Beyond Imagination

< CALL ENDED >

2012-02-10T15:17:00.007+10:00

By The Missionary Sister

“Beam me up, Scotty!”

As crew members frantically push buttons and twist dials and type on space-age keyboards, lights flash and alarms bleep and Spock and Kirk go poof.

Sounds like Skype to me.

After all, what other technology allows you to interact with someone on the other side of the world, but while you’re frantically clicking buttons and twisting microphones and typing on your not-so-space-age keyboard, suddenly it all cuts out and your person goes poof.

Beam up? More like beam out. Good-bye, person. It was nice knowing you.

Sometimes, the good old-fashioned letter sounds wonderfully stable. After all, letters don’t just flit in and out of existence whenever they feel like it or go on vacations for weeks on end (which has greatly been the culprit of Catherine’s absence from the blog lately, as her Internet decided to spend some time visiting his summer home in Hawaii).

I mean, really, have you ever tried to Skype with someone on the other side of the world? Sometimes you just have to accept that half the communication will revolve around the fact that communicating isn’t.

So here you are, trying to Skype. You’ve successfully kidnapped the Internet, threatened him with a long and painful death, bound and gagged him, and forced him to stay there for enough time for you to have a decent conversation. But he is mad and determined to have his revenge through The Delay.

For example, let’s say Catherine answers my Skype call.

“Hi!” I say enthusiastically.

“Hi!” she responds.

Awesome, so far, so good. But this is where you’re going to get cocky. Even though you’ve had a fabulous, extensive, productive, wonderful conversation thus far, it’s completely a fake. Just watch.

“So how are—I’m sorry that—you doing—I haven’t called.”

Pause.

The Delay has reared its ugly head—bringing with it the inevitable Speaking Over Each Other. Here you have a predicament. You start pondering the situation. You could speak but it’s been several seconds and so it’s possible that she’s already speaking and if you do now you’ll just cut her off and start the whole cycle over but she’s a nice sort of person so is probably waiting for you to say your piece and what if since she hasn’t heard from you she thinks you’re mad at her because you haven’t responded and besides she is older after all and has sort of seniority so you could just keep on waiting but the suspense is killing you and you might as well live life on the edge and so you blurt out—

“What did—what—you say—did you say?

Pause.

Apparently she had the same thought process.

But no matter, Catherine and I are smart and manage to work around The Delay, but our troubles aren’t over. Next is The Echo. Although you may think it’s just that extra voice you regularly hear in your head, in reality, it’s not. (Sorry to burst your bubble.) No one knows why The Echo occurs. Rumor has it that bored teenagers hack Skype calls and repeat everything you say just to annoy you.

But the real problem with The Echo is that it’s just so insanely distracting. It’s like walking in a room full of mirrors. You naturally stare at yourself. It's weird. It’s not like you don’t know what you look like. But you nevertheless gawk at yourself like you were born on the moon, and it’s the same with The Echo. All you can focus on is yourself and what you said and what you are saying and pretty soon you can’t even focus on what you’re doing saying doing and you and you don’t even start to think about what you’re understanding and sense is is sort of really really disappearing gone away gone disappeared.

So then you call her and hang up and she calls you and hangs up and you both call at the same time and hang up and try to lose those annoying teenagers on the other end and finally you outsmart them and now you’re safe from The Echo.

There are more problems, of course. There is the video quality, which usually resembles some sort of low-budget stop-action animation film which freezes and starts and freezes and starts and inevitably stalls out when you’re in some sort of eminently attractive position of mouth open and hands flailing and eyes half shut. A frightening sight, to be sure.

No wonder the locals worried about Catherine’s family. They all looked like zombies.

Of course, some computers don’t have microphones at all. At one family gathering where this was the case, I was elected to type all of our communication to Catherine through the chat feature while she talked to us via the Skype call. (I made a mental note to forgive the mean lady on the Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing CD for all of the times she tried to limit my spelling creativity with little nasty red lines she put under all my typos and to thank all the little aliens for letting me blow up their ships as I rescued Planet Earth from their attacks in the speed-typing games.)

Really, it’s amazing we get to communicate with Catherine at all, after all that. But we’ve managed. After all, if good old Scotty can beam people up as they hurtle headlong in a freefall from thousands of feet in the air with bombs blowing up all around them, I guess we can handle Skype. And you know, I think I that know it will will….

<CALL ENDED>

Some Suggestions for Webster

2012-01-19T06:00:00.000+10:00

A major element of village living was to improve our fluency in Tok Pisin (PNG’s trade language). Our waspapa (host father) took this role very seriously. “No!” he would shout, interrupting another’s question, “You can’t ask them in English! You must use Tok Pisin!”

I could have taken a photo of all my paperwork. This is much prettier!

The other person would look at us sheepishly. We’d shrug. And soon we’d start again (with my waspapa standing guard, ready to squash any deviations…).

These past couple of weeks I’ve been delving back into Tok Pisin instruction as I’ve been preparing lectures and materials for the January POC course. Language learning is always an adventure!

Originally starting as a way for the Australian coffee managers to talk with their Papua New Guinean laborers, Tok Pisin is based on English, German, and other local languages and has a small vocabulary and limited grammar. It has now spread across the country as an effective trade language that allows the people from 830 different vernacular languages to communicate with each other. Tok Pisin only has about 2,000 words—which is very limited in comparison to a major language, such as English, Chinese, or German which each go upwards of 300,000! As a result, many of the words have multiple meanings, and the length of the sentences can increase dramatically.

John 3:16 in English: For God so loved that world that He gave His one and only Son so that whoever would believe in Him will not perish but have eternal life.

John 3:16 in Tok Pisin: God i gat wanpela Pikinini tasol i stap. Tasol God i laikim tumas olgeta manmeri bilong graun, olsem na em i givim dispela wanpela Pikinini long ol. Em i mekim olsem bilong olgeta manmeri i bilip long em ol i no ken lus. Nogat. Bai ol i kisim laip i stap gut oltaim oltaim.

I’ve found Tok Pisin to be an expressive and fun language with a great many words that I think English would do well to incorporate. They (along with many others, I’m sure) have certainly crept into my language! As I was working on the curriculum and lectures for the upcoming course, I started making a list of my commonly-used words...

Bagarap—Definition: Screwed up. Broken. Wrecked. (Letting the fire char your scones into black nothingness is a perfect time to shake your head sadly and sigh, “oh, bagarap.”)
Hap –Definition: part (This is so useful because it is so vague. Things, people, places, time periods….it works for one and all.)
Laik bilong yu—Definition: Whatever you want to do; your preference. (Which movie do you want to watch? Laik bilong yu.)
Maski—Definition: Forget it. Leave it. Nevermind. (Oh, it’s raining out. Maski.)
Malolo—Definition: Rest. (A lovely word perfectly acceptable to invoke at any time of the day, especially upon conclusion of a previous activity.)
Liklik haus—Definition: outhouse. Lit. “little house.” (Really, it’s much more pleasant sounding to my English ears to say “I need to go to the liklik haus”).
Tok ples—Definition: vernacular/indigenous language of the area. (Were the materials printed in tok ples?)
Nogat—Definition: Nope. (I love how much stronger this rolls off the tongue with that lovely g and t. Do you have bananas today? Nogat. )
i go i go i go—Definition: To continue doing something in a similar manner that goes on and on and on. (We walked up a mountain, down the next one, up the next one…i go i go i go.)
Toksave tasol—Definition: Just an fyi… (I’m going out to the market now, toksave tasol)
Wanbel (vs. tubel)—Definition: in one accord/agreement vs. having two different, often conflicting, opinions. (Do I eat another cookie or not? I really feel tubel about it).
Bung—Definition: to gather together; to meet. (Let’s bung at the Post Office.)
Em nau—Definition: Yes (with emphasis). That’s right. (You’re the house that had the bonfire! Em nau!)
A?—Definition: Question marker (comes at the end of the sentence). (You're making bread today, a?)

Brief Pronunciation Guide
There are no silent letters. Consonants are said more forward (close to teeth). 'r' is a flap or trill.
A=father O=boat I=keep E=ate U=shoot Au=house Ai=tie

On Roller Coasters and PMVs

2012-01-16T12:45:00.000+10:00

When I was in high school, my youth group loaded up the church vans and emptied at ValleyFair, Minnesota’s most well-known amusement park. We gleefully ran to stand in long lines and get whipped around in spinning, looping thrills. Finally, a group of us decided to tackle the High Flyer, the oldest of the roller coasters. As we climbed upwards, the struts creaked and groaned, the cars swayed in their heights, and I began to lose a bit of confidence in its structural soundness—a fear that turned into reality when we eventually got stuck on the last turn into the loading dock and the attendants had to climb out and push us back in.

On one of those trips across town, we stopped for gas

Now, here in PNG, I’m finding myself reliving that experience… except instead of two-seater cars on a narrow track, I’m bouncing in the back seat of PMVs through the jungle-laden mountains.

On Saturday, I embarked on my journey from the Highlands to the coast, but we were only 20 minutes into it before we were rolling to a stop. Flat tyre. Four trips across town and an hour later sent us on our way (only to repeat the flat-tyre experience five hours closer to Madang). But, considering the drive, I suppose it’s a wonder that we didn’t have to replace tires more often!

The roller coaster ride began anew as we trundled toward hills that soared upwards beyond the view of the windshield. Caution: 17% Gradient, proclaimed one sign. Another calmly observed: Steep and Winding Road.

Those are indeed clouds, and they are indeed below us.

Finally (and most succinctly), red-painted letters: SLOW.

Their reassurance was stifling. The van’s joints creaked and groaned just like that ancient High Flyer as gravity weighted me into my seat—not unlike an airliner’s take-off. Out my window, the road’s so-called-shoulder plummeted down the cliff, rivaling Six Flags. For a moment, we teetered at the top of the hill, an instant of spectacular scenery—the Highlands mountains tumbling and folding into crevices like a rumpled quilt. Then, over the peak and down… I shoved my knees into the seat ahead of me as we pitched forward at 100 km/hour, leaning around the curves as I braced against the window or ricocheted into my seat mate.

