Abraham Meal

We usually try to have a special meal for the course closing each VITAL module. For this past October module, we had been translating selections from Genesis—key stories about Abraham, Jacob and Joseph—so some of the staff were inspired to try to give the participants a small taste of some of the foods and meal culture from the Middle East. Thus commenced what we called, “the Abraham Meal.”

We cleared the tables out from the dining hall and hung sheets, mosquito nets and tarps around to give it more of a “tent” feel.

Karla and Joanna hanging the entrance to our "Abraham tent"

For the food we decided on flat bread, hummus (chickpea/garbanzo bean dip), taboulleh (bulgur, tomato, cucumber, parsley & mint salad), tsatsiki (yogurt, cucumber & mint dip), falafel (fried chickpea meatball), lentil soup, lamb-kabobs (lamb meat is much cheaper here than in the US), and, of course, kaukau (sweet potatoes)—without which no PNG meal would be complete. The menu was maybe a little ambitious considering we would be feeding about 60 people and our cooks had never made any of these dishes before (except for the kaukau). We ended up making about 90 flat breads at the Centre the weekend prior to the course closing and freezing them until the meal on Friday evening, and our own cooks made another 30 on Thursday. We were able to get dried chickpeas/garbanzo beans for the hummus and falafel at the store without any problems and substituted brown rice for the bulgur in the taboulleh. There was no mint or parsley to be found, so we did end up missing a few of the flavors, but overall, I was pretty impressed at how things turned out.

Me, dishing up a plate of flat bread, taboulleh, etc.

In the past when I’ve made hummus we used a food processor or blender to turn the chickpeas into a paste, but we didn’t have one. So we ended up mashing them in a bowl using a bottle of soy sauce J It felt much more like what Sarah (Abraham’s wife) would have used to make her own hummus…though I imagine she wouldn’t have had a bottle of soy sauce either!

Christina, one ouf our cooks, and I are trying to determine if the lentils are done...neither of us had cooked them before! (The plate that I'm holding has a mound of garlic on it--I think we used two full bulbs of garlic for all of our dishes.)

Two of the staff played the roles of Abraham and Sarah, hosting a meal for their friends (the participants and special guests) and the rest of the staff all dressed up in our best bed sheets to act as servants of Abraham.

'Abraham' and 'Sarah' are being fanned with a palm branch by one of their 'servants'.

We called the participants to come to the meal with our PNG substitute shofar (ram’s horn)—a large conch shell. As they came in the door, they had their feet washed, and then were invited to take a seat on one of the mats on the floor. We served the meal in courses, and as the participants ate, “Abraham” and “Sarah” told stories about their lives. Abraham’s “chief servant” also told the story of going on a long journey and, with direction from Abraham’s God, finding a wife for Abraham’s son.

Abe, Sarah & servants preparing for the big meal...if you squint you may be able to see the giant conch shell in Karla's hand.

Knowing that foot washing was something that was done in Biblical times (it’s even mentioned in Genesis 18 as something Abraham does for his special visitors), we decided that it would add to the experience of our meal by washing the participants feet off in a basin of water as they entered our “tent”.

One of the participants having her feet washed.

We were a bit surprised to hear afterward that many of the participants were uncomfortable having their feet washed and having their food served by the staff. But in spite of that, and the food flavors that they were not used to, after they got settled in to the meal, the participants seemed to appreciate the experience.

The inside of 'Abraham's tent'...his guests are being served flat bread.

belonging

I was in the market buying some guavas from two ladies who were probably about my mom’s age. One of them, standing on the other side of the food bench, noticed the necklace I was wearing, a Bagi. (From what I understand, these necklaces are only made in the southern island-y parts of PNG, mostly Rossel and Sudest, where they have these certain types of shells that they use (the pinkish part) and the big black things are banana seeds.) She asked me if I liked wearing my Bagi, and I said, “yes, very much!” Then she asked me whether mine was made by people from Misima or another people group. I said, “I am not sure, I didn’t really know the person that made it.”

Her friend, who was standing next to me explained, “For our people, a Bagi is traditionally used to buy a girl (i.e. as a part of ceremonial exchange between families when people get married).” She gave me a big smile and, putting her arm around my shoulders, she said, “So you belong to us now!”

