Kein New Testament Dedication

On the weekend of April 15 we had the priviledge and joy of celebrating with the people from Kein (pronounced "cane"), the village where we did village living, as they dedicated the New Testament in their language. We hiked out to the village the day before the dedication and spent the day visiting with our village family. The next day was a day of celebration, singing, dancing, and speeches. It was special for us to see people that we have grown to love here in Papua New Guinea receive God's Word in their heart language.














1: Heidi receives a warm greeting from her village grandma
2: Traditional dancing and singing
3: Our village Papa & Grandma with their copies of the Kein NewTestament
4: Paul & Heidi with the village kids

a shot from survey

Getting down to business

All hiking and scenery and coffee aside, what was the purpose?
In every village we went to we did various types of survey to understand the sociolinguistic situation.
Esther took word lists (170 plus 20 sentences) that usually lasted about three hours.














Bonnie did interviews with church and school leaders and also recorded a few stories that we used to test peoples understanding of different speech varieties.














I did interviews asking what language they speak and who speaks like them. As well as questions about their culture and where they travel to and what the marriage patterns are (who goes where and comes from where).














Right now we are back in the office (yeah!) trying to sort out all the information we gathered and determine the need for Bible translation in the three languages we surveyed.

Bridges

Build your own bridge! Grab some bamboo, a few sticks and some vines, bundle them together and viola. I thought these bridges were awesome. People cross these carrying bags of coffee,
cement and sheets of tin roofing and we felt a little wobbly with just backpacks.

Cash Crop

Coffee is the cash crop in this area of PNG.















The red berries are harvested, husked and then set out to dry.

















Ever morning the people lay the berries out and then take them in at night and whenever it rains. This is done for a month. Then they carry them down to the mill in big sacks, some people will hike 6 hrs through the mountains! One garden will yield about 6 bags of dried beans. They will get 60 Kina ($20 CAD) per bag, if the price is good.

Survey

My two teammates and I got dropped by helicopter in the Saruwaget mountains in Morobe province on March 8. It was a kind of funny feeling watching the chopper fly away.














We spent the next 18 days hiking through the most amazing mountains. We could usually see where the next village was, just across the valley maybe 3 or 4 kms. But the trail went straight down to the bottom of the valley and then straight up the other side! We probably gained and lost more than 1000ft a day. We were able to finish the survey 2 days early, I was very excited to see Heidi sooner than planned!



















On our way out we took a PMV (public transportation) as you can see the road had seen better days.The corner was a litte too tight and the river was washing the road away, so they just threw a few branches down and drove across! We made it but I was holding my breath.














The survey went really well and we are now back in Ukarumpa. I'll try to post a few pictures at a time and some brief explanations. Thank you for your prayers, none of us were injured apart from a few scratches and many flea bites...

reunited

Paul is safe and sound, reunited with his wife after 18 long days apart. The survey team is in Lae this week while they start to write the survey report. Once we get back to Ukarumpa we will post some pictures from the survey. The views and scenery were incredible and we were welcomed warmly in all the villages we visited.
Thanks for your prayers.

Survey Trip

Paul will be off on his first survey trip on Wednesday morning, bright and early. Three of the surveyors, Bonnie, Esther and Paul, will take a helicopter ride to the village of Gom and start their 20 day survey from there. They will be visiting 14 villages in five language groups and then travel to the city of Lae on the 27 of March. The other half of the survey team will be flying to the other side of the language group and surveying three more languages. Heidi will fly down to Lae and meet the team there when it's all over. Please pray for us during the time we are apart and pray for health and safety for the survey team. Also pray for good interaction and meaningful conversations with the people we come in contact with.

Community Health Clinic

Heidi has had the opportunity, once a week during the month of February, to go along with other clinic nurses to help with the Community Health Clinics (CHC). A group of 3 or 4 nurses and sometimes other volunteers go out to surrounding villages. Infants and children are given their childhood vaccinations, and the moms are also given education about how to help keep their kids healthy. It has been a very rewarding experience. She has also enjoyed time outside of Ukarumpa and being able to interact with Papua New Guineans where they are more comforable, in their own villages.

Lae

We recently took a trip down to Lae, a city on the coast of about 70,000 in the urban area. The scenery on the way was beautiful as we left the highlands and traveled down to the coast.