More Highlands mountains, heading down into the valley

Although driving may technically be on the left, in reality, it occurs where the least potholes are (nothing is marked anyway), which makes for hair-raising encounters as you come around the bend and find a massive truck racing toward you on the same little spit of smooth road. Pothole-avoidance is a finely-honed skill and our driver proved his worth, slaloming expertly through a road pockmarked with ditches, as if someone took a massive shotgun and peppered the asphalt with crater-producing bullets. When he couldn’t dodge the holes, our driver skidded to a near halt, then crept forward, gingerly dropping the wheels down the cavern until I was certain the undercarriage must have scraped the ground, before the rest of the vehicle followed suit, and then up again over terrain akin to mountain-goat habitat. Such a strategy assumed, of course, the road was paved—which was only occasionally. Gravel roads, on the other hand, benignly sported rocks the size of paving stones and washed out canyons that lurched and jolted our spring-loaded seats. Occasionally, I would attempt to read, but when the words blurred into an unintelligible smear from the bouncing, even my strong stomach kindly asked me to give up and look out the window.

In the Ramu Valley. We came down those mountains.

Bridges (or fords, when the bridge didn’t exist) were another whole experience, with the gaps over the water lined up with our wheels and the metal plates bouncing and clattering and the one-lane chicken-race with the other car (the bridge barely being wide-enough to accommodate your side-mirrors). Since ours was a well-traveled road, we didn’t have to cross those bridges that were only the two sets of wooden logs spaced apart for the tyres. I’ll save that for another day.

When we finally reached Madang and I climbed over the seats and out of the PMV, it was with same that rather incredulous belief you have after clambering out of a roller coaster—the realization that solid, unmoving ground still exists.

And to think, I used to pay to stand in long lines and go in a looping circle in order to come to the same conclusion!

Celebrate!

2012-01-11T09:00:00.006+10:00

The entrance road to the hospital

One Saturday during my time in the village, my wasfemili (host family) and I made the several-hour trek down the mountain to celebrate the opening of a new maternity wing on the local hospital. Seven different singsing groups from the entire surrounding area had been practicing for weeks to perform their traditional songs and dances in joyous welcome. Even the Prime Minister Peter O’Neill was coming!

The brand new maternity wing! (very exciting since death rates are still high here)

A singsing is a riot of color—pink, orange, red, yellow, black, white, green—dying grass skirts (purpur), slashed across foreheads and arms, woven into bilums (string bags). Feathers, shells, teeth of dogs and pigs, stones and seeds chatter and swing as the dancers stomp and bend to the beat of the kundu drums and garamuts.

Most of the dances happen in a circular pattern

Here they are playing a garamut (left) and a mambu drum

Hundreds of people flocked to see their lain (clan) perform, and several of the women had a brisk trade selling icies, peanuts, and water. Despite the cloudless sky and ferocious tropical sun, the dancers kept going and going and going….

No rain today--all the umbrellas were to provide shade for the eager onlookers

My sister-in-law and aunt, waiting to start the next dance

Even my area, Aronis, had sent a troupe of dancers, including various relatives such as my uncle, grandfather, brother, sister-in-law, and aunt. Earlier that week, we had visited one of their last practices: intense, sweat-gleaming dancers, in a rhythmic pounding circle around a Coleman lantern. The drums make your blood shiver, and I had soon found myself pulled into the circle of dancers, joining the women in their bending, swaying tempo beneath the Milky Way.

Eventually, they would break, gathering “backstage” (under the clumps of trees) where the cigarettes, water, sunglasses and cell phones appeared—quite a clash with the traditional grass skirts and pig-tusk necklaces!

At one point, I found a bit of shade and started working on my bilum; suddenly, hundreds of eyes riveted on the latest cultural attraction—a white woman blithely weaving a traditional handicraft! (Everyone was also thoroughly amused to dress me up for a few minutes in the traditional outfit before we left that morning. On the other hand, my 1-1/2 year-old niece, Respa,was less than thrilled with the attire.)

Yes, Papua New Guineans certainly know how to celebrate!

On The Thirteenth Day of Christmas....

2012-01-09T18:19:00.001+10:00

Suppose you want to have a bonfire party. First, you must find something to burn. Then, you must have an excuse to burn it. Next you must have food to roast on said bonfire. Finally, you must have a crowd to join in the festivities outlined above.

On Saturday, all of that came true :)

The Treehouse.

You see, Epiphany was at its peak (we opted to create a Thirteenth Night and hold the celebration on Saturday. Ancient celebrations have to bend to modern working calendars…). We had the Decrepit-Falling-to-Bits-And-Beyond-Hope-Of-Repair Treehouse that needed to be destroyed before some child fell through the rotting boards. And we had lots of food ready to be put in a stew.

Destruction + Fire + Food?

Perfect.

The Strength.

Before we knew it, people of all ages began flooding our backyard (we heard it went upwards of 70), armed to the teeth with sledgehammers, bushknives, axes, ropes, leather gloves, saws, and toolbelts, ready for action. After some folded-armed deliberation (no doubt discussing air speed, tree branch angles, leverage principles, rotten wood strength and other fine details), they hooked a rope around the struts, strategically employed all the high-energy youngsters (well-anchored by more seasoned individuals) and then Heave! Ho! Heave! Crash!!

The Demolition

Within seconds, they were scrambling on top of it, like ants to crumbs. I must say, I’ve never seen quite such an enthusiastic race by grown men to smash to bits the dangerous construction. Before long, a huge tepee of wood was standing, built around our Christmas tree and well-stoked by enthusiastic donations of burnable items by our neighbors. Add a liberal dousing of kerosene and whoosh! We had our own (rather enlarged) version of the traditional Burning Yule Log.

The Very Cool Conclusion

Success! As I watched the flames lick skywards and sparking ash float towards our house, I found myself rather belatedly grateful that our water tank was currently gorged with the gift of rainy season. Of course, it also helped that half the volunteer fire department were standing around the inferno, grinning rather giddily to themselves with their success.

Obliteration makes people hungry, and it didn’t take long before the piles of potluck food gave way to empty bowls and crumpled napkins (and desperate measures—such as when we ran out of spoons and started handing people measuring spoons. Sorry—you’ll have to use the teaspoon…).Although marshmallows aren’t currently in stock at the store, various individuals contributed their coveted bags to the post-destruction roasting party. It took several hours before the massive conflagration could be approached voluntarily (several marshmallow-starved individuals tried constructing roasting shields to protect themselves from the heat), but the eventual treats were worth it.

Eventually, as what used to be the tree house became a smoldering pile of embers and the inevitable drizzle started to leak from the clouds, roasting sticks and hammers were packed into bilums (string bags) and our backyard grew quiet with the silence that follows annihilation.

With a sigh, my housemates and I tucked our leftover vegetables into tinfoil and laid them in the ashes to cook overnight.

And that was the end of the Christmas season at Ukarumpa.

Hello--from the future!

2012-01-01T09:48:00.001+10:00

I like taking advantage of the International Date Line when I can—like now, for instance, when I’m in 2012, and many of you are still sitting in the past…. Good ole 2011. Don’t worry. You’ll catch up sometime. From what I can tell, January 1, 2012 promises to be a good laundry day. Now, that’s an auspicious start to a new year, if there was one!

Ukarumpa scenery outside my window :)

A year ago, I don’t think I anticipated shouting in the new year wearing flipflops under the shadow of banana leaves and illuminated by a splendid array of sparklers, floating fire lanterns, and quite a remarkable show of spinning, spitting, flaming steel wool on coat hangers—the Ukarumpa version of fireworks :)

Nope, that wasn’t quite what I had pictured. This was certainly better :)

A year ago, I was still working as a receptionist at the counseling clinic, putting hundreds of miles on my car as I traveled around blizzarding Minnesota to speak to churches and groups(whose bright idea was it to do find partners during a season when your eyelashes freeze solid?), and was attempting to guess at packing for PNG while I prepared for summer linguistics school.

Now, I’m living in Ukarumpa, Eastern Highlands, Papua New Guinea with several other marvelous ladies, and chat in Tok Pisin as I search for the week’s vegetables at our local market, shoulders slightly peeling from a bit too much tropical sun!

One thing hasn’t changed…I’m still packing, but now it’s for the next part of my assignment: on January 14, I will travel back down to Madang to serve on staff for the January POC course!

Back to Madang--and sunsets like this!

You weren’t expecting that, were you?

So, six months after I entered the country, I will be stepping from student to staff and teaching Tok Pisin and the various academic portions to a whole new set of incoming personnel! It wasn’t what I expected or planned, but severe staffing needs and my flexibility as a new person without a long-term assignment allowed me able to step in and help out for the next couple of months. In addition, I’ll be able to conduct a revision of portions of the course in order to make sure it continues to meet the current needs of orientation for work in the South Pacific. Who would have thought it? I certainly didn’t—but here I am, and the Lord continues to do amazing and marvelous things!

Can you imagine what will happen next year?

A Tale of Two Hymns

2011-12-30T01:00:00.002+10:00

I first fell in love with the hymn Be Still My Soul when I attended at my first summer of intense linguistics school at SIL-UND (thanks to one of the hymn sings, which I’ve blogged about here). Little did I know at that time that the Lord would use that haunting melody and those Truth-filled words to comfort and encourage me countless times over the trials and rocky points of the next several years.

Those five weeks of living with a Papua New Guinean family were an amazing experience and one that I will treasure deeply—it makes me look forward with joy to spending more time with Papua New Guineans in their villages and homes. It also rates near the top of my list of one of the most difficult, stressful, and emotionally draining times in my life. During that period, I was reading through a devotional made up of notes, thoughts, verses, and prayers gathered by my friends and family and given to me just before I left the States—it has since become one of my most treasured possessions. Lo and behold, on a particularly difficult day, I turned the page… and found this hymn.

Later, the Lord reminded me that there are another set of lyrics to this same tune of Finlandia by Jean Sibelius—We Rest on Thee, a joyous, triumphant song that is also known as the hymn sung by Jim Elliot and his friends before they walked into the Ecuadorian jungle and were killed.

I find the two sets of lyrics juxtaposed together to be rather fitting, reflecting more fully a Truth found in both the shadows and the sunshine.

Be Still My Soul

Words by Katharina A. von Schlegel, 1752;
Translated from German by Jane L. Borthwick.