I just thought that was really cute!

Here is a photo of my Bagi…which I love to wear J

And then a photo of Tuula, Karla, and I all wearing our bagis…

Bible Storying Workshop

Well, I’m back in Alotau to help out with the multi-language project. The first week we had a special workshop for the course. A gentleman from Australia came to teach us about Bible storying. Because there are so many cultures in the world where they are used to transferring information orally, sometimes the methods that are used in literate cultures don’t connect/resonate with people. For cultures like this, Bible storying—translating Bible stories into the language, and teaching them to people, and accompanying the stories with questions—is a great way to tell people the story of the Bible while teaching them about God and his character, mankind and our character, and how the two interact.

I admit that I wasn’t very excited about this workshop to begin with—because I don’t really enjoy public speaking. But I found that telling Bible stories is fun! And that it is a great way to connect with people! I’m excited to begin to craft more stories that I can share with people in different situations.

In order to be able to cover more ground, the mentors learned a different set of stories than the participants. Ours were stories to gather principles of healthy church growth from Acts. Below are some pictures from a few of the mentors telling our stories to the participants…

*Me* Acts 3 Crippled beggar healed, jumping and praising God!

“Isn’t that the crippled guy who normally begs at the gate??”

“It is in Jesus’ name that this man was healed”

*Joanna* Acts 4 Peter and John instructed not to teach

*Marisa* Acts 9 A light from heaven blinds Saul

*Stephen* Acts 12 Peter in Jail

*Tuula* Acts 13 The sorcerer was blinded

*Karla* Acts 15 An argument that could’ve split the church

Vacation in Madang

Skipping back to last month..in mid-September a couple of friends and I took off for a weeklong vacation trip to the coastal city of Madang.

We had so much fun just hanging out together playing games, snorkeling, and cooking some of our meals. We also enjoyed eating out at a some restaurants, which we don’t normally have the opportunity to do! I tried a few activities that I’ve never tried before, such as fishing...didn’t catch anything. I’m sure the fish were afraid of me and my scary pole! (It was light when we started…but we forgot the camera part until after the sun was mostly gone.)

I even tried golfing for the first time. As you can see from my perfect golf stance in the photo, I have it down perfectly!

Actually, it took us a REALLY long time (4.5 hours to play 9 holes) since I had a bit of trouble actually getting the ball up into the air—I played it more like miniature golf but with more grass between the tee/start and the hole. Oh well. You can’t be good at everything! But on the whole it was an awesome time!

friendly bugs

I don’t quite understand the draw…keep meaning to ask someone who knows, but I never actually remember—what is the draw that bugs have for light?? Anyways. The power goes off here at 9pm. Not wanting to go to sleep yet, I was attempting do to work on my computer, but as you may be able to tell from the picture, I was competing for my computer screen with a bunch of small flying creatures (that’s what all the little black dots are—at one point I counted at least 20). I don’t mind SO much when they are just on the screen, but I find it a bit inconvenient when they fly up my nose as I’m trying to breathe through the swarm!!

I miss...

This week Karla, Tuula and I were watching a couple of TV shows that Karla’s friend from Oklahoma had sent (thanks!). I never thought I’d say this, but it’s kinda fun to see commercials from home. However, some of them maybe it would be better to just fast forward through, like the one for Red Robin — you know that restaurant with steak fries and the ‘five alarm burger’ J And to top it all off, this show actually ended inside the restaurant, with that familiar red plastic basket and it’s little paper liner sitting on the table. Maybe it’s not very missionary of me…but right now I sure do miss Red Robin ~ ahhh.

birthdays

Well, I haven’t been so good at keeping up with blogging lately. Mostly life has just seemed rather normal, and who wants to read a blog about normal? Going to the office for the day, working on my computer at some sort of work or other, coming home to hang out with friends for the evening or go to a meeting.

HOWEVER, a couple of Saturdays ago my housemate, and neighbor and I decided to throw ourselves a birthday party—as we all have September birthdays! My housemate is really creative in coming up with fun ideas of things to do—so we had a great time. We had a menu that listed six courses and six eating utensils, and our guests selected what order to eat the courses and what utensil they wanted to eat each with—the only tricky part was that we called the each of the dishes and eating utensils by a made up name on the menu.

