It's Christmas!

It’s now Boxing Day evening. 1am. In 5 and a half hours I’ll get up, make my way to the nearest road and catch a public bus into town. From there I’ll search out the busses going down to Madang, a town on the coast. I’ll find one, hop in, and then it will drive around town for an hour or so trying to find more passengers. When it’s finally full we’ll start the 4 hour trip. I plan to rest at the Wycliffe guesthouse there for 5 or so days. I’ll read, eat and sleep. And that’s about it. Maybe go for a swim when it heats up at midday. It’ll probably be my last holiday here, as I leave in March. I’m taking Living in the Light of Eternity by Yohannan, and An Unexpected Light: travels in Afghanistan, by Jason Elliot. Yohannan’s book is good. I think Elliot is a bit of a pretentious writer, but I do learn about the country. I meant to pick up an easy-read novel to take but didn’t get round to it. Oh well. I’ve just finished Secret Believers by Brother Andrew. Excellent book. Highly recommended. If you’re at all interested in Islam, Muslims or just generally, in the growth of the church, or even if you’re just looking for a good read, get it. It’s very readable – kind of like a good novel, but telling of the stories of the struggles of ‘Muslim Background Believers.’

Christmas was good. I spent Christmas Eve with Alan and Ritva Brown, Bible translators here. They also had two daughters over from Europe, and a few other guests. I enjoyed that. Good food and good company. Alan’s a Brit and his wife, Ritva, is from Finland. I found out that Finnish Christmas food is very nice. Mmmmmmm.... :-) On Christmas day I was invited to someone’s house for breakfast, and then after breakfast got invites for lunch and dinner, so that worked out well. The singles here often do things together, eating together, just hanging out, playing games like Settlers, Risk and cards; thankfully Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit don’t rear their ugly heads too often. Oh, and I changed a tyre...haha...great Christmas Day activity, hey.

I hope your Christmas was good. I bought a whole stack of hand-painted postcard-like things to send out but, yep, you’ve guessed it, I didn’t get round to posting them. Sorry about that. I will send them and write again soon, but not for the next week while I’m away.

To all of you that in any way support me in this work, through finances, friendship, or prayer, thank you. This year has had its ups and downs. But I can say, without any hesitation, that it’s been a good one: one of learning, growing, and doing good work. I look forward to seeing what next year will bring.

We had a department Christmas lunch...every table had to make a Chritmas scene with a roll of toilet paper. Ours was a snowman. We won.

Christmas, at 11am.

To remind you to read Secret Believers ;-)
A second reminder (a scene from Afghanistan)

What is 'development' anyway?

Hardly any paid work, houses that fall down every few years, an ‘out-of-date’ system of bride-price, a poor transport network and communication system...the list goes on. These things are every-day realities in the lives of millions of rural Papua New Guineans.

However, what, exactly, is wrong with any of them?

It’s just that I have a problem with categorising countries into ‘developed’ and ‘developing’, like developed countries are inherently superior to all others. Making an exception for better health care, which of course I think is very good, have we done ourselves any favours by getting rid of all of the above and replacing them with salaries, expensive houses, cars, cell phones, exotic holidays and even marriage as we know it?

In a Papua New Guinea village, few people receive a salaried income. But no-one goes hungry and everyone has a house to sleep in, provided they’re willing to work for both (i.e. build their own house and tend their plot of land).

In a Papua New Guinea village, houses do not last like buildings in the West and they’re not as big or as comfortable. But everyone owns their own house, no one pays rent, and no one has a mortgage. Houses are rebuilt every 5-10 years or so with material freely available from the abundant natural resources available to all.

In a Papua New Guinea village, a man pays bride price for his wife. But the husband, and many families in his village who helped with the payment, have now invested in this woman and so have a vested interest in looking after her. And, importantly, the wife's family have been compensated for losing a valuable helper and member of their community.The man has shown he is serious about marrying her; the husband's village has shown that they’d like her to become a part of their community.