Be still, my soul: the Lord is on thy side.
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain.
Leave to thy God to order and provide;
In every change, He faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul: thy best, thy heavenly Friend
Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

Be still, my soul: thy God doth undertake
To guide the future, as He has the past.
Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake;
All now mysterious shall be bright at last.
Be still, my soul: the waves and winds still know
His voice Who ruled them while He dwelt below.

Be still, my soul: when dearest friends depart,
And all is darkened in the vale of tears,
Then shalt thou better know His love, His heart,
Who comes to soothe thy sorrow and thy fears.
Be still, my soul: thy Jesus can repay
From His own fullness all He takes away.

Be still, my soul: the hour is hastening on
When we shall be forever with the Lord.
When disappointment, grief and fear are gone,
Sorrow forgot, love’s purest joys restored.
Be still, my soul: when change and tears are past
All safe and blessèd we shall meet at last.

Be still, my soul: begin the song of praise
On earth, believing, to Thy Lord on high;
Acknowledge Him in all thy words and ways,
So shall He view thee with a well pleased eye.
Be still, my soul: the Sun of life divine
Through passing clouds shall but more brightly shine.

We Rest on Thee

Words: Edith G. Cherry, circa 1895.

We rest on Thee, our Shield and our Defender!
We go not forth alone against the foe;
Strong in Thy strength, safe in Thy keeping tender,
We rest on Thee, and in Thy Name we go.
Strong in Thy strength, safe in Thy keeping tender,
We rest on Thee, and in Thy Name we go.

Yes, in Thy Name, O Captain of salvation!
In Thy dear Name, all other names above;
Jesus our Righteousness, our sure Foundation,
Our Prince of glory and our King of love.
Jesus our Righteousness, our sure Foundation,
Our Prince of glory and our King of love.

We go in faith, our own great weakness feeling,
And needing more each day Thy grace to know:
Yet from our hearts a song of triumph pealing,
“We rest on Thee, and in Thy Name we go.”
Yet from our hearts a song of triumph pealing,
“We rest on Thee, and in Thy Name we go.”

We rest on Thee, our Shield and our Defender!
Thine is the battle, Thine shall be the praise;
When passing through the gates of pearly splendor,
Victors, we rest with Thee, through endless days.
When passing through the gates of pearly splendor,
Victors, we rest with Thee, through endless days.

A Day in the Life...

2011-12-27T13:03:00.000+10:00

Sure...they look cute and cuddly NOW when ASLEEP!

My eyes fly open at the screeching, ear-splitting squeals of the feeding, fighting piglets beneath my house, and my sleep-fogged brain struggles to remember where I am. A rooster leaps onto the veranda only a few feet from my head (never mind the bamboo-slatted wall) to shout a welcome to the sun, and geckos start croaking in disgust. I press my watch’s light—it’s 5 am and I wonder blearily where my earplugs are. I can hear my host family stirring and starting the breakfast fire, shouting at the kids to get up and get ready for school. Instead, I turn over on my air mattress, attempting to squeeze my eyes shut until at least 6 am, when I deem myself ready to sit up in my mosquito net and have my devotions.

It’s morning in Silum, Papua New Guinea.

My house!

For the POC village stays, a staff member scouts out locations and meets with a wide variety of families to ensure the best fit. In this case, our five teams were all placed within the same language group of Bargam (in fact, most of us were within an hour’s walk from each other), which had recently received a translated New Testament. Our particular wasfemili (host family) had hosted expatriates in the past and was absolutely thrilled to have two “white daughters” join them at the last minute (our original village location had some complications). As a result of this quick change, our waspapa (host father) was still feverishly building the veranda when we arrived!

My waspapa was a talented carpenter and loved to invent!

Good morning—breakfast is ready! Sometimes my teammate and I make food, but more often than not, I am handed at least two full plates of food by our wasmama (host mother) and was-susa (host sister). Our practice of a hot drink in the morning is now a family favorite—especially now that they have been introduced to milo! After breakfast, I curl up in one of my waspapa’s chairs and journal about the previous day, write a letter, or perhaps jot some notes for my assignments.

In addition to learning Tok Pisin, we had multiple assignments to complete in the village, including cultural observations, learning skills, survey reports, and preliminary linguistic analysis and transcription.

My wasmama and her namesake granddaughter

Before the sun comes up and the “heat cooks you,” it’s time to do something! I might go to the garden, wash laundry, walk up (or down) the mountain, visit neighbors, work a bilum (string bag)… you name it!

For many people, POC’s village living can be a very quiet, slow, relaxing time that allows for reading lots of books. Not so with ours. Our family, with the zeal of tour guides, whisked us up and down the mountain, packing as much culture as they could into our very short visit! As a result, our days were extremely unpredictable and could vary at a moment’s notice—and we rarely had days where we just stayed at the house!

Time for lunch! One of the women will have prepared more gigantic, heaping plates of garden produce (for all meals it is typically a combination of taro, cooking bananas, and greens) for us. Eat up!

Also unexpectedly, my teammate and I ended up living in the same house with our family (although we had two rooms of our own); this continual immersion in village life was excellent for our Tok Pisin (and they did their best to help us learn Bargam as well), but it also had its own stresses as we were utterly absorbed into the family structure as daughters, sisters, aunts, and cousins, within the clan relationships. One way they showed this was by feeding us every meal—sometimes six times a day!

They even added a tarp-wall for privacy!

After lunch, the sun is brutal, and thus it’s time to nap, shower, and generally move slowly in the shade. Now is a good time to work a few more rounds on that bilum of yours.

Our waspapa was extremely inventive and constructed a shower for us out of an old hose, a coke bottle with holes punched in the end, and some twine! In fact, we actually had a tap near our house which served as the main water source for the whole village. We felt like we were in the lap of luxury!

Fresh bread rolls...yum!

The afternoon is full of possibilities and I’m never sure what will happen—if I’m at the house, perhaps I will hold a bread-baking lesson or play games with the children or draw their portraits or work on my bilum or try to make progress on my assignments. Often, we will have visitors stop by and want to “story.” However, plenty of times during my stay, I will still be off somewhere, continuing whatever activity I began in the morning.

In PNG culture, isolation is not valued situation (especially for women), so everything that we did was accompanied by at least several children, if not a large crowd of adults as well. This was for our own safety (they took their jobs as hosts very seriously and wanted to make sure we were completely taken care of at all times) as well as so we wouldn’t be lonely.

Dark falls quickly in the tropics, but the evening meal will already have been started cooking over the fire. My waspapa lights a coleman lantern and soon our veranda will be full of relatives, ready to converse and story until the wee hours of the morning. Perhaps tonight is a fellowship meeting for the local church or my was-susas will want to sing hymns for hours (accompanied by a guitar or my penny whistles). Once my wasbrata (host brother) and friends discovered Uno, intense tournaments draw a crowd. Don’t forget the even later meal, brought by my “second” mama, just in case we were still hungry!

I know you are curious. Here it is...and we even had a seat!

Bedtime for us varied between 9 and 11 at night, though we were often falling asleep much earlier than that! Because of living in such continuous close proximity with our family (who were comparatively well-educated and thus knew a fair amount of English), Jessica and I had very limited occasions to debrief with each other. We soon found the best place to hold a frank conversation in English was our nightly trek up the slippery hill to the liklik haus (outhouse)!

We were serious all the time. Seriously.

When we left the village, there were many tears, speeches, and even hugs (physical contact was not common in our village). Even after five weeks, relationships went deep and strong--after all, potholder puppets (left photo) do make significant impressions! Eventually, if resources allow it, I would be glad to go and visit my family again, but for now, we keep in touch through letters and cell phones.

It’s amazing how after a long day, a air mattress and mosquito net can turn into a luxurious four-poster feather bed with an artistically draped gauzy canopy. Sweet dreams!

Good night! (You can see just see the second net with the flower material)

Lefse in the South Pacific

2011-12-21T13:50:00.000+10:00

It was, perhaps, 80 degrees Fahrenheit, and I could feel my shoulders prickle and glow in the first stages of sunburn. My housemate adjusted her sunglasses as we peered at the tree in our backyard. “So, we just hack at it?”

“I guess so.” Landscape design wasn’t my forte. “I think the bush knife would be easiest.”

“Probably.” She swung it experimentally and then bent over. “Here we go!”

And so, with a great many hackings and chippings and whackings, we managed to cut down the bushy, shapeless spruce that was to be our Christmas tree. Actually, we were quite pleased with ourselves—not only did we release a fruit tree from the spruce’s choking grasp, but it would serve our holiday purposes far better than our other option of the spindly avocado tree which the dogs had nearly destroyed.

The Tree (complete with racing LED lights!)

Before long, our two other housemates joined us, and together, we managed to wrestle it across the yard, up the steps, onto the porch, in through the double doors and finally into our living room. What a great tree! We congratulated ourselves, grinning with the effort. As we began hauling it upright, our smiles became a bit more round in surprise: Trees that look short outside evidently morph into gargantuan mountains of greenery once brought into a house.

Nevertheless, we valiantly pulled out our Christmas tree stand (an unwanted White Elephant gift left from an earlier party), which, upon seeing the magnitude of the tree’s girth, promptly fell apart and required some ingenuous convincing by wire and a leatherman. But before long, the tree was standing (safely fishing-lined to the wall and ceiling to prevent unwanted crashing from earthquakes like the 7.3 one just experienced), we were sorting out Christmas lights by power voltage, and the dozen spiders who once called the tree home were now dueling over new territory on the ceiling.

Oh well. At least the geckos will have a Christmas feast.

Christmas in Ukarumpa, I am learning, has the intimacy of a college campus (where else does the entire population turn out for the high school Christmas concert or the weekend coffee house or the store’s version of “Black Friday” when shipments come in with much-awaited rarities?), the bustle of a small town (especially as we scurry to take care of business before departments close for the holiday break) and the global feel of the United Nations (20+ nationalities each adding their own flavor—literally—to the mix).

Gingerbread + humidity = high level of homeowner's tolerance!