So one person ended up eating their fettuccini alfredo with a straw, and another ate their chocolate cake with a cheese slicer. I ended up drinking my iced chai with an ice cream scoop, and my housemate ate her pasta with a clothes pin!

After lunch we played this really fun game named Quelf. It’s a board game with some questions and some acting/singing things (similar to Cranium), but sometimes it just has you do really random things. For example, one card said something like:

Stand up, go to the window and say, “It looks like rain.” Then go to another room, splash water on your face and don’t dry it off; return to the game and ask everyone how come they didn’t get wet!

I had one “rule” that said whenever someone passed my person on the game board I was supposed to “fall down, play dead, and say, ‘You thwarted us again, you vile beast!’”

Cards like kept us all laughing.

personal space

So there I was—standing barefoot at my kitchen counter when I felt a tickle on my foot. Instinctively I moved my foot a bit and glanced down…to see a little black slimy tail slithering over the top of my foot! Apparently I was in the way of one of the small lizards that live in our house, and so he took a shortcut over my foot! I don’t mind sharing a house with the little fellows (they’re generally only about 5 inches long) as they help keep the bug population down. But when I find them climbing around on my favorite coffee cup drying in the dish drainer, or when they use ME for a shortcut across the room, I really wish they had a little more respect for personal space!

59.7

59.7 That is the temperature (in Fahrenheit, of course) that the thermometer in my kitchen read this morning when I got up! Brrr! I didn’t know the inside of a house could be so cold! Now I know why the highlands people are so strong--you have to be to endure temperatures like that without the comfort of indoor heating…though maybe they have fires in their kitchens…hmmm. Do you think anyone would notice if my housemate and I built a little fire in the corner of our house to stay warm?

Tawali

A couple of days before I left Alotau, a group of us took a trip to a nearby resort called Tawali. Apparently quite an expensive place to stay, we got a great “day trip” deal for transport there/back and a buffet lunch. It is about a 1½ hour drive from Alotau, then a 10 minute boat ride. Once there you can snorkel, go caving, or just hang out in the lodge-type place and drink coffee/tea, read, play games, etc.

When we arrived, we were all given these glasses of fresh fruit juice. I’ve never gotten a drink with a cute umbrella before!

We were all looking forward to some snorkeling, but as June/July is “winter” season in the southern hemisphere, the water was just a bit chilly to be comfortable for more than ½ hour or so. So, after braving the water as long as we could, the four of us single gals ended up drinking warm drinks (coffee/tea) and playing a game.

This is the view from the deck. The lodge is on a hill, giving it a nice view. As you can see, the skies are a bit grey, but the view is still really beautiful.

Oh, and meet my friend Turk. Well, he is actually carved out of wood and painted. But doesn’t he look amazingly real!!

What a relaxing way to spend a day, after a busy month’s work on the June course.

\-/_!EARTHQUAKE!\]>/

So, one of the things that I never really experienced in living in Washington was an earthquake.  The earthquakes in PNG seem to come fairly frequently to me—maybe once a month or so—with varying degrees of shaking going on.  Thanksgiving 2007 was my first real “big” one.  It actually moved our stove across the floor a couple inches!!  This morning I was awakened at about 6am by another earthquake. It was just big enough to make me wonder if my bed was the best place for me to be at this time—but then, at that time of the morning in a Saturday, I just couldn’t be bothered to move J Turns out it had a magnitude of 5.3 with the epicenter located maybe 200 miles away from us. Exciting!!

THAT's what's so great about the US!

So my housemate and I were laughing today.  I had gotten a new bag of cotton balls.  You’ve probably seen a similar thing in your store—150 cotton balls in a bag.  When I went to open it, I realized that I’d better cut a small hole, otherwise they’d all fall out. And that’s when we realized, that’s what’s so great about the US—they have ziploc closures even on the cheap cotton ball bags! Hee!

it's a chilly day in the neighborhood...

So, I really felt like Mr. Rogers today when I walked into the office, took my chair, and whistled to myself, “would you be mine, could you be mine won’t you be my neighbor” as I changed my shoes.