In a Papua New Guinea village, few people travel widely; most grow old in the same village they were born in. But no old person is hidden away in a special home because their family doesn’t have the time to look after them. Older folks get looked after by their children and others, eating every meal with them, seeing their grandchildren every day and constantly being part of a community until they die. Few people travel widely, but when they do travel, even if they turn up unannounced, there is always a place to stay and food to eat. Hospitality is valued.

In a Papua New Guinea village there are no landline telephones or computers for internet (although now, there may well be cell phones). But they do have this really cool drum called a ‘garamut’ which can be heard from miles away :-) Different drum beats signify different things: an important visitor has arrived, someone has died, there is a fight...

Ok, so that last point isn’t really an improvement on cell phones and email access, but my point is that I really like many things about Papua New Guinean culture. I like how it’s relationship-oriented.

Obviously, I’ve presented an overly-rosy picture in the descriptions above. Sometimes people do go hungry, not hungry to the point of death, but hungry nevertheless. Sometimes a community may pay bride price because they owe the family in question something, not necessarily because they totally approve of the marriage. Sometimes old people are not looked after like they should be. Sometimes poor transport means that access to medicine is limited. A man in the village I stayed in for five weeks during orientation fell out of a tree, was paralysed instantly, and had to wait 3 hours for a vehicle to drive past before he could start the 2 hour bumpy ride to a hospital in the back of a flat-bed lorry. Life in Paua New Guinea is not paradise.

However, I wonder how much of our ‘development’ actually increases happiness. High powered, high pressured jobs, ‘lowly’ mind-numbing jobs, mortgages, traffic jams, pollution, family breakups. Sometimes, during surveys, when I’m living in these PNG villages, I wonder what it would be like to settle down there and learn to build a bush house and farm my land. Would I have been happier having grown up in one of these villages, living off the food that my land produces, with my friends and family around me, or would I be happier living the life an average Brit leads? I don’t know. But I know that I just don’t like the assumption that the West’s society is in better condition because of ‘development’. What is development anyway?

Sorry, this is a little more philosophical than normal. I couldn’t help it. This issue bugs me. Any thoughts? (No, this doesn’t intentionally follow the last post.)

How to get a wife

Well, one way of doing it is to exchange sisters!

Here's a short section from a survey report of the Arafundi area.

All of the areas visited practice sister exchange for marriage, where a woman from one clan will marry a man from another clan, thus requiring the man’s clan to send a female relative (not necessarily a direct sister) to marry someone in the original bride’s clan. If there is no exchange, then the bride price increases considerably (from about K200 [$75] where sister exchange occurs, to K1000 [$370] in the event that it does not). In Yamandim it was also noted that if no female is available to be exchanged, then the family that receives the bride may send a child back to the other clan as payment (usually one of the children born to the bride). However, the system for sister exchange does not always operate now, since young people often decide for themselves who they want to marry.

Pretty interesting, hey. Although it doesn't happen so much any more. And don't be too shocked by using children as 'payment'...the child wouldn't be badly treated, he or she would be adopted into a family and treated like a son or daughter. There are no orphanages here; when children need looking after, the family decide which relative will do the adopting. Family boundaries tend to blur - terms like 'brother,' 'sister' and 'cousin' are used a lot more loosely than we'd use them.

Alright, enough of the anthropology class.

It's almost Christmas! Doesn't feel like Christmas. We should get a snow machine here or something.

Pictures of Arafundi people

Sleepless nights

When it’s late and you can’t sleep, what do you do?

Edit survey reports!

Which is what I’m doing right now. At 1:30am. 5 minutes ago I decided I may as well give up trying to sleep and do some of this work...it’s bound to put me to sleep more quickly than anything else. Just kidding, I actually quite like editing.

And if, as you’re reading this, you’re wondering, ‘Wow, I’d really like to see one of these reports,’ guess what. You’re in luck! Just click here and you can download one written a few years ago but just published. The section 'Traditional Practices' is all about things like initiation rites, sorcery, witchdoctors, traditional stories... you may find that interesting.

