Imi is on my right here reading the Word of God

Imi continues to amaze me!

It was Sunday night and time to meet with the ladies again.  It had been a long week and yet I couldn’t skip this meeting!  I was leaving the following Thursday to head out to Wewak as the first step in a long trip to the US to speak at a Christian school.  So I couldn’t very well miss the last meeting with the ladies for a couple weeks – and God sure blessed me as a result of my going! 

 

We had talked about baptism in the lesson that morning – the last lesson of the week from our first week of Acts teaching.  I asked the ladies if they had questions on what we talked about and so we spent most of the evening talking through the real reason and meaning of baptism.  It was so cool to sit back and watch Imi respond to some of the other ladies that were still a bit confused about the meaning of baptism – and that it didn’t help in terms of salvation – only Christ did that.  I was just an observer as this new believer taught the other ladies!  Wow!  So so cool to see the answers coming from an Uriay woman, and not the white one!!! 

 

Then we started talking about prayer requests.  The ladies knew that I was going to be making a whirlwind trip to the US to speak in a Christian school where a friend of mine has been teaching them throughout the year about tribal ministry, specifically about Wabuku and myself.  The ladies had woven little string bags for me to give the kids – I bought them but they knew why they were making them.  They knew what I was going to do but I didn’t ask them specifically to pray for flights and the speaking times and such.  We were talking about things going on there in the village – who was sick and other things that needed to happen in the days ahead.  But then as we prayed, Imi started praying for me and the kids that I would speak to.  She asked God to undertake in my journey – to get me there and back safely.  She asked God to give me wisdom in what to say to the kids and then she went on to ask Him to work in the kids’ lives so that they too might one day become a missionary!  I was humbled, amazed and even convicted that I hadn’t asked them specifically to pray for those things!  The Spirit of God is at work in Wabuku.  He is speaking to believers and challenging them to get involved in what He is doing – in and outside of Wabuku!  Why hadn’t I asked these ladies to pray for flights to go off on time?  Why hadn’t I asked them to pray for me and the kids?  Dumb on my part and yet I’m so very thankful that the Holy Spirit works in spite of me!  I’ll have an opportunity to return and share with this lady just how God answered her prayers.   Praise the Lord His Spirit is at work and growing these young believers up in the faith!!! 

Sunday morning - Wabuku style

Well, as I sat in the church ‘building’ this morning, waiting for the folks to get there, I couldn’t help but reflect on how different it is from my home church in Florida.  We’re using the same building that we taught literacy in back in the fall of 2009 and where we presented the Gospel.  It changed a bit between there - we removed one side wall so that there was enough room for the whole village to sit and hear.  But as it’s a tribal building, it doesn’t last that long between the dogs and the kids.  The siding has been pulled out by the kids almost completely on two of the remaining walls.  The thatch roof is still good but the rest of the building has literally gone to the dogs!  I could see more of the village than I could walls this morning as I sat there!  Before we got started though, we had to remove the siding (sago palm frond stems) from the pieces of flooring that we sit on.  It’s basically a tree bark that they use and right now they’re sitting on little logs for us to sit on.  My knees are almost in my nose if I sit with them up too far.  J  Anyway, the siding was all over the spot where the ladies usually sit so I tossed those out.  Then we started noticing the little piles of dog poop laying around.  Elias got a shovel and removed one but then one of the ladies came back with the shovel to remove three more piles further down to my left.  The ladies were all commenting on the flies – that were there because of the poop – child and dog bits left over from the last meeting.  So we seemed to be free for the moment of poop and its smell.  But then here came one of the little pups carrying a piece of burnt pig skin, running from his siblings and the older dogs – the church building being his hideaway.  But he was soon chased out, only to have one of the bigger dogs take away his find.  So the yelping and such was louder than the conversations happening in the little broken down building as we waited on the crowd to gather.  I don’t think I can really paint a picture here of all that I saw this morning but perhaps you can catch a glimpse. 

 

The smells and sounds and light coming through the various spots where there used to be a wall….or the sight of watching three little boys (two years old or so) running away together from the building so that their mothers would have to leave the teaching in order to bring them back and make sure they don’t beat on each other or head to the river and fall in.  Or of the slurping of the snot from folks all around me as they deal with the latest cold going around the village.  Or of the interruption at the beginning of the teaching as a guy heading off to the nearest town called for his mom from the meeting to take his son from him.  Or as I watched the crew that followed these guys upriver rather than coming to church – just to send them off.  Or of little Yeniyo wanting to toss a container back and forth with me in the middle of the meeting as he stood in the middle of the floor.  Or of little Brooks pooping on the floor while we prayed….or of Bundos practicing his balance as he walked across a pole lying on the floor in the building or of how Elias just continues to teach through all this stuff. This is a fairly normal Sunday or Wednesday morning for us.  While the building has no floor, one wall and a roof, plenty of dirt, trash and poop laying around, the people that make up the real church here continue to come to hear His Word taught in this little ramshackle of a building.  They continue to read Scripture in the meetings and grow in their understanding of who God is.  In between hearing the lot of them very noisily pull their snot back into their head this morning, I could just hear Fabel thanking the Lord for His power and goodness, His love and mercy.  I could just hear Dakruma praise the Lord for sending His Son to pay for her sins.  I could just hear the praise of His kids as they sat in a messy and by western standards, disgusting little place of worship so that they might praise and worship Him.  Not exactly Florida – no carpets, no air conditioning, no nice smells or certain time of service but I can’t imagine being anywhere else at the moment. 