 

Since I’m now in the southern hemisphere, my seasons are different from home. Now it’s “winter” or at least cooler from other times of the year. So I’ve been bringing my slippers with me to the office to help keep my feet warm, since the flip-flops I normally wear for wandering around don’t do much for my chilly tootsies!

back in the Highlands

So, I’m back at my home in the Highlands after nearly 2 months in Alotau. It’s good to be back -- see friends, get to hang out and play games in the evenings (Rook and Risk are the current favorites!). I don’t think that I’ve posted many, if any photos from here…I’ll have to take some pictures and do that soon. Just wanted to let you know that I haven’t forgotten about you!

 

I’m working during the day in a new job in the office.  It involves keeping track of the different linguistic requirements for the language teams, collecting papers as they complete them, making sure all the proper forms are filled out and signed by the proper people, and helping the teams to find consulting help as needed.  It’s a lot of working getting up to speed on what needs to be signed by whom and forwarded on to someone else, but I’m loving it! I’m so glad put me here just now to do this work ~ what a gracious God He is to give me work that I love, surrounded by friends, and able to contact loved ones far away by blog, email and even mobile phone (when I can get a signal)!!

power points

Those of you familiar with Microsoft Office programs may think this blog will be about some sort of slide show…however, a ”power point” in Commonwealth English is what I would call an electrical outlet.  Aside from the different voltage and shape of the prongs on plugs, there is one really big difference in power points here from what I am used to in the States—an on/off switch. This switch is really handy in that it allows you to leave something plugged in and yet have no electricity flowing through the circuit.  I usually like to have the switch turned “off” when I plug in my computer because otherwise it tends to make a rather loud crack when I plug it in…which makes me rather nervous.  However, the problem with this is that I also usually then forget to actually turn the switch on.  I can’t tell you how many times I have plugged in my computer and worked away, assuming that I was running off the electricity, when all of a sudden I get a “low battery” message on my computer and I realize that I had never actually turned the power point switch to “on”!!

plants I never expected to see in the tropics

I’ve always thought of these as desert plants, but surprisingly, there are a number of healthy looking cactus and yucca plants around.  I even saw some aloe vera being sold in the market last week!

Cooking

So how DO you cook for 40 people at a month long course—three meals a day-seven days a week?

Well here are photos of our “stovetop” and “oven.” Both are fire driven. We have a duty roster which schedules the men to take turns chopping firewood each day.

We have three ladies that do our cooking for us and they are wonderful! They arrive at 5:30 each morning to get the fire going to heat water for coffee and tea for breakfast—and they stick around all day (with short lull between breakfast & lunch and lunch & dinner) until dinner is cleaned up.

I have made up a menu of what I would like cooked for each meal, I just try to make sure that we have all the ingredients (all that are available this week at least!) and the cooks do an excellent job of handling all the actual cooking. This is really great for me, as they have SOO much more experience cooking over fires and inside a wood oven that I wouldn’t be much help anyways. In fact I just learned last week that because the oven gets so smoky when there is an actual fire under it, they have to start early and get a good fire going so that they will have only coals before cooking inside or the food will taste smoky. This makes sense, but I don’t think I would have thought of it on my own!

We have been trying a few new recipes this course (potato soup, chili, tuna & egg salad sandwiches, coffee cake, brownies) and they have been so excited for the opportunity to test new things! I am so thankful for these three women!!

daily

This course/module has been a bit different than normal. The seven language groups finished translating the book of Mark in the February module and took copies back to their villages for checking between modules. They returned in June with a list of corrections that needed to be made to create a nearly final copy that will be checked by a trained consultant hopefully in the next few months.

Our fearless leader

So this module has been spent making those final corrections, double checking spelling and key terms and finishing up a “back translation” (translation done from the language into English by someone that didn’t work on the original translation—this is a tool used by the consultants to make sure that meaning is being correctly conveyed).

The Taupota language team working with their mentor on corrections

In addition to the above work, this module has also been a time for the participants to learn/polish typing skills. We have a number of small AlphaSmart Neos. They are small word processor-type computers that have a full keyboard and a small screen, about 4 lines long, and they run off 3 AA batteries. These allow the participants to do their own typing of stories and songs on their own time to increase the volume of language resources. These can then be used for storybooks in schools, songs for church songbooks, and more information about the language--which is helpful for analysis of the language, an important step in a good translation.

