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.