Flat Stanley was one of the many of us crammed into the canoe! Can you see the close quarters?

 

Pretty narrow paths at times!

 

Some Business Trips are More Rigorous Than Others!

It’s been awhile but I thought this trip to Siawi was worth a blog report!  Linda Krieg, a missionary and translation consultant that lives in a neighboring village had graciously agreed to check the first three chapters of Romans for their clarity and comprehension.  I say neighboring but it’s not like it’s in the suburb across town or something.  This business trip took a bit more travel than that.  So let me get right to the story…

 

We left here around 8:30 on January 6^th.  Linda had gotten sick the weekend before so dates changed and it was a mad dash to get things ready to go.  But we left around 8:30 to begin the journey to her village.  We’re in wet season but it’s been a very dry season so far.  Our river is really low but it had come up just a bit in time for this trip.  We made good time getting to the Weyya baret.  This small tributary is the way to get to the village from the main Sepik river, without a three hour hike.  The water was so low that the Sepik turned into the baret.  Normally you can stay on the Sepik and pass by this tributary without seeing it.  So we had passed the village of Weydo and were on our way up the smaller river.  I thought we’d just passed a couple of bush houses like we did last time, not realizing that we’d passed Weydo already.  We didn’t see the guys from Linda’s village and we were slowly making our way up the tributary through some tricky parts as the water was so low. I finally asked Wobre if we had passed Weydo and he said yes, we were going up the Weyya tributary.  I told him what Jason had said several times on the radio the night before – that if we got to Weydo, we had passed the baret and needed to turn around and go back.  But we were pretty sure that you needed to pass Weydo first but since he was so insistent, I thought maybe something had changed that we didn’t know about.  So we turned around and went back to Weydo – where some of another village’s folks told us what we already knew – that there wasn’t another baret.  So one of the kids, Alex was standing there and because it was now 11:30am, we didn’t have enough time to go all the way to Siawi and get our guys back to Wabuku that night, I asked him to jump on and just show us where the road started next to the river once we got half-way up or whatever it would be. So we headed back up the baret – and finally met up with the Siawi guys around 12:15.  I was SO glad to see them – I had begun to wonder a couple times if we were going to make it to Siawi or not!  But we met those guys and started heading upriver by 12:30 or so.  It was slow-going as the water was so low and we kept having to stop and push/pull the canoe over logs and such.  The driver was literally under water pushing the canoe from underneath to get it over some of the logs while other guys pulled and tugged the canoe over.  The further we got, the more stones we got stuck on (instead of sand) and so it took us about 3 ½ hours to get to where they shored the canoe and we hiked the 20 minutes or so to the village.  We arrived around 4:30 and everyone thought we had motor problems – as opposed to just not finding each other for awhile and the slow ride up the river.  If the Siawi guys had been there the first time up the river, we could have been there a couple hours earlier but we were there!  It was better than the three hour hike but it would have probably been more like a two hour hike with how dry the trail is and how low the water is – as you have to cross the river a number of times.  But we were there! 

 

Then Linda and I needed to work through the pre-check stuff so I ended up cooking dinner while she made the adjustments to her English back translations with my changes.  I was dead on my feet but it made sense so I made a big stir-fry while she worked on the computer and asked me questions from across the room.  She asked me something at one point, and I finally just told her that I was too tired to figure out how many packs of noodles we needed in the stir fry – she needed to make that decision!  We finally ate around 8:30 and worked until 10:30 – but we were fed and ready to go for the next morning! 

 

The check itself went well although we definitely found a few spots that needed work.   Tomas was doing a great job – obviously processing all that he was hearing as well as giving it back.  Wobre was less helpful but he inserted some smaller details.  He talks a lot in Melanesian Pidgin, PNG’s trade language, but in this check, he spoke almost totally in Uriay - even when we were sitting at the lunch table or something.  Tomas asked some good questions at lunch that first day – about his ancestors based on what he’d heard in the first half of chapter one.  Linda basically told him to keep listening to the rest of chapter one and even into chapter three and he’d get the answer to his question through them.  It was pretty neat.  We got through most of chapter two in the afternoon but we hit verse 24 and realized they had hit the wall.  I could already see it in Tomas’ face but he was still pushing so I thought maybe he’d get a second wind.  But we gave up about 4:30 and figured that we could finish on Sat morning.  I ended up sitting outside talking with the guys until it was time to go to the other missionary’s house for dinner.  We talked about all kinds of things that Tomas had questions on – some in Romans and some in other stories and books.  It was really fun and I can’t help but think that he’s a believer that’s lacking a lot of teaching. 