Members from the Maiadom and Kakabai language teams doing typing practice

We have also taken some time to work on expanding dictionaries. We have acquired two really nice posters on the flora and fauna of PNG. It is so helpful to a match PNG language name to its English name using the pictures on these posters! I have spent some time working with the Kakabai (Kah-kuh-bye) language team on the dictionary work and realize that it is a bit of a handicap for me to not be familiar with the plants animals in this area of the world! I just haven’t seen enough Cassowaries to know what to properly call, in English, the name of the pokey things that they have that are not called “feathers”—pictures and descriptive books really are an asset (by the way…we decided on quill/spine)!

Members and mentor from the Ghayavi language team looking at posters for words to add to their dictionary

Catching up...

Ok, sorry I seem to have fallen off the face of the earth!  I haven’t forgotten about blogging, but somehow it just didn’t get done. So, a quick catch up:

 

April -> flew to Madang (north coast of PNG) for a short vacation with friends. We took an Open Water Diving course, so now I’m certified to dive to 18 Meters!  It was really fun—there are so many colorful things to see underwater here, as well as some WWII wrecks (which as an “Open Water” diver I can only view from the outside, but still really cool)!

 

April to mid-May -> Back to Ukarumpa (in the “highlands” middle of PNG).  There I worked on some formatting projects on the computer; basically typesetting a grammar paper for publishing.  I also trained a new gal on how to do the job—she was really fun to work with, but I felt a little odd to be training someone on something I’d only done once before myself (I worked on a different grammar paper typesetting job last December and really enjoyed it).

 

mid-May -> returned to Alotau (southeastern tip of PNG) to do some prep work for the multi language project I helped with back in February: re-designing the Access database of course information (participants, publications, training, etc.), gathering information and creating a songbook to print for the course participants, a week of computer training with our national staff mentors from the basics to some more advanced programs; my more experienced teammate did the advanced training, but then I was also able to learn more about those programs myself!

 

June -> our June course for the multi-language project started, and we are now about halfway through the course!  Wow!  This course I am once again the “buyer,” and thus responsible for purchasing all the supplies, managing the cooks and making sure everyone is fed.  I have added a few new recipes to the menu this module (chili, potato soup, tuna and egg salad sandwiches, oatmeal) which everyone seems to be enjoying—at least the staff enjoyed the oatmeal J—so that make me happy too!  I also am available to help out one of the language groups with their typing work that has to be done in English (even if you can speak it well, you have to admit that some of those English spellings trip you up!), and will begin to do some printing of the literacy books that are being produced next week.

 

MV Doulos

Last weekend the OM ship MVDoulos sailed into port in Alotau.

It had already stopped in a couple of ports in PNG, but I was glad to have the opportunity to see it! The Doulos has the worlds largest floating bookstore. They also have 300 staff and crew on board, who go out into the community each port they stop at. They visit schools and churches doing teaching and ministry, and they also do some community improvement projects. There are also seminar/conferences and classes offered on the ship.

People stood in line for a long time to have the chance to come on board and check out the bookstore!

We were all excited for the opportunity to visit the bookstore as we don’t usually have access to the variety of books that we would in our home countries, and it gets REALLY expensive to ship books! We started off by attending a Women’s Conference that was offered on board. It quite nice. They introduced some of the ladies on board who were dressed up with traditional clothing from their home countries (I think they said about 50 nationalities on board!) and then there was a time of singing, a skit, and a woman from the Netherlands shared about some of her experiences in her 6 years with OM and how important it is to take time to invest in other women—older and younger.

Then we got to go on a tour of the boat…even down into the engine room!

We ended with a trip to the bookshop, which was quite good sized and just packed with people!! I was a little daunted from too much browsing just by the crush of people, but did find a few things to take home with me. We also found a nice unabridged English dictionary that VITAL has been needing, but haven’t been able to find/ship here, so that was really awesome.

Thanks to Karla Sligh for these pictures! I was so sad to discover that I had forgotten my camera!