There are evenings of cookie decorating and classic Christmas movie nights, white elephant parties and Christmas choir practices, a holiday orchestra and Sunday School children’s parties.—I even went caroling (replete with umbrella, mud boots, and headlamp since it was pouring rain)! Yesterday, ten pairs of hands gathered around our kitchen table and were soon covered in frosting and candy cane pieces in gingerbread house decorating (one house aptly included a swimming pool and coconut trees).

Mmmmm....sugar!

Indeed, this past month has been a delightful mix of new and old traditions as families bring bits of their home country to the tropics of PNG—I, for one, decided the South Pacific needed an introduction to my family’s lefse (sort of a potato tortilla hailing from Norway).

But more than that, it has been a huge blessing to celebrate our Savior's birth within a community that exists solely because the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. He left His home to enter into our culture and share a life-changing message in a way that allowed us to finally understand in our hearts—translation by incarnation. Alleluia!

Merry Christmas!

Office Space

2011-12-19T11:44:00.000+10:00

It was empty, just like the others.

I, along with the other new arrivals to Ukarumpa, were following our friendly tour guide up and down the hills of the center, learning important tidbits on how to survive on center—such as how to know if you got a package and what hours the store’s kai bar was open and serving fresh, hot chips (that’s French fries for the US people). And now, we were finishing our orientation by walking the halls of LCORE—the language resource building—and I was once again standing before a deserted office.

When I first arrived, I was rather overwhelmed by the enthusiastic welcome of my Ukarumpa co-workers. Oh, thank you! We’re so glad you’re here! I shook hands until the individuals mashed into a smiling, blurry crowd, and I vaguely remembered someone called John. I could hear them murmuring together, shaking their heads in amazement: Three new translators! So many! How wonderful!

So many? I was disoriented. When did three become a multitude? Did not three hundred languages still wait?

But now, as I stood before yet another office, the nameplate blank and computer dark, I began to understand that excitement. And it wasn’t just the language department—construction, finance, education, music, the clinic, media, graphic arts, the store, Bible courses—every single department was what the average US company would consider grossly understaffed.

Nearly every person I meet here seems to wear three or four hats, each job worthy of a fulltime commitment (which is significant, seeing as basic living itself, from cooking to laundry to house maintenance, takes far more time than it would in the States). One important job is put on hold to fill a need in another—translations still in progress wait on a shelf while those workers fill desperate needs elsewhere.

300 languages left to be started—with this kind of resources, how would this even be possible? Looking at the numbers, counting the vacancies, hearing the calls for yet more help in the valley children’s VBS program, even as the Lord blesses our leadership with new strategies and partnerships, it could be very discouraging, if not deemed impossible.

And yet, here I stand. And here you are, reading, supporting, sending, going. And praying.

Every Sunday, faces appear in the morning service’s powerpoint slides of people who are “in the pipeline,” on their way to join us here in PNG. We see their faces, read their needs, and then, we corporately pray for each individual by name. Every first Thursday of the month is the Morning of Prayer where we gather to worship, praise, the Lord, and pray as He brings His plan to completion among the people of Papua New Guinea. It is no secret that this task is far bigger than what we can handle, but such knowledge, rather than becoming debilitating, reminds us not only of why we are here, but who called us.

A year ago, when I was merely one of those faces on that powerpoint, I started this blog to chronicle a journey that I knew would travel far beyond my own imagination as the Lord works out His grace and glory in my life. It certainly hasn’t been disappointing, and I’m excited to see how He continues to unfold His plan as I take my own place among my colleagues—my brothers and sisters—here in Papua New Guinea.

And, I’m so delighted you’ve joined me—please feel free to sit down! Perhaps this empty chair next to me is for you :-)

Ocean Crossing

2011-12-14T11:46:00.001+10:00

Karkar in the background--a still-active volcanic island :)

Fish, I decided, is meant to be eaten by the ocean. Especially if it is wrapped in a banana leaf and combined with fire-roasted cooking bananas.

My wasfemili (host family) and I had walked the two and a half hours down to the Pacific Ocean where I encountered one of those places that I thought only exist in postcards. Waves crashed up against the point, rippling off the volcanic islands on the horizon. Under the shadow of a cloud-crusted Karkar, I could see flashes sparkling and twisting above the waves like fireflies—tuna and yellow-fin were leaping before the boats of fishermen. The sun-warmed breeze, flavored with salt and tropical flowers, filtered through the palm trees and lush vegetation. My host brothers clambered over the black coral rocks, using their knives to pry off mussels, crabs (yes, the kuka appeared again), shrimp, and crawfish and fry them in the fire.

I am indeed attempting to canoe in the background

At one point, one of my nephews or uncles (keeping all the relations straight is always a puzzle) invited me to embark on a traditional outrigger canoe, where I soon discovered that my Minnesota paddling skills do not translate easily to a watercraft with a saman and ocean waves. So, I practiced going in circles… and marveled at the scenery of this place I’m learning to call home on the Pacific Rim.

It was a tropical paradise.

As I sat, listening to the waves break over the reef and the chatter of my wasfemili in the languages of Tok Pisin and Bargam, I realized that crossing from one culture into another is like stepping from dry land onto a ship… and living there.

People still eat and drink and laugh, but onboard the plates must be secured to the table and your bed is simply a hammock. The floor rocks under your feet unexpectedly, storms seem to blow up without reason, and the bird calls seem to scrape against your ears. Your stomach roils at the slightest provocation, the speech barked out by the sailors is a jumble of nonsense, and you stumble and fall like a small child just learning to walk.

Why did I leave? You wonder, hands outstretched to the wooden sides, clinging for stability. You wonder, until you gain your sea legs, learn to read the sky, and fall in love with the ocean depths.

And then you realize that once your voyage is at an end, you must once again cross over—this time from the deck to dry land.

And so, you start again.

Tag--You're It! and Other Universals

2011-12-10T17:51:00.001+10:00

It’s always amazing what we take for granted as “stable” and “unchanging”—until circumstances alter, and we find ourselves slightly off-kilter. It didn’t really matter that I had studied astronomy, made charts, and read all the right books…it wasn’t until I craned my neck back, searching frantically for familiar constellations, that it finally dawned on me that even the sky here is different. Different grass, different bird calls, different side of the sink that controls the hot water. Plenty of differences abound as you cross the ocean.

Except for one.

Children, in my opinion, seem to be remarkably similar whether they grow up in the inner city of Minneapolis, carry their championship cornstalk to the Sibley County Fair, or live in a bamboo house in Silum, Papua New Guinea.

Perhaps one of the highlights of living five weeks with my wasfemili (host family) was having over thirty younger brothers and sisters (and nieces and nephews and cousins and great-cousins and neighbors and every other relation you can imagine) interact with us on almost a daily basis. Not only did they haul our water and wash our dishes and guide us through the bush and bring us every kind of delicious fruit you can imagine, but they also were thoroughly entertaining :)

You know that Oboshinatintatin-whatchamacallit clapping game that preteen girls in the US will play for hours? Well, PNG kids have variations on that too. In fact, as Jessica and I were immersed in the world of PNG Childhood Games, we found that many of the games we taught them had their own South Pacific counterparts—nonsense songs, chasing games (tag is definitely universal), games with rocks, games with bugs, games with sticks, games with water… It’s all here, and it’s all worthy of pulling up a chair to watch!

Little boys and bugs. Universal

Rocks. Perhaps the most versatile toy ever.

The Memory tournaments, for example, were so competitive that you could have been watching the final elimination for the Superbowl. And their stamina at playing Uno (or Last Card) will easily put you to shame.

Preparing for Round 172 of Memory!

Among the older youth, these traits were exemplified in the hard-hitting, high-flying volleyball tournaments, where teams from all over the valley met to play. (When the country’s lifestyle develops nearly every youth into the fitness of an Olympic athlete, the games can be rather intense.) Of course, it was the first volleyball tournament I attended where the concessions were muli (citrus fruit), various nuts, and coffee candies, and the referee wore a bilum (string bag) on his head. Soccer, rugby, and basketball are also favorite sports and have their own seasons and tournaments.

Several of the girls loved to sing, whether in English, Tok Pisin, or Bargam, and often begged us to teach them songs from the US. As a result, Jessica and I sang every Sunday School and VBS song we could possibly remember, scraping back to those years in AWANA or children’s choir. If the song had actions, it was an even bigger hit. And so, when Father Abraham entered the queue, I found myself hopping around (Right leg! Left leg!), dodging chickens and puppies (Right arm! Left arm!), hoping I wasn’t too close to the fire and large pot of boiling rice (Nod your head! Turn around!), to everyone’s great amusement (Sit down!).

Yes, the children provided us with hours of entertainment.

And, so, in turn, did we.

I’m glad some things don’t change. :)

Toksave Tasol (Just a Few Announcements)

2011-12-09T14:45:00.001+10:00

It’s always good to pull back and look at the big picture. If you don’t, you might find that despite following the recipe, the amount of pepper called for will turn your chicken and dumpling soup into Chicken-and-Dumplings-of-Fire. Or, even though you think you might know the circuitous roads of Ukarumpa, you neglect to remember they actually follow no particular reason and you probably should check the map if you want to arrive on time.

While I’m sure these things would never happen to me ;) I figure blogs might be the same way.

So, a few announcements:

December newsletter: I am now trying to post my most recent newsletter on the My Story page. You can also download it here. If you would like to receive it by email, please send me your address.
Wycliffe USA blog: Speaking of that newsletter, the main story was recently published on the Wycliffe USA blog here. If you are interested in more stories about Wycliffe from around the world, I highly recommend you check their blog out.
More blogs! Blogs are fun ways to get to know people and experience life in far corners of the world, and there are a lot of amazing fellow bloggers living in PNG. I’m creating an easy-to-access list posted on Learn More! where you can learn more about Bible translation in PNG.
Pages: You’ve probably noticed that some of my permanent pages were a bit out of date now that I’m living in PNG. That has now been remedied! Have fun exploring.
Email updates: For my new readers, I’d like to mention that if you would like to have my blog posts sent to your email, you can sign up by putting your address in the box on the left-hand side of the page.
Broken links? Broken blog? As more and more of you join my adventures, so do the various browsers and formats used to view this blog. If you find things aren’t working, let me know so I can work out the bugs.
Questions? What would you like to hear about from life in PNG? Anything make you curious? Your questions can be as random or as lengthy as you would like. Let me know—shoot me an email, or post your questions in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer. Who knows—if you thought of it, you’re probably not the only one!