While we were there we ventured to the big market in town where you can get coconuts, bananas (by the stalk), peanuts (roasted or fresh), any other fruit or vegetable you like and if you're hankering for them even bat and grubs. We went to visit a family who we went to POC with. They are working with the Reform church in Lae.

Medical Evacuation to Cairns, AustraliaI

I am back in Ukarumpa, safe and sound. What an adventure I had this week . On Tuesday, we (another nurse, Karen Wood, a patient, his wife, and I) left the local Aiyura airstrip at around 3:00pm. We took a man that had been having abdominal pain, and we suspected appendicitis. We are not able to do surgery at the clinic, so we had to fly him over to Australia. The plane that we usually use for medical evacuations (med evac) is our King Air, which was recently struck by lightning and the engine is being overhauled. Another mission has very generously offered to help us out with med evacs while our plane is out of commission, so their plane and pilot picked us up at our airstrip here and we set off for Cairns. It was a 3 hour flight,with no trouble, and the patient tolerated the flight fairly well, just had pain and some nausea, which we had medication for. We flew into the overcast and rainy, but warm town of Cairns. It is a lovely town of about 30,000 people. There was only room for 2 extra people to ride in the ambulance with the patient, and seeing as this trip was for me to learn the ropes of a med evac, I went along with the patient's wife in the ambulance,
We walked into the lobby of the hospital, and it was so nice that I was worried my shoes would get dirt on their nice carpet. I had to bite my tongue not to exclaim how clean and nice the hospital was, I think it's the nicest one I've ever seen. I reported off to the nurse there, and then went to catch a cab. I got a ride to Treetops guesthouse, which is also lovely. Karen (the other nurse) and I had a car from the guesthouse, and headed in to town. First on the agenda was a trip to the grocery store, because we had a moderate-sized list of requests from some of the clinic staff for items that you just can't get here in Ukarumpa. I even bought myself 2 packages of feta cheese!!! And of course, picked up a treat for Paul - Cadbury Flake chocolate bars, which I knew he likes. Next we were in serious need of some supper. So we drove around town, and settled on a Chinese restaurant, and the food was superb. We also got to shop around at the night markets for about 20 minutes, before they closed at 11 pm, and I bought a hat! We had to leave early in the morning, so up at 5 am, with only about 4-5 hrs of sleep. But it was worth it! It was so weird to be in a developing country one morning, and by evening, be enjoying some of the sights in Australia! I am thankful for this experience, and for the safety we had during our flights and also that the patient got to Australia on time. We hear that they took out his appendix about 1/2 hr after he got to the hospital! He and his wife will stay in Cairns for a time while he recovers from surgery.

Finding Fun on a Saturday Night

Last weekend a large group of young adults here in Ukarumpa celebratedThom's birthday (one of Paul's fellow surveyors). The evening includedmaking a large number of pizzas, and everyone brought along a couple pizzatoppings and a side dish. Later on, we all enjoyed playing some "firegames". One of them had Thom tying a piece of steel wool to the end of arope, lighting the steel wool of fire, and then swinging it around incircles. The results were impressive, as you can see by the photo. Whosays we don't have anything fun to do here???

The Language Survey Office

Paul is enjoying all he is learning in the survey office. He has a great team of people to work with and learn from. Right now there are eight surveyors; one will be leaving in January and another in February. The next survey is planned for some time in March and will be about 3 or 4 weeks long. Paul is helping to get the research and planning ready for this survey. Researching involves looking to various sources for information: the library, the Internet, periodic journals and translators and other people who have lived or worked near the area. Once all this information is gathered and the purpose of the survey is clear, the team can set out.
The team will stay in a different village almost every night, gathering information through interviews, wordlists, and recorded tests. The main objective of surveys is to determine the vitality of a language and then whether or not a Bible translation project should be started in that language.

The SIL Clinic

The SIL Clinic provides services for the residents of Ukarumpa and also serves as an aid post for Papua New Guineans living in the surrounding area. There are 3 doctors and 9 nurses who work at the clinic. The clinic also has a dental department. Heidi has been working steady at the clinic for almost6 weeks now. She is still on a steep learning curve, but has an excellent mentor who is a great teacher. Heidi has much more responsibility here than she did in Canada and works closely with the doctors. She is doing lab work and X-rays. The main responsibilities of the nurses at the clinic include screening patients for the doctors in the office, seeing their own patients (functioning more like a nurse practitioner would back home), and occasionally helping out in the Outpatient Department (OPD), where Papua NewGuinean patients are seen. The OPD side of the clinic sees an average of 100 patients per day! The clinic also serves some of the surrounding villages by holding Community Health Clinics; the nurses go out to villages and give vaccinations to the babies and children. The clinic is only openduring the day so the nurses and doctors take turns being on-call during the night and on weekends. Heidi has been on-call a few times during theholidays and for several evenings/weekends. Paul has been helping the clinic by volunteering as a driver for the on-call nurses. If the nurse on-call needs to go to the clinic during the night a driver picks her up and waits at the clinic until the appointment is finished. So far he hasn’t been busy.