Geckos

Chirp, chirp, chirp

 

That was never the sound I imagined would come from these little guys!  I will often be sitting in my kitchen and see a dark flash skeetering across the white wall—a gecko on his way somewhere.  They are amazingly fast and can run through the tiniest crack between cupboard and wall.   Most around here (Alotau) are about 4-inches long, though in Madang and Ukarumpa they were much bigger—some 8-10 inches. They are also quite shy about being photographed, thus, this funny photo.  The other evening I was getting ready to put away my dishes from the dish drainer, and noticed a little baby gecko…running across my “clean” dishes.  I guess maybe it’s a good thing that the cupboards have doors, so I don’t really know all that goes on inside!

rhinos

This is the closest we get to rhinos around here. A rhinoceros beetle.  This fellow was so big I couldn’t believe it.  I tried to photograph him with something to give you an idea of his size.  He got flipped onto his back and was waving his legs around for quite some time before I took pity on him and flipped him back over.  I guess he was so tired from his little ordeal that he let me snap a few pictures before he ran off.

drinking sugar

I saw this sugar cane in the market on the weekend and thought it looked yummy!  I had my first sugar “drinking” experience in the village last fall—at least that was what they called it.  Some of you may be familiar with the process. You cut a stalk of sugar cane, and cut/peel the hard skin off with a sharp knife.  Then you use your teeth to chew/yank off a hunk of the bark/pulp/string stuff in the middle. You chew on it, “drinking” the sugar juice and when there’s just pulp left (i.e. it’s not chewy/juicy anymore) you spit it out.  I have a bit of trouble doing this in public, as mom drilled into me that “what goes into your mouth does not come back out!”  But I enjoyed it in the privacy of my kitchen this weekend, with no one to watch me - hee!

my back yard

One more short post.  I wish that may camera was a bit better at getting sunset colors, but I still think this picture captures the idea.  I am just amazed when I stop to appreciate this  view from my porch!

maps

I love maps. I found this really cool one on the Ethnologue website, and it has marked all of the know languages of PNG and grouped them by language family.  Pretty busy map, huh?  The current number for total languages in PNG is over 820!

 

Here is another map of PNG, for those of you who don’t have the country memorized yet (hee!)  I’m currently living on the southern tip of the country, in Alotau, which is the capital of Milne Bay Province (outlined in pink on this map).  Just for reference, my POC (orientation course) was on the north coast, in Madang.  Ukarumpa, where I lived over Christmas, is more towards the middle of the country, in the “highlands”, and is located a bit south-east of Goroka.  Just as a reminder, PNG is around the size of the state of California.

Quote of the month

I heard this quote in a sermon recently, and liked it so much that I put it on my computer desktop where I could be often reminded of its truth:

 

"Had any other condition been better for you than the one in which you are, Divine Love would have put you there. You are placed by God in the most suitable circumstances. And if you had the choosing of your lot you would soon cry, 'Lord, choose my self will for me, for I am pierced through with many sorrows.' Be content with such things as you have, for the Lord has ordered all things for your good. Take up your own daily cross; it is the burden best suited for your own shoulder. It will prove most effective to make you perfect in every good word and work to the glory of God. Down busy self, and proud impatience. It is not for you to choose, but for the Lord of Love. Trials must and will befall, but with humble faith to see, love inscribed upon them all, this is happiness to me." ~ Spurgeon

Celebration day

Since this VITAL module celebrated the completion of the first full book, the Gospel of Mark, translated by the 7 language groups that participate in the New Testament VITAL modules, we had an extra special course closing celebration.

VITAL has access to a boat that is used to pick up and drop off the course participants. We were able to get permission to take the boat out on a short trip across the bay to a place called Wagawaga.

photo courtesy of Don McIntosh

photo courtesy of Tuula Kaija

photo courtesy of Tuula Kaija

There we had a little BBQ,

photo courtesy of Tuula Kaija

people were able to do some snorkeling (there is the remains of a WWII boat with some beautiful coral and fish),

photo courtesy of Karla Sligh

and play a game of Frisbee. This was a great way to celebrate, close out VITAL module #9, all the while developing relationships in a more relaxed situation.

photo courtesy of Joanna Frampton

photo courtesy of Karla Sligh

I got some teasing because of my 50cent glasses...they just make me laugh! Here I am enjoying our special treat, chocolate cake ~ mmmmmmm