What’s in Your Bilum?

2011-12-07T12:19:00.001+10:00

If Papua New Guinea (PNG) is the Land of the Unexpected, then your first lesson should be How to Pack a Bilum. A bilum, as a quick review, is the handy-dandy all-purpose string bag of Papua New Guinea. Both men and women carry them, and they can be made out of plastic, wool, or traditionally, bush materials.

Pretty much, as soon as you step out of your house, a bilum is automatically part of your wardrobe.

Here are a few things you will find in mine

However, whether it is well-packed or not is another question. I soon found out that a poorly-stocked bilum can result in some slight discomfort when I take that 6-hour detour to visit the mother’s sister’s cousin’s baby boy in the next mountain range or decide that fishing in the ocean might actually be a good idea since the market was rather boring. While each circumstance (and part of the country) will have its own priorities, here’s what my bilum looked like as I lived in Silum.

Spoon in plastic—Hospitality, often shown by massive plates of food, is a key part of PNG culture. However, washing all utensils in hot soapy water isn’t so universal. Having a clean spoon with you (in plastic, so you can take it back), is not only more sanitary, but it also relieves a burden on their limited resources.
Hand sanitizer—Dirt and plenty of other microscopic wiggly things that I don’t need to mention are everywhere. Soap is not.
Ibprofen, bandaids, toilet paper—Light, compact, and oh-so-helpful when you need them…
Tiny sunscreen/bug repellant—Tropical sun is killer, especially to people like me whose ancestors hark back to Good Mother Europe. Mosquitoes are killer too. Repeat after me: re-apply. Re-apply…
Photo book—As the newcomer, you are the local entertainment. Thus, having some photos to illustrate your stories (especially about the Great and Terrible Land of Ice) is extremely helpful.
Water—Lots of sun = lots of sweat = lots of water you must drink
Pen and tiny notepad—I’m a linguist :) so as I hear new words and idioms, I write them down. Go figure.
Hat—Remember that sun? It’s still there. Wear the hat.
Mobile—(It’s a cell phone, for you US people). Service is spreading rapidly around PNG. Of course, you might need to stand on one particular hill under one particular coconut tree facing one particular mountain range…
Camera—If I didn’t take it with me, you wouldn’t have interesting photos. So be glad I did.
Flashlight—Dark falls quickly in the tropics...and even more quickly when you are scrambling at high speed through the rainforest. Don't leave without a flashlight.
Umbrella—I have the cutest little umbrella that just tucks into my bilum, and it has saved me more than once!
Crackers—Someday I have to write a blog post on the beauties of PNG crackers. Suffice it to say for now that you really have no idea when your next meal is, so having food along will keep everyone happy.

Washing Saksak

2011-12-03T08:35:00.000+10:00

There are some foods that require such an elaborate process to make them edible that you wonder how in the world we discovered the process. Coffee, for one (really….let’s pick some beans, roast them, grind them up, and eat the dirty water that filters through them?). Mushrooms are another (who first got to figure out which are poisonous? Hmm?). In Papua New Guinea (PNG), my great question mark centers on sago (or saksak in the Tok Pisin language).

Saksak is a staple food for many parts of PNG, including my village. Thus, my wasfemili (host family) was eager to let Jessica and I experience the many steps of harvesting, cooking, and eating saksak according to the customs of Aronis (a part of PNG's north coast).

Saksak comes from a certain palm tree, which can be planted or found growing wild. Once the tree has reached maturity, it is chopped down, and the great palm leaves are cleared away for morota (the traditional roof), the saksak grubs are removed (to be eaten later), and the gaimer is picked (a leafy vegetable used in cooking).

Then the men hack away the bark with their tomahawks and bush knives until the pale, smooth core is revealed.

After some good-natured ribbing and jostling, they sit down with metal-tipped adzes and pound. Above the head—down! Smash the wood pulp to bits! Again and again and again until they shine with sweat and heaps of sawdust spill over their legs, piling on the limbum mats.

Now the women and children arrive, scooping the sawdust into bags and bilums (string bags), carrying it on their heads to a nearby water source, where my wasmama (host mother) had gone ahead to set up the troughs for washing.

Half a dozen massive pots circled the troughs waiting to be filled with water and saksak pulp.

I plunge my hands into the sludge and begin to repeatedly squeeze the saturated dust. Washing saksak. The resulting water is a murky rust—the color I always imagined the Red Sea when I was young, and it stains your hands and clothes (especially our white skin!). We all bend together, washing saksak in a rhythm until I no longer notice my aching back or tired hands. Squeeze, shake, toss. Repeat through four pots until the water runs clear and no more food streams from the wood.

Then the water is pressed through the troughs, letting the liquid drip into the bag where it will settle, forming a thick, pasty sediment of starch, like fine sand. This is saksak.

The sun is starting to go down and we scoop the food into pots, dividing it among all the family present, which we carry on our heads back to the house. It’s a great delicacy, they tell us. You must taste it!

Delicacies, however, are culturally determined. And despite my own involvement in its preparation, when I was first handed a bowl of saksak soup, I began questioning the energy invested to acquire this food. (Since most of you probably haven’t tasted it and I neglected to get a photo, you can imagine a semi-solid gelatinous mass, looking like Jell-O that hasn’t set, and tasting similar, though without the sugar or the cherry flavor.) In spite of this rather unfavorable beginning, I found that the innumerable ways of cooking saksak—wrapped in leaves, combined with meat, fried over a fire, and more—did broaden my perspective on the value of the food.

However, I still wonder who first thought of eating the sediment that settles when you strain water through sawdust.

Catherine Vs. Rambo-Kuka

2011-11-30T16:49:00.000+10:00

They weren’t dead.

I stared at the bowl in my hand, where a dozen or more crabs suddenly convulsed and snapped in a wriggling pile of legs and pincers.

“You have to hold them right here,” my was-susa (host sister) pinched a crab (or kuka) by the legs and was poised over the frying pan, “otherwise they will bite you.” With a quick flick, she tossed him into the middle of the hot oil in the frying pan, where he wiggled, sizzled, then grew still.

“Okay.” I nodded, trying to look confident.

“But, make sure he lands on his back! Otherwise he will climb out.”

Right. I was still holding the bowl, conscious of eight pairs of eyes of my wasfemili (host family’s) younger children all curious as to how this white meri would cook. Live crabs. Not quite what I was expecting when my was-susa said I could help with dinner, but, hey—I wanted to learn the culture, right?

I aimed for a small one. Perhaps I could keep my fingers as long as possible. Grab, twist, flick. The oil caught one after another, and soon their shells turned bright red, ready to eat (which you do, shell, legs and all…they are quite tasty). I can do this, I thought to myself, only a few more left!

Except, I hadn’t counted on Monster Kuka.

And this one was traipela. Huge. His body was the size of my palm and his front pincers longer than my littlest finger. Just like the others, I reasoned, reaching for the prehistoric creature. Be quick.

This is not The Kuka, but it's close to it!

I wasn’t the only one who was strategizing. As I attempted the flick into the frying pan, he turned into the Kuka version of Rambo sans machine gun. I swear there was a soundtrack! With a mighty twist, he flung himself out of the oil around and attacked my tongs, using them as a springboard to jump, pincers outstretched, for the side of the frying pan, and straight toward my leg. “Aiyahh!” I cried, “No! No! You must die!” I snatched at him with my tongs, flinging him back into the pan. He attacked them again, scrabbling over the top. “Die, Kuka die! Die!” I whaled on him blindly, smashing him into the bubbling oil. “Die! Die!!” Finally, the oil cracked through his shell and Rambo-Kuka's struggles ceased. I looked up, brushing hair from my eyes to see astonished faces around the fire. Then a slight chuckle set off an eruption of laughter as tears streamed from their faces.

Lots of kukas! Kukas everywhere!

Die! Die! The story rippled through the community, complete with actions and sound effects. And that, my friends, was how I earned the name Kuka Susa and embarked upon the Great Kuka War.

I don’t’ remember how it started. Perhaps it was when my 16-year-old wasbrata (host brother), Raphael, threatened to send kukas after me when I did the laundry, or perhaps it was when I dropped a large bug on his shoulder shrieking “Kuka! Look out!” and he jumped like a rabbit :-) Or maybe it was when we warned about the potential of finding hidden kukas in the other’s pillow or bilum. Regardless, the rest of the five weeks were spend in continuous banter as we made kuka shadow puppets, tickled each other’s legs with a broom (running away before retaliation, of course), tied a rock to a string (so it could be dropped on an unsuspecting shoulder from above), and even discussed making orange-colored bilums (the color of a kuka, after all).

“Kuka, kuka, kuka! It will bite you!” my brother would sing out.

“Don’t worry!” I would shout back. “I’ve got my tongs!”

The Kuka Siblings. Beware!

Survivor: POC edition ;)

2011-11-27T17:14:00.000+10:00

After a seven-hour ride in the back of the Hino, I’m now in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, settling in what feels like absolutely luxurious accommodations at Ukarumpa (I’m renting a house along with several other girls, so I actually have a kitchen!). It’s time for another orientation as I learn to live where it is cold (yes, I have thoroughly acclimatized to the tropics, and thus, the chilly mornings are worthy of sweatshirts and pants under the skirt).

Actually, we sat on mattresses, making this perhaps the most comfortable vehicle ride yet.

Despite the large load of luggage swaying in the back, we all promptly fell asleep.

Welcome to Ukarumpa! I shake hands with one and all as my new coworkers greet me with delight. We’re glad you survived POC!

