diet. Then they use every other part of the tree to build their houses. When we get back to town and internet, I will do a more detailed post with pictures. But what you need to know right now is that is a lot of hot, sweaty, hard work that you do in the middle of the swamp with mud up to your calves and bees and mosquitoes flying all around you. And these people do this about once a week…so they will have food…so they won’t die. After that experience I will not complain about my “scratch” cooking.  I am ashamed of all the times I have opened a bag of flour, and thought, “Ugh this is so hard!”  Now I know it could be worse…much worse. I could have to go out and cut an entire field of wheat with a machete. Then carry it home and grind it into wheat first. And that would still be easier than what these people do. These real tribal wives are doing real scratch cooking. Like, starting with cutting down a huge flippin tree. I bet if any of them heard me complain, they would laugh, and say, “Lady, you don’t know squat about scratch cooking.” And I would hang my head in shame because they are right.

 

Anyway, so that is just a little tid bit of what we are doing now. Learning a lot of new things and gaining a whole new perspective.  And sweating. We are doing lots and lots of sweating.