Ok, time to work.

Youth Centre

Yesterday I went to a local youth centre that has just been opened by John and Wendy Bailey, an Irish couple who work for NARI, and the rest of the board (all Papua New Guineans). The vision of this place is to see the youth in this valley come to know Christ. It will be open every Saturday from 2pm to 4:30pm. There are informal guitar classes, a pingpong table, books, jigsaws, drawing competitions, and sports. There are also times of worship, dramas and testimonies given. A team of 15-20(?) volunteers (of whom I am one) have committed to being involved in this project, to get alongside and serve the youth who come. I like how both expats and local people are on the team of volunteers and on the board. I like how we can all work together. Every week I look forward to going. Please pray that God would touch the lives of many youth and that they in turn would become disciplers of many.

Pics

Just a few of my favourite photos. They're pretty old. You may have seen them already.

When we arrive in the country, during orientation we stay with a family for five weeks, in their village, to learn about PNG culture, the Tok Pisin langauge and to just make friends. This is my adopted grandma. I called her "Ai", the term of respect for an older woman in the local language. She has a ready smile, an infectious laugh, no teeth, and very large cigarettes.

One day in the village my family told me to go to the wash place and look for the snake. This is what we found. The snake tried to eat the frog/toad; but the frog was cleverer than that and poisoned the snake. Which resulted in a sort of loveless Romeo and Juliet end scenario.1) Mr Bat, while still with us. If you're squeamish maybe stop here.

2) Being served with sweet potatoes and greens

Spondulicks

Recently I’ve needed a little more money than I’ve been getting. Mostly because of the cost of flights home next year. I cancelled plans for a week’s break over Christmas because I didn’t have the (as my dad would say) spondulicks. I told one or two fellow workers here in PNG and my sister who said she’d pray. Sorry Mum, no, I didn't tell you...it wasn't that bad :-) THEN today, about 10 minutes ago, I get my statement from Wycliffe. Most supporters of mine give monthly; I rarely get one-off gifts. But this month, someone (a charitable trust, actually) who had no idea I needed money gave. That is God. And I thank him for his goodness.

Not made for time

At the moment I’m reading a book called Living in the Light of Eternity by KP Yohannan. It was given to me by the Newmans, a family in the States with a real heart for missions. The book starts out by challenging the reader to remember what's important in life. It then goes on to talk about what we are doing about those fundamental life issues, focusing on mission. At the moment I’m in the chapter entitled, ‘Bringing our hearts back into focus.’ One section which hit me is:

We are not made for time. We are created for eternity. Our life right now is simply a little classroom in which we are learning to be conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ (Rom. 8:29).

And what is the purpose of Christ’s life? Why did He come into this world? What did he live for? “To seek and save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). And the more we become like Christ, the more we too will make world evangelism top priority in our lives.

Do you see how everything else in life becomes so incidental when we gain this focus? Our clothes, our food, our hairstyles, our makeup, our bank accounts, our education, our degrees, our plans and ambition, our children, our spouses—all these things cannot be the most important things in life.

Missions is for all of us. I don't like it when churches put overseas missionaries on pedestals. We're all the same, you and me: we work for the same boss, God, and we have the same job, allowing ourselves to be conformed to the image of Christ. I like that we can work together at it from all over the world.

A sad day

Today Tiffany, a good friend, left. We were in the same orientation group at the start of 2007 and have been friends ever since. I just got back from seeing her off at our airstrip. In typical style, things didn’t go to plan...the plane had a radio problem and so takeoff was delayed for two hours; two small Cessna 206s were used instead of the larger Islander. As we stood 15 meters away from the plane lifting up into the air someone standing nearby commented, ‘Well, I guess it comes with the territory.’ Saying goodbye, leaving and being left: some of the things I dislike most about this vocation. As I said, ‘see you later’ to her I immediately wondered if I ever would. Probably not.