POC is one of those experiences where the stories are best told in whispers by firelight, as you hear creepy birds sing out from the forests and bats dart overhead. There are the rumors of the sharks in the bay, the grubs on your lunch plate, and the mosquitoes that could carry off a young child. While I won’t confirm or deny any of these previous stories…. I will give you ten of my own tips for surviving POC. :-)

Never sit under a coconut tree, unless you feel like reenacting a Pacific version of Newton as gravity once again consistently works its magic on something rather larger than an apple…
Klostu. (Pronounced: CLOSE-TOO. Used in the response of a Papua New Guinean when you want to know how much further you must hike.) You don’t know what it means. Ever. The sooner you accept it, the sooner you will be happy.
Not all flipflops/thongs are made equal. Know where yours stand on the Ease of Destruction scale.
When cooking over a fire, smearing the outside of your pots with dishwashing soap before use will make clean-up a cinch. On the other hand, if you accidently use kerosene, you might be scrubbing with steel wool for quite a long time… (Thank you to a fellow POCer for personally testing this theory!)
All cooking ingredients are optional. Really.
I always used to wonder why hundreds of frogs would be a plague in Egypt. Now I know: after the rain, beware the stupidity of frogs who jump into walls, legs, posts, doors, and who knows what else…
Unless you were a champion at I Spy books, I suggest having a wide variety of photos in your album, as coming up with new conversation topics can be challenging when you flip through it for the 7,265th time.
Your umbrella is your friend, and you would do well to give it a name, considering the amount of time you will spend together. Otherwise, you will stand there…watching…waiting…waiting… knowing that your dorm room is only 30 meters away, but you can’t see it for the blinding sheets of rain that must be leftover from Noah’s Flood.
Hot showers are only available at the hottest part of the day.
Forget the hiking boots. When you attempt to scale PNG mountain paths in the rainy season, I recommend ice crampons.

Stories, stories, stories!

2011-11-19T11:23:00.000+10:00

In Tok Pisin (the trade language of Papua New Guinea),the word story is a verb.

Jess and I with our host parents, Andrew and Margaret

To story is more than simply talking. It’s to sit down with someone, to engage in his or her life, and share experiences, from the minor jaunt to the creek for washing clothes to the high excitement of seeing the Prime Minister to comparing countries (in everything from methods of growing corn to whether America had monkeys to differences in politics and voting). Every day throughout my five weeks of living in Silum, I was shaded by a guava tree or was invited onto a veranda or stretched out on a banana leaf or balanced on a log and storied with the Papua New Guineans of Aronis. Oh, yes, please come! Sit down! They shake my hand enthusiastically and motion to their neighbors. Come over! Let’s story!

For all the POC participants, the last five weeks have been filled with enough stories to put the Grimm brothers to shame. There were crises and climaxes, challenges and blessings, joys and pains. We faced dragons and fairy godmothers and saw God do amazing things when we could do nothing. We climbed mountains and laughed over our mistakes and cried and prayed.

What was it like? I know you’ve had to imagine a lot, and now I’m excited for the opportunity to take you beyond that and share with you some of the photos and some of the stories.

Right now, however, I am in the midst of packing (yes, again!), debriefing, last assignments, and preparing for yet another transition as I move on Tuesday to Ukarumpa. Ukarumpa (NOT Oompa-Loompa…those are the orange-skinned creatures from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) is the main linguistic center where I will be living for the next couple of months (nothing is ever certain, of course…). It’s relatively close to Goroka or Kainantu when you look on a map. If you are curious to learn more about Ukarumpa, I suggest you check out my friend Wendy Johnson’s blog HERE, where she gives a great tour of the area.

Thank you all for your prayers, your notes, and your love (and thanks, Hannah, for your awesome posts—I hope you all enjoyed them as much as I have reading them now!). God has been working in your lives these past weeks too, and I want to hear about it!

So, let’s story. :)

Are you the artist?

2011-11-14T08:08:00.001+10:00

By The Missionary Sister

Someday, someone is going to ask me what it was like growing up with a child prodigy. Actually, I bet it’s like James and Jesus. Did you ever think about that? Poor James. Jesus was able to do all this awesome carpentry and make all these cool things, and James, well, he was probably sent to go buy the nails.

In fact, I know just how the conversation went, because I've had it many times myself:

Enter James.
James meets Person.
James tries to be friendly
James: "Hi, my name is James."
Person [blank look]: "James...? James who?"
James [sighing]: "Oh... You know. James. The brother of Jesus."
Person [grins]: "Of course. Right. James. I know you. You buy the nails. Hey, wow, you know, Jesus' carpentry is just amazing, isn't it?! You're so lucky to have him for a brother!"

Poor James. Poor me.

Don’t worry, I don’t think I’m irreparably scarred. But Catherine’s artistic skill was truly unbelievable, making her the most famous artist in Minnesota 4-H. And me? Well, I got to be the foot model. That was fun.

Until my feet got cold.

But that cold was nothing compared to when I would help Catherine take pictures of her art in the middle of the wind-whipped snow Armageddon tundra on our farm in Minnesota ten minutes from the Arctic circle. She would drag me out there to hold her paintings while she photographed them, and I would be shaking with cold while trying to hold the painting at the exact right angle and the exact right height while tortured by the horrible fear that an earthquake would hit or a tornado would strike and I would drop her painting in the snow and ruin it forever and absolutely destroy everything.

I was a sensitive child.

The worst of it, though, was the fact that, somehow, I looked like the artist. We could never figure it out—maybe it was my curly hair. But I was asked—always, constantly, all-the-time asked—“Are you the artist?”

And (while keeling over inside) I would smile very sweetly, and shake my head, and for the 10,000th time, say, “Oh, no, I'm sorry, actually, that’s my sister.” Everyone asked it. At church and at 4-H and on the street and in the library and at the county fair. (I even got asked it lying in the chair at the dentist’s office by the hygienist! How did the hygienist know!?)

Actually, I was this close to getting a shirt that said simply, “NO. I AM NOT THE ARTIST.”

“Hey, James, are you the carpenter?”

Despite not being the artist (the most art I ever attempted was a long-term comic strip running along the top of my math notebook consisting of a sarcastic stick-and-circle cartoon figure named Charlie Contrast), I am one of Catherine’s biggest fans. I’m proud to show off some of her art here. You can see more at her art website (www.catherinerivard.com), but I thought I’d share a few of my favorite pieces here—plus some background information you may otherwise not have been privileged to see.

That is, if you didn’t know The Missionary Sister.

Before we get to the paintings, you need to understand Catherine's humble beginnings: namely, the basement white board. This drawing was all Catherine's—I'm not sure why I'm in the picture. Make the unskilled labor feel better, I guess. She was very protective of her paintings. I think maybe I was allowed to draw the snow in that picture on the left. Yeah, go buy the nails, James.

Here is Catherine posing with the famous artist Wyland because she won his coloring contest at the Minnesota Zoo, the very first art contest she ever won. I entered the contest, too. I didn't win. Figures.

Here we are in Tennessee, celebrating one of Catherine's first (of many) national wins with her art. I entered with my photography. Photography that Catherine later used for her art.

Catherine had ample opportunity to study from life. She also always felt loved, at least by The Cat, anyway. Where am I in this picture? I don't know. Probably getting her pencils.

Catherine actually never liked painting with a brush, but she still did a good job of it anyway, obviously. Here, our two art styles got as close as they ever would when she painted big cartoon characters for our church Vacation Bible School. Although my cartoons were never photo-realistic. They weren't even in color.

It was always fascinating watching Catherine paint. Did you know she usually left the eyes until last? Most people think that's cool. They don't realize that that meant her paintings were seriously creepy until they were almost done.

This was one of my favorite paintings she ever did. Want to know a secret, though? I may not be the artist, but I am the photographer. I have taken so many of the photos Catherine has used in her artwork, well, I'm practically half The Artist.

What people don't know about this one is the background changed like 25 times. It used to be a horse in a field, and it changed, though I can't remember why. Water is cool, though. (My photo.)

Makana, our foal. Know something? My photo.


Super cute, even though not my photo. This was her favorite kind of background to do -- a little abstract.

Horse: my photo. I was also there the 10 million times we baled hay, so, the background, well, it's practically like my photo.


Having an artist in the family was kind of like having a dentist for your dad. The dentist's kids hardly ever got their teeth cleaned, and the artist's family hardly ever got paintings of their own animals. This was one of the rare exceptions—Catherine painted this of my mom's dog, Riley. (Sure is a great photo. Wonder who took it.)


One of my favorite dog portraits she ever did and also one of her first.


Dad and I would always give Catherine really good ideas on what to include in her paintings. We tried to convince her to have blood covering this pheasant and all over the ground, but that didn't fly (no pun intended).

Occasionally she did graphite (=pencil) drawings, but her favorite medium (as you've seen above) was pastel, which is a lot like chalk. Pastel paintings are still called paintings, however, even though they don't use paint. Don't ask me why. I'm not the artist.

Catherine was never much into abstract work. This was as abstract as she ever got. Pretty radical, huh? Good thing she used my photo, or else it never would've worked.

No problem, Catherine, glad to let you use my photo.

Dad and I were so great at helping her name her paintings. I'm pretty sure all our names for this one revolved around imminent death-by-tiger-attack...

...and our names for this one were all about imminent death-by-wolf-attack. That, or about Bambi mourning for his deceased mother. (It was our our mission to keep Catherine humble by not taking things too seriously.)

There was much weeping and gnashing of teeth revolving around painting that water.

This was one of my favorites. She would spend hours on that fur—a typical painting was 20-30 hours of intense work. (Caption: "Too much rabbit gives you a stomachache.")

I think these would be cute if they didn't remind me of opossums. And don't get me started on opossums.

Some of my favorites of Catherine's were scratchboard. Basically, it's like a glorified Etch-a-Sketch. You take a knife and scratch off black pigment that is on a board. Thereby, "scratch-board." Actually, you don't scratch Etch-a-Sketches. But it's kind of similar. Don't expect to understand. You're not the artist.

If you think the eyes on this one are cool in a picture, you should've seen them in real life. They were unreal. Or unbelievably real. Same difference.

And the best for last. This is my only painting of Catherine's, and it hangs on my wall all the time -- a drawing of my own horse, done before I even owned her. But that's a story for another day... maybe once I'm the artist.

On ravenous wolves, wild horses, and the Hay Baling Experience

2011-11-08T13:58:00.004+10:00

By The Missionary Sister

When the average person says they were homeschooled, generally they don’t refer to their sister as one of the teachers. But that’s just, you know, normal people. As I generally err on the side of nonconformity, I placed Catherine squarely in the role of one of my instructors. Specifically, I was a student of Catherine’s School of Classical Dressage. It was an exclusive school, that’s for sure. One student. Me.