Isaac's Strawberry Feast

Our little friend Isaac decided that his "Uncle Paul" needed to eat somestrawberries.

Heidi's Morning Smoothie

1 cup frozen strawberries
1 ripe banana
3 scoops homemade yogurt
1/4 cup milk
Blend well in blender/food processor
Serve immediately and enjoy!

Merry Christmas

We want to wish you all a very merry and blessed Christmas. While we are nearing the end of Christmas Day here in PNG, all of you back home are sleeping after a lovely Christmas Eve, and will wake up in a few hours to enjoy Christmas morning. We wish you all a lovely Christmas Day, spent with family and loved ones.
Last night, Christmas Eve, we enjoyed a quiet evening meal of appetizers and sparkling grape juice, which is becoming a tradition with us. *Please see above photo of us in our living room, in front of our banana tree "Christmas Tree" (Paul's ingenious idea). We then enjoyed a Christmas Eve service with all the residents of Ukarumpa in the Meeting House (where church services and big events are held here in Uka). After church, a big group of young people had a bonfire, we sang carols, and then went to a house to enjoy Christmas treats and hot apple cider.
This morning, we opened presents together, just the 2 of us. Heidi got a set of mugs and a coffee pot from Paul made by a local potter. Paul got a set of arrows from Heidi. After presents and relaxing, we headed over to the Campbells for a delicious brunch, complete with crepes and delicious fillings.
With our stomachs already full, we proceded to Gavin & Carrie Jones' house (friends of ours from POC) where we had a delicious meal, with chicken (in lieu of turkey), mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, stuffing - the works!
Now we are completely stuffed and badly in need of a nap. In a few minutes we will be heading out again to spend more time with the big group of young people that are affectionately know around Ukarumpa as "The Crowd". More food, games, and good cheer.
We are keeping busy, which is good because it is keeping us from getting too lonely and homesick. But of course, we cannot forget our family and friends, who we are missing, especially during these days when families are so often together. We wish we could celebrate with you all.






May you be blessed as you celebrate the birth of the Saviour...

Hiking on a Saturday

Last Saturday a group of about 20 decided to go for a hike up Lone Tree Hill, a big hill just outside Ukarumpa. We were eager to go, as we have not hiked much since getting here to Ukarumpa. We started by crossing a river about 30 ft wide and up to our knees in some places, we were surprised how cold it was. The hike up the hill took us about an hour and a half, and provided stunning views of the Aiyura Valley and Ukarumpa. We ate a snack in a grove of pine trees at the top of the hill and then descended. On the way down we walked through a few coffee plantations, it is grown as a cashcrop in the valley here. A beautiful hike on a beautiful Saturday -perfect!






a view of
Ukarumpa













because there
are no rock faces
around here...

Shopping in Kainantu

So where do you go when you need to buy something, and it can't be found in the small store in Ukarumpa? You go to Kainantu on a shopping trip!Kainantu is a town about 30 minutes drive from Ukarumpa, depending on the condition of the gravel road (recently graded) and whether you run into "rascals" on the road or not. These rascals are known to hold up cars and steal money and belongings. Our trip to Kainantu on Saturday was not so eventful and we had a safe drive into town. Kainantu has several grocery stores and also is popular among Ukarumpans for its used clothing stores. We went with 2 other couples and had fun looking through racks and racks of clothing, mostly imported from Australia.

Irony

Rainy season has started here. It has been raining almost every afternoon since we arrived. I was thankful, knowing that our water tank, which provides our drinking water, was filling up. On Sunday the water pressure was dwindling but the pump was still pumping hard. It was then we discovered that our large water tank was empty. The screen on top of the tank was clogged and was preventing not only debris but also water from entering our tank. It hasn't rained since Sunday, so much for rainy season.
(For those who are concerned, we get drinking water from our neighbors and river water is pumped in for all our other needs.)