Life goes on; and the cycle of meeting new friends and colleagues and, sometime later, parting ways continues. I wonder if I’ll ever get used to it.

Meanwhile, in the survey office we discuss whether we should go on survey on Saturday. We had a last minute request for a survey in Madang province. However, it looks like it makes more sense to delay it until February when we have more personnel who can come (at the moment it would be just me). In that case, I’m going to continue analysing the data collected on our last survey to the Benabena people. Another day in the office!

Kwomtari Grammar

The other day, at morning coffee, we had a celebration for the publication of Kwomtari Phonology and Grammar Essentials. It was great to hear testimonies from the translators working with the Kwomtari speakers about how God is at work in that area.

Two of the people used by God in that translation project are British girls (Julia Drew and Katharine Spencer) who, after university, joined Wycliffe as GRIPers, the same scheme I’m enrolled in.* They spent a year here, analysing the Kwomtari language and writing up their findings. The Honsbergers (Kwomtari Bible translators) said if it wasn’t for those two girls, they may not be here today – they really helped in providing encouragement and understanding of how the language works. Murray Honsberger gave a few thoughts about how all the parts of the body have their unique and very valuable roles to play. We cannot function in isolation.

Carol Honsberger, Lisa Gilliland, Murray Honsberger, Ian Tupper, Rudy Yawiro, Lydia van den Berg, Laura Lee Honsberger

*GRIP stands for Graduate International Programme which is a scheme enabling people interested in Wycliffe’s work to get involved for a year or two. Intensive training is provided for recent graduates and then you, as an intern, are sent to a specific project. See www.wycliffe.org.uk/languageprojects.html for more details

Bimin Bible dedication

Last night the Weber family (translators working with the Bimin-speaking people) gave a report on the dedication of the newly published New Testament in the Bimin language. I felt really encouraged hearing the stories about how God has been at work in the lives of these translators and the Bimin people throughout the past 18 years, from the start of the project until now.

A few years back...

Last month, at the dedicationThomas Weber's father with a Bimin man and his new Bible

(dedication photos taken by and property of Ruth Toy)

Football!

There are things I like about Ukarumpa (the mission centre we live in) and things I don’t like. Sometimes life here can feel insular and claustrophobic. There are times when I just need to get out. I normally deal with that by kick-starting my aging Suzuki DR-350 bike and taking off to Kainantu, the local town, or just going for a ride into the valley and surrounding hills. The fresh air, different surroundings and different people normally set me up for the next week or two.

Something else that does me a lot of good here is getting involved in different community events. On Saturday, the high school on centre hosted football (soccer) and basketball tournaments. Three other schools turned up to compete. Over the past couple of months I’ve been helping out coaching the boys’ football team and yesterday I got to referee a lot of the matches. I enjoyed it, even with the passionate coaches occasionally making their thoughts known from the sidelines.

At the moment we’re planning another survey for December. It’s a bit of a last-minute thing, but it’s going to be a short one, and accessible by road...so no real problems. We hope!

Our team, in white, in the process of beating New Tribes

Comments

Some of you were asking about commenting on the blog. Comments are now enabled.

Pictures

I've just uploaded pictures of the Benabena survey to my photo album. Go to '2008', then 'Oct 2008 survey - Benabena'. Here's a few to whet your appetite:

Can the car get across the bridge?

Reading books in their language for the first time

Survey diary 2

I wrote this on the 3rd evening of our survey in a village called Megabo.

It’s been dark for about an hour [i.e. it’s around 8pm]. We’re sitting in a large, smoky, one-roomed house made from bamboo and local wood, with a grass roof. In the centre there’s a dying fire, and the rest of the room is taken up with a raised platform where we sit and chat. Later we’ll sleep in here. Two paraffin lamps give off a dim glow.

Bonnie is doing the group questionnaire, Juliann is sitting in the corner with the women, Nelis is sleeping and I have been reading. Bonnie is about 40 minutes into the questionnaire so she probably has one and half or two hours left.