For those of you familiar with my horse training, you know I do some odd things. Namely, I have an unexplainable urge to ride horses without bridles. Racehorses, young horses, old horses, it doesn’t matter. I go on and the bridle goes off. What you may not know is that Catherine is and was one of my greatest supporters of that. Ever unflappable, she would amiably stand in the middle of the arena while I whizzed around her on my ex-racehorse sans bridle and give me lesson after lesson that no other instructor would, being that I had no bridle. Open-minded elitist single-student schools are the best.

She could train me because she herself was brilliant with animals and a fabulous rider. Her dream was always to compete at Grand Prix dressage (the level of the Olympics). She has set that dream aside for now, but I have no doubt she could have—and would have—done it.

When she wasn’t instructing me, we were riding together. We certainly shared a lot of adventures together on those horses—some that I’m still not certain we’ve ever told anyone. Sometimes it’s better not to tell anyone about one’s near-death experiences. They’re kind of private.

There was one equine-related experience, however, that I am surprised never killed us: baling hay. Have you ever baled hay? Baling hay is like this paradoxical blessing-curse. It’s great because it builds a ton of character. Being miserable will do that to you. But it’s also kind of a curse, because, well, it’s miserable.

For one thing, baling hay is not baling hay if it isn’t 10,000 degrees outside. And so humid you don’t even need to sweat, the air just practically condenses onto you. And rain is always imminent, so you’re always in a rush, so you’re usually stressed out. If those things aren’t in place, well, I’m afraid what you’ve done is a sad counterfeit to the Hay Baling Experience. However, I’m guessing that this was good preparation for PNG for Catherine.

What some don’t realize is that baling is a team sport. As Catherine was always the detail-oriented one, she got to stack the bales in the precise scientific modulating jigsaw pattern on the rack. The hay stacker is like the PhD of the Hay Baling Experience. Me? I was just the unskilled labor. I threw her the bales.

Despite being a PhD in Hay Baling, Catherine was kind enough to work with me, and we definitely bonded over the experience. As we were coughing out too much hay dust to talk, we found other ways of entertainment, all competitive, of course. We would compare the number of cuts and bruises we had, the amount of sweat, the number of places we’d torn our jeans, the size of our arm muscles (we calculated we would each throw a total of 8 tons of hay in a day of baling), the distance we could throw a bale, and the height to which we could lift one. Remember, hay baling is a sport. It’s about being stronger, faster, better, and lasting just one minute longer than anyone else before you die of heat stroke.

Thankfully, Catherine took care of me and we both more or less survived our hay baling experiences and all of our other near-death encounters. To give you just a glimpse of some of those adventures, I’ve compiled some of my favorite pictures of her (or she and I both) in our animal adventures…

This is our hay field, a deceptively idyllic picture. In fact, I was actually taking this picture with my very last dying breath, cruelly murdered by a day of baling.

Our earliest animal experiences consisted of being locked in cages with ravenous, man-eating wolves.

Mind melding with The Dog. Very difficult.

Mind melding with two dogs. Even more difficult.

One of the advantages of homeschooling is that you learn to concentrate under life-and-death situations. Life and death because you see that brown cat on the right? He had been known to attack your head -- your head! -- if you ticked him off. First it was The Bird, then it was The Cat. We just had real trouble with animals.

Catherine is second from the left (I'm on the right), as we compete in 4-Dog Team -- think military drilling crossed with dog training. Only with four less-than-rational creatures drilling with you who really don't care about being precise and would maybe rather just sleep instead.

You never knew who got more exercise in agility training -- the person or the dog. In the case of my dog, I always got more exercise.

Do you know why I always got more exercise? Because this was my dog. Sleeping was his hobby.

We always kind of hoped if we really stared down the dogs they would perform better. I'm not so sure it worked very well.

They say dogs' mouths are cleaner than humans'. Let's hope so.

Waiting for show results was always less stressful when you could be standing by your sister. :)

I'm not the only model in the family!

Did you know Catherine is competitive? Catherine is competitive.

In fact, Catherine is so competitive that, in this particular incidence, after getting thrown halfway off in a timed event, she held onto the side of the saddle until she crossed the timeline (thereby not being disqualified). Then she promptly fell off. That's dedication.


Catherine in her first and only jumping competition, which is harder than it looks, especially when your horse is over-jumping by a solid foot.

While usually Catherine and I rode together (and had our aforementioned brushes with death), sometimes my dad, did, too. I think Catherine had fewer near-death experiences with Dad than with me. I guess I was a bad influence.

Riding in the winter can be miserable, evidenced by both of their expressions. That's enthusiasm if I ever saw it. Thankfully this situation won't happen in PNG.

At our very first show. We never did grow into those helmets.

Catherine -- Minnesota Walking Horse youth equitation reserve champion! (And a proper-sized helmet.)

Makana -- our first, only, and last-ever foal. Take whatever amount of work you think foals are, then multiply that by a gazillion and ten, and you have a far better estimate of the time involved.

The night of Makana's birth. Catherine and I were on foal watch, and I still remember us drooping groggily in the living room watching Helen Keller at 2 a.m. when I went out for the hourly check and found our mare, Jewel, in labor.

Catherine and I convinced Dad to build an entire cross-country course in our woods. We were so proud of it!

If you didn't know it, you'd have thought she'd gone crazy. But if you're a horse person, you know she's just practicing her equitation pattern -- on foot. Turn right, circle left, right lead, flying change, begin again. (Kind of like the song, "Father Abraham," actually...)

Catherine got bitten by the horse bug young...

...and never recovered.

Do the Happy Dance!!!

2011-11-03T08:34:00.018+10:00

By The Missionary Sister

Most of you probably know Catherine in the context of her speaking about her missions work. She showed up at your church, very poised, very calm, with everything under control. Her PowerPoint was pristine and her speech was well-rehearsed; she answered questions with great clarity and was completely composed the entire time.

That makes me laugh.

Not because that isn’t her, but because that’s only one side of her, and if you didn’t know the other side—the side that is hilarious, spontaneous, and side-splittingly funny—you’d be missing out on a whole lot. Just in case it’s hard for you to imagine Catherine making up nonsense stream-of-consciousness stories for hours while we stacked wood, or she and I flailing around the room doing our classic Happy Dance for minutes on end, I’ve collected some pictures of she and I throughout the past 20 years that show the side of her that is, well, downright silly.

Even as a little girl, Catherine showed serious fearlessness. Here, she was probably preparing to protect herself from The Bird...

...and her ability to defend herself never really went away (even if it was just against bubbles). No wonder I have an interest in martial arts. I had to defend myself against this girl!

She's always great for invisible adventures. And invisible baseball. Because, you know, reality is overrated.

We had a great many exploring adventures together. Woods -- beaches -- fairgrounds -- houses, it was all fair game for Intrepid Explorers.

Poor girl. One of the great travails of being my sister is she had to keep me in line. Family portraits were always cause for ridiculous faces.

Even when we grew up, we still couldn't do a normal family portrait. It just wasn't in our genes.

Not everything was flowers and happiness. Here, we prove we can indeed (pretend) to not get along. We definitely did our share of staring contests.

Here's a nice little series that shows generally the progression of pictures in our family. First, they are cute and cuddly.

Then, one of us starts to lose it. (We won't comment on who began losing it first, here.)

And pretty soon we're pretending to fall backwards off our bench into the great chasm behind us while shrieking in fake terrified horror. I still remember the tourists across the aisle laughing at us. Go ahead and laugh. We were having fun.

It was on this missions trip to Mexico that Catherine found out she was only worth two cows because, well, she wasn't the best at tortilla making. Poor girl.

We would sometimes break into spontaneous acting. I really don't know what started this Christmas coronation, but I don't think either of us really cared.

Catherine really, really loved presents when she was little. As you can tell.

Actually, she loved them so much that I had to learn how to defend myself. Maybe that explains why my first words as a toddler were, "Mine," "No," and "Let go."

Back to crazy family-ness. Catherine was the artistic director of our annual Easter-egg mural on the floor of my grandparents' house. Look at how proud we all are.

Catherine made a really great hippie lip sync-er in a '50's spoof on Cinderella. You should've seen her dancing around the stage. That was my favorite play of all time.

And I think this might just sum up our relationship: Catherine as great friend and spontaneous playmate who is always there to save you when you fall off a cliff.

Catherine the Casting Director

2011-10-30T10:06:00.011+10:00

By The Missionary Sister

While many people may think of me as the actress in the family, the flair for the dramatic didn’t actually start with me. It began with Catherine.

Actually, I have her to thank for my being an actress and not a director. Why? Because, in my sensitive budding artistic career, any inclination of mine toward directing was promptly crushed. As the oldest child and the driving force in all decisions great and small in her little sister’s life, Catherine was the self-appointed director, producer, script writer, and costume and prop designer in every one of our award-winning two-person productions. And directing was never in my job description.

One of her favorite shows to put on in our living room was Beauty and the Beast. We were obsessed with the movie to the point where we both dressed up as Belle for Halloween one year, matching costumes and all. I don’t know what we were going to do if we came upon our beloved Beast. Fight to the death, I guess.

Aside from directing and producing, Catherine was also the local casting director. Therefore, whenever she would produce Beauty and the Beast in our living room, she was, of course, Belle. Convenient. Dad was—you guessed it—the Beast. This was a choice of necessity, as he was the only male she knew. Except for the dog. But he wasn’t very cooperative. And do you know whom I was cast as, every single time?

Mrs. Potts.

That’s one to go on the résumé.

However, as the years went on, Catherine became far more democratic in the putting on her theatrical productions, and I was admitted as a full-fledged member of the Rivard Actors’ Union. In high school, our flair for the dramatic broadened beyond Disney stories to those of our own making, and I would like to introduce you to one of them here.

May I now reveal to you the epic story, "An Adventure in the Mysterious Wood: A Fairy Tale."

Director: Catherine Rivard (some things never change)

Screenwriter: Catherine Rivard

Screenwriter’s Assistant: Hannah Rivard

The Princess: Hannah Rivard

Guardian of the Wood: Catherine Rivard

Production Company: Rivard Enterprise

Artistic Director: Sarcasm

An Adventure in the Mysterious Wood: A Fairy Tale


Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess. She lived on the edge of a magical forest. Of course, that shouldn’t be too surprising, since this is a fairy tale, after all.

