30

I am 30 today, and honestly it feels pretty good. It felt really good this morning when my husband turned the air conditioning on in our room and let me sleep in. Yes. I do have a small window until air conditioner in our bedroom in Wewak. We have NEVER turned it on, though..until today. It was my husband's birhtday present to me and it was THE BEST BIRTHDAY PRESENT I HAVE EVER RECEIVED. If you think I am exaggerating, then please read the all other posts and you will know how much I love my air conditioning.

Anyway, it was great. I am not bummed at all about being 30. My 20s could be summed up with college, marriage, and babies, and I am hoping that 30 will be summed up with marriage, raising those babies, and planting a church in the Jungles of Papua New Guinea.

It has the potential to be a great decade...even though it will be very hot.

Happy Birthday to me,
Tribal Wife

Pictures

I think the internet got my message about how much we love it, and want it to work for us. Because I woke up this morning and everything is miraculously working!! I have no idea how long this will last, so I will just put up some pictures and talk about the highlights of our 7 weeks in the bush! Here goes...

This is my friend B. We did a lot of stuff together- here she was teaching me how to fish (I didn't tell her that I was a Southern girl who has been fishing since she could walk). She taught me a lot and made me laugh a lot. She is very funny and now one of my favorite people here in PNG...



Here I am taking a Pidgin test. Looks a lot different than 7 years ago sitting in a college classroom writing essays in a blue book...




This is my friend T. She taught me how to make this sleeping mat. I then bought it just to show people that I made it (ok, so I only did like 3 inches of it, but I did it, ok)...



This is a picture of us with some sweet friends who volunteered to dress up for my friend Lauren's birthday. She came to visit our tribe while they were in bush orientation in another tribe...



This is one of my favorite pictures of all time. Why put your smokes behind your ear when you can put them in your ear...




These last two are a preview to my new website concept. Think along the lines of "people of wal-mart" or "awkward family photos". This one will be called "babies with knives" and anyone who has been to a majority world country (that is the new PC term for third world, just so you know) can submit their pictures of babies with knives. Every. Single. Country. I have been to outside of the Western world, I have seen a baby with a knife. I am sure all my other traveling friends out there will agree. From now on friends, take pictures. Take lots and lots of pictures..

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.