 

The next day was a bit slower – the guys were a bit sluggish from the start and those fun verses in Romans 3:5,7 didn’t come across as well as we wouid have liked. It was good though – we didn’t get done until 1pm or so but we got it done and Linda felt like I’d do well on the rest of the book.  As soon as we got done, we started working on dinner for that night – to host the other missionary couple.  I worked on potato salad – peeling and chopping potatoes.  Then I made the deviled eggs and got those stuffed.  Then later I made the brownies and cut up carrot sticks and did other little things - like pulling Linda’s laundry off the line and helping her fold it all.  I was glad to help but I was literally dead on my feet by the time they got there for dinner!  They loved it – a lot of what Linda made was what she was going to make for New Year’s Eve so the kids really enjoyed it!  Pigs in a blanket, potato salad, deviled eggs and brownies!  They wanted to play WII but neither Linda and I were up for it so we ended up watching a really cheesy Hallmark movie which involved no brain power!  

 

After the slow haul up the river, the guys were asking me about our return trip.  We decided that if we didn’t get any rain, it would make more sense to hike than go by canoe.  As of Saturday night, we were planning on hiking as it hadn’t rained.  Jason said the trail was so dry that we could probably make it in two hours.  But it poured down rain that night – which kept me awake for quite awhile so I didn’t sleep well at all.  But the river was up so were going to canoe down rather than hike.  We left Linda’s before 8 but didn’t get loaded into the canoe and moving until 9am.  It was a much different ride down!  It started out with 13 Siawi guys in the canoe and then us – but we were too tippy and some of the guys were sitting on top of our stuff – including my computer!  (I forgot to mention that my computer screen went out again mid-day on Friday!  This is the third time my screen has been so bad it needs to go to Cairns, Australia to get fixed!  It’s already spent 7 of the 20 months I’ve owned it in Australia!)  So I asked that they not sit on top and so three guys eventually hopped off the canoe.  But there were still 13 of us and we were sitting really low in the water!  It was much like one of those log rides – where the people in the middle get soaked!  The little rapids we were riding through kept splashing into the canoe – onto me and Tomas – and no one else!  It was cold and wet!  We had to stop once just to throw debris out of the way so the path was open again for the canoe.  Then later we had a much longer delay as they cut a fairly large log at one end that totally blocks the river (we went under it on the way up) and pushed that out of the way to open up the road again.  It wasn’t bad though – about 40 minutes of hanging out there on the side of the river.  From there it was pretty smooth sailing and we met up with our Wabuku folks around noon.  There were only about three times that I thought we might actually capsize!  Seriously!  One time the right side of the canoe was laying flat on the water – we took on water but somehow managed to stay afloat!  It was quite the adrenaline rush until we got past that last log!  The ride back up the Bapi was relatively innocuous. 

 

I can think of other business trips that might involve flight delays or even traffic delays but they don’t really compare to sitting in a canoe for 8 hours or having your back muscles ache from trying to stay upright in a canoe while it tips from side to side for hours!  I don’t usually have to go to the bathroom in the woods or sit in water-soaked clothes for hours or wonder if my computer is going to get lost in the river or not.  So I think this business trip classifies itself as a ‘narapela kain’ – a different kind!  I’ve only hit on the highlights – not describing in detail the time and manpower that it took to get the canoe up and over logs and across stones.  Or of some of the smaller details of what it means to travel from one village to another when the main mode of transportation is a motor canoe and hiking!  Think jungle cruise at Disney but multiplied a few times!  It was great though – the Lord undertook and another chunk of verses are ready to be printed in the Uriay language! 

 

To wed or not to wed....

And no I’m not referring to myself!  I haven’t been holding out on you and keeping a fiancé under wraps.  I’m in town for a break and my coworker, Elias has been shooting short little emails as to what’s happening in Wabuku.  Yesterday I got an email that Aendrien, one of the new believers had taken a widow, Ame, another believer as a second wife.  I was rather bummed in that we’ve already seen such a change in him already that I wouldn’t be surprised if he became a leader or elder in the church in the future.  So I hated to see him disqualify himself by taking a second wife.  I knew too that my sister, Kayne, his wife, would not be happy – and as a young believer herself, I wondered how it would flesh out. Then today, Elias wrote and said that Aendrien has backed off because Wobre has made an official marriage proposal to this same lady.  Not sure that Ame wants to marry anyone but she doesn’t have much say, short of running away to Bayyo, her home village. She’s the one that’s been teaching her kids – her two sons are believers too, along with her oldest married daughter.

 

Personally, I’d rather that Wobre marry her than Aendrien….for the sake of the church.  Wobre is still an unbeliever and he’s determined to take a second wife so for the church’s sake, it would be better for him to take a second wife than the other guy.  It’s not a done deal yet but that’s the latest news.

 

It’s so funny….before we were concerned about the salvation of our friends before but now not only are we concerned about the salvation of some, but we have new ‘concerns’ for these brand new believers – wanting to see them grow and how their choices, even as babes in Christ will affect them down the line, and the rest of the Body of Christ in this little village.  So keep praying for your folks if you’re praying for someone individually – or for the church as a whole.  Pray for wisdom for us as we disciple and know when to share and how much to share when some of these things haven’t been taught yet.