One day she decided to go for a walk. That also shouldn’t be surprising. We need some sort of problem to befall her. That’s just what happens to princesses who go for walks in magical forests.

Unknown to her, this magical forest was home to a variety of unique creatures, including the mysterious Guardian of the Wood.

Like most magical guardians, this one was a bit perturbed at the entrance of a princess into her homeland just for the sake of a Facebook story.

Deciding to take her job seriously, she chose to help the narrators of said story by creating a trial for the princess.

She began by setting the mood with music. Yes, that’s right. All epic stories have fantastic soundtracks. This one is no different. Only she uses a penny whistle, and it’s in sepia for effect.

The princess wandered deep into the wood, following hidden trails until she was lost, ultimately finding her way into a sheltered glen. Its beauty caught her breath, and she stopped in amazement.

Her first thought, like most fair princesses, was to gather armloads of flowers. This is a common pastime for princesses wandering in magical forests. It tends to have dire results, but they don’t seem to learn.

Eventually, she became wearied of her fearsome task, and reclined among the flowers for a brief respite.

Unknown to her, the Guardian of the Wood was watching her imposition on the Guardian’s carefully tended garden, waiting, watching.

Oh, no, what’s that?! The princess whirled in fear at the sound of snapping branch.

It’s a huge vicious wolf! The princess sprang for some branches, hoping they might shield her from the terror of the forest.

This is the wolf which so frightened our fair princess. That is pretty self evident.

The Guardian of the Wood watched as the wolf stalked the helpless maid. This would be the prime opportunity for the handsome prince to ride in on his white charger and save his soon-to-be-true-love, however, since the narrators were unable to find a prince, the princess is on her own.

This could have been the prince. On second thought, maybe it’s okay he didn’t come after all.

Fear clouded the princess’ mind, trapping her until her only thought was to sing. After all, dangerous predators always turn into tame forest friends for all the princesses in the movies.

To her amazement, at the sound of her pure, lovely voice, the wolf reared back on his haunches and cocked his head, listening. Score for the princess.

After a moment he turned and trotted back to his mistress, and sat at her side. She listened to the princess’ song. “Why have you come?” Her voice sounded of the forest. Big surprise, seeing as she was its guardian.

The princess slowly emerged from her hiding place, puzzled at the voice (it didn’t take much to confuse her).

“Please,” the princess asked shyly, “I’m lost and don’t know my way back home” (directional aptitude is also not a common princess trait). “Could you please point me back to my castle?”

The Guardian gazed long at the girl, her fierce eyes piercing through the girl. Had she discovered the secret of the glen? (What this secret is, the narrators aren’t sure, but it sounded good.)

“I will take you.” The forest shimmered around them and suddenly the princess found herself standing on the edge of the Wood, her turrets of her castle visible behind the next hill.

“The forest is a dangerous place. Do not expect it to be so friendly next time.” The Guardian peered at the princess, hoping to impress upon her the danger. Princesses weren’t known for their intelligence. “Beware.”

The princess sighed, looking for an instant towards her castle, then back at the Guardian. She wasn’t there! The princess looked around wildly, and then turned, with a skip and began the walk to her castle. After all, strange things happen in the magical forest; no need to trouble oneself about silly magical matters.

The Guardian watched the princess go, hidden deep in the woods, her hand atop the wolf’s head. “Yes, beware… my sister.”

The Lady and the Tiger (AKA, The Bird)

2011-10-23T11:32:00.023+10:00

By The Missionary Sister

You wouldn’t have guessed it, I suppose, from her sweet demeanor and poetic writing.

Catherine has wicked good aim with a rake.

That’s right. A rake.

You see, there is a side of her that perhaps few people see, and that is that her very composed self can let loose into total Warrior Woman. I suspect that this will serve her quite well in Papua New Guinea, helping her with the many real dangers both large and small. Indeed, you can be confident that the Lord has been equipping her since she was young to deal with many kinds of peril.

As I said, she started young. Or, should I say, we did.

We grew up on a farm, which was excellent preparation for missions work; in fact, Catherine often told me how much she was able to relate to “missionary kids” at college simply because of her rural background. As children, we felt the full force of living on a farm, with our parents expecting us to take our full share of the farm’s responsibilities, no matter the weather, the work, or the mutant animals.

Yes, mutant animals. We had a series of serious mutant animals on our farm, and the first one was also the most dangerous. You know all of those scientists who say animals used to be much larger, taller, and heavier, beyond anything we could today imagine? Do you doubt those people? I sure don’t.

Because we had one.

We had the most serious throwback of a mutant rooster you have ever seen in your entire life. I mean, my gosh, the thing was the size of a Tyrannosaurus Rex and weighed twice as much as one, too. It had the nastiest, cruelest, coldest, beadiest eyes you’ve ever seen, and they could stare right into your soul—and freeze it solid.

Do you realize it still gives me chills just LOOKING at a chicken that resembles The Bird?

They say children can speak to animals. We couldn’t with most of ours, but we sure as all get out could with this one. You know what it said to us, every time we walked within 30 feet of that chicken coop?

“I’m going to kill you.”

Yeah, no kidding. We didn’t doubt it.

It didn’t matter that Catherine and I had petted and coddled and picked up and tamed those chickens to death since the moment they arrived when they were just a few days old. We tried to make them tame, we tried to do everything by the book, we really did. But when your chicken is possessed, nothing you do helps.

You just have to fight back.

As our dearest parents had absolutely no sympathy for Catherine’s and my 8- and 10-year-old plight, they didn’t rescind the mandate that we had to gather eggs, feed, and water the chickens twice every day. Twice a day stare death in the face. Twice a day make the 20-foot Walk of Death. Twice a day descend into the lair of the demon bird.

The coop is gone, but the chicken house is still there. I still remember The Bird coming tearing around the side of that house right when I thought I was safe. Ha. He knew better. I should've, too.

Catherine and I learned very quickly we needed to give ourselves some serious tactical advantage in this war, otherwise we definitely might die a really horrible early death. And, let me tell you, we had a very strong will to live.

Therefore, in our desperation, we turned to each other, forming the best little SWAT team you’ve ever seen, armed with the best weapons we could find.

Rakes.

Two children. Two rakes. One rooster. It begins.

We each take a death grip on the biggest, widest, scariest-looking leaf rake we can find. Sucking in a deep breath, we look into each other’s eyes, perhaps for the last time. In case we don’t get out of this, well, it was good knowing you. Sorry it had to end this way.

Back to back, we inch into the chicken coop, carefully latching the gate behind us. If The Bird got out… well, we didn’t even want to think about the carnage that might follow.

We’re in. Inching toward the chicken house, backs pressed together, heads swiveling, we try to lock in a location on The Bird. Suddenly, I squeak in horror. There he is. Behind the tree. Looking at us, sneering at us with those murderous eyes.

I warn Catherine, and as one unit we swivel, staring at The Bird. Only 15 feet to the chicken house and to safety.

But we’re not going to make it.

And time stops.

The Bird snakes up his nasty ugly head to its full horrible dinosaur height—the wings come out—the beak opens up—and with a great shrieking squawk of sheer nightmarish fury, he attacks.

As the prehistoric monster rushes toward us, Catherine and I swing around to the ready, braced for impact—and then, rakes flailing, we launch our counterattack. He’s coming at Catherine and she hits him aside!! He wheels and makes for me and I just manage to trip him before he can fly up at my face! The battle is intense! The enemy fire is withering!! We struggle to hold our ground!!

Catherine lays in with whacks and smacks while crying out tactical orders. “He’s on your right! Take him down! Never give in!” She throws open the chicken house door and we leap in and slam it behind us.

With great haggard breaths we crumple in relief against the chicken house doors. We made it. We’re alive. And we smile.

Because we are warriors.

The Missionary Sister Returns!

2011-10-23T11:21:00.001+10:00

By The Missionary Sister

While it is marvelous that Catherine is off for the next month in the jungle village without the slightest access to Internet, unfortunately, all the experts (whoever they are), say that such a long absence is just dreadful for blogs. Newcomers wonder what happened—if the writer is still there—if they even care.

Well, I can assure you that Catherine does still care, and to prove it, I’m writing for her in her absence, with her permission. (You hope, anyway.)

Or, in other words, you may welcome back—The Missionary Sister.

Those who explore together, blog together.

Packing. Again.

2011-10-15T00:00:00.005+10:00

Our table, before things got packed...

Well, I have once again been sorting, organizing, labeling, bagging, and taping shut my life into various boxes and buckets. Except, this time, items are sorted into their respective containers based upon whether they are edible and non-edible… by rodent standards.

I’ve also been trying to answer those burning questions that inevitably keep you awake at night. Such as, how much toilet paper do I plan on using for five weeks? Or, since Madang appears to have been out of baking soda for the past month, what are my creative substitutes for cooking everything from scratch? Will I despise corned beef and tuna by the end? How long will my camera batteries last without recharging?

I am, in other words, preparing to leave for five weeks of living with a village family up the North Coast of Papua New Guinea in a tiny hamlet called Silum. It’s a chance for my roommate and me to live with a national family and be immersed in language and culture—in a situation stripped of many of the temptations to fall back on my American habits. Furthermore, I will be exploring the language of use of this particular village, have an opportunity to show the Jesus film, and be blessed to develop relationships with the nationals around me. I appreciate your prayers during this time, that the Lord might be glorified and His name praised in all that we do!

Although I’m bringing a household with me, one thing that can’t get wrapped in plastic and labeled with permanent marker is Internet access. Meaning, as soon as I board the truck on Friday morning (Oct 14), I will not be blogging or answering emails for the next five weeks. So, you’ll have to be patient and wait for me to return around November 17 or so before I can share my stories. In the meantime, I would like to introduce you to my lovely and remarkable sister, Hannah. Some of you may have met her already through her blogs Cambria Horsemanship and Prayers of Light, and now she will be appearing here as the guest blogger Missionary Sister :) You may recall a previous post of hers here. I guarantee, with her writing, you won’t be disappointed!

May the Lord bless your next several weeks! I look forward to hearing what He’s done in your lives—and I’m excited to share what He will do in mine!