rewards

I am not a morning person. Sadly, the market where we get fresh fruits and veggies here at Ukarumpa is only open Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings from 6:30am – 8:00am. So, not only do I have to be UP (which I usually am by 7am), but I also need to be smiling, friendly, and somewhat able to converse (much harder for me at that hour) if I am to get fresh produce.

One of the GREAT perks of being married is that Jamie IS a morning person—and doesn’t mind going to the market! Today, though, he had to be out to the airstrip for an early flight, and I was left to make the trip. I did find some great deals—a yummy pineapple for less than $.50! and then, the best reward of all when I got home, my favorite breakfast: a peanut butter banana smoothie!

workdays

In the Linguistics Office, the job responsibility that I job-share with my friend, Joyce, we are getting caught up on emails. We’ve had some requests for old documents (pre-computer era) from folks doing masters or doctoral linguistic studies. These particular documents we only happened to have on paper in our Linguistics Library or in our archive room, so we had to hunt them down, see if we had them, if the authors had given permission for them to be given out, that sort of thing. I’m glad to have Joyce to use as a second set of eyes, when crafting emails to other folks, so that I make sure they sound nice J

I’ve also been starting to menu plan for the June module of VITAL. Our meals there mainly consist of rice served with some type of soup/stew/meat topping, root vegetables (sweet potatoes, taro, yams) boiled in coconut milk, cooked greens, and some fruit. This framework is fairly set, so mostly I just decide on the soup/stew/meat dish for each day. I’m so glad that I discovered dehydrating before the last (February) module, as that gives us more and cheaper options for ingredients for the dishes! I plan to dehydrate again for this module, so hope to get the menu worked out enough to be able to get a start on it next week.

the box of horrors

So, last night for dinner I made sloppy joes with a twist. Juliann and I have a “box of horrors” in which is a jumble of all sorts of packages of things that we don’t remember (half used bags of pasta, rice, nuts, etc.) and in the box we had two opened and two unopened bags of lentils that came from who knows where. I heard that lentils make a good filler in a recipe when mixed with other meat like ground beef, so I tried half ground beef and half lentils in the sloppy joes. I think I ended up with a bit too much liquid, but it didn’t taste bad—so we thought over all it was a success!! (since you can’t buy buns at the store here, I also made the buns ~ which I was pretty excited about J hee! Who knew I’d have to turn into such a cook!!) AND I emptied the two opened bags of lentils, thus removing them from the “box of horrors” which made it a double success! Hurray!!

Exciting news!

I have some exciting news to share! I’m engaged J Wow! You may say, this is fast…well, not really. I met Jamie Halverson at my orientation course when I first arrived in Papua New Guinea in August of 2007. He was on staff at the course. His normal job here is as a pilot serving in PNG. We began dating last fall. From the very beginning when I met Jamie, I was impressed with his love for other people—desire to help and serve them, and his desire to please God and draw closer in relationship to Him. So, when Jamie asked me to marry him on March 14^th, I was very happy to say, “yes!”

We are still trying to figure out wedding plans, plans for meeting each other’s families (he’s from Wisconsin), and plans for furlough—so we would be glad for your prayers as we make those decisions.

I’m looking forward to serving in Papua New Guinea for a long time with Jamie; and I can’t wait to see how God can use us together to see changed lives as the people of PNG are transformed by the power of God’s Word!

helicopter!

The day before I left Alotau (after the close of VITAL) to return to Ukarumpa we had a really cool happening…a helicopter landed in our “back yard”. The helicopter had gone to Fergusson Island (smallish island off the southeastern coast of PNG) to pick up a couple doing translation out there. They overnighted at the Alotau Regional Center, so the best place to park was in the big grassy area out back.

The clothes on the clothesline under the house got a great deal of wind during takeoff...some even ended up blowing off the line and to the far side of the house!

I missed the landing, but it was really cool to be able to watch them take off the next morning…and a bunch of our neighbor kids thought so too!

preparing for takeoff as many eyes watch

mice

It was a funny thought to me when recently I called out to my neighbor, Liz, “Hey, do you have a mouse?” and I realized that I really ought to clarify that I meant “computer mouse” and not the furry kind! I’ve never lived anywhere before where I needed to make that distinction, hee!

A silly story

Tuula asked me if I would be able to write a short sample story for the Literacy folks. She was teaching them a new learning game. This game is called, “Write an ‘?’ Story.” It involves a person creating a story where the first letter of most of the words is the same. I spent quite a while coming up with my little story, and in the end, I really liked it ~ so I thought it might bring a smile to your day as well.

A shiny snake named Sally slithered down the slippery sidewalk. She sang a silly song as she slithered along. Sunshine shone down on her slimy skin, and she sped up significantly to slide into the shade of the sweeping Sycamore tree. She spied a small sleeping skunk under some sticks. As Sally snuck softly through the sticks, sadly, she sneezed! The sleeping skunk sprang up, spotted Sally snake, and squirted her with its stinky spray. "Sorry," said the skunk. "You surprised me!." Sally, now significantly stronger smelling, smiled, shook her head and said, "shew." Then she shed her skin and slithered off into the sunset.