We haven’t eaten since lunch. Not sure if food will come. Should I snack on some crackers? Think I’ll wait a little longer. This morning we ate one roasted sweet potato each and for lunch I bought some roasted peanuts from a local market - very nice! In the afternoon we were given a pineapple which was delicious. Yesterday I’d been commenting to J and B how nice it would be to eat pineapple; and then today as we’re hiking from one village to the next a random stranger walking towards us stops, greets me, puts his hand into his bag and hands over a pineapple! Thank you God for your acts of kindness.

But no pineapple (or anything else for that matter) tonight. We’ll see what happens. Maybe it’s time for the crackers.

[I did eat some and then, of course, the food came.]

Bonnie update

For those of you who have asked, Bonnie is doing a lot better. We expect her back here on Friday. She walked without crutches for the first time the other day and the swelling has almost totally disappeared.

Also, regarding the previous post, yes the people pulled the car up. For every pull the car moved a cm or so. It took a while. Would have been nice if a car had driven past, but no such luck.

Survey diary 1

One of the fun parts of this survey was the driving. There was a decent amount of 4x4 driving needed, as the roads were pretty muddy. However, at one point, it almost got a little too ‘fun’.

As we approached a corner, I steered slightly to the right in order to keep the wheels on the driest part of the road. What I didn’t realise was that the dry shrubbery on the edge of the road wasn’t very solid. In fact, it was hiding a 15-18ft drop down to a stream below. The car started sliding off the road, the driver’s side tilting over the edge of the drop. Thankfully the two wheels on the passenger’s side caught on the edge and they stopped us rolling down the drop off.

Also, thankfully, there was no-one sitting in the back, as there had been for most of our other trips between villages.

Local people rushed to help us, and after a few hours we got the car back on the road. Men, women and children all worked together, in good humour, whether pulling on the ropes, giving advice or just watching.

We were really thankful that this one guy knew what he was doing. He immediately took control of the situation and guided us all through it. It turns out he’s worked with Wycliffe before. He wouldn’t accept any payment for his time. Thank you Father for protecting us and providing perfect help when we needed it.

Cool picture

Isn’t this a great picture? I got it from a Facebook group called ‘The Africa you don’t see on the news’ or something like that. It’s taken from above the Zambezi river, on the Zimbabwe/Zambia border where you can do all sorts of adrenaline activities like jumping into the gorge like this guy, zip-lining across it, bungee jumping off the Vic Falls bridge, and white water rafting.

When I was there I did the rafting which was amazing. I went to the bridge to do the bungee jump, but after looking down went to town and spent the money on clothes. My excuse is that I was only 15 so I was allowed to be scared, and there’s something about diving headfirst off a bridge I just (still) don’t like. Sky diving would be different – I’d like that.

But this blog is supposed to be about how great Papua New Guinea is...so I better stop here as this it totally unrelated :-)

Next I’ll post some stories and pictures from the survey trip.

Medical evacuation

No, three weeks are not up. Yes, we are back from the survey. Bonnie, our team leader got a nastily infected cut on her ankle, and on Thursday, after she also got a fever, we came back to Ukarumpa. Yesterday (Saturday) she was medivaced to Australia. The antibiotics weren’t working and the infection had spread quite a way up her leg. The doctors here thought maybe the infection is in the bone. Haven’t heard any more news.

We think the her leg got cut on a long hike last Friday when there were quite a few leeches biting and doing their thing, and a lot of scratches and cuts from just hiking through the bush.

Never seen leeches in action before. I got a few on my feet. They really don’t come off once they start sucking your blood. Seriously! They’re small and slimy and you have to repeatedly scrape them off with your fingernail or a knife or something...they’re determined suckers (hehehe).

Ok, enough for today.

So it’s back to the office. I may start to analyse the data we got from this survey. Though from Monday to Wednesday, I’m helping out at strategy workshops. Maybe more on those next time.

Thanks for your prayers for Bonnie.

Prayer

Tomorrow morning at 8am we leave Ukarumpa to spend 3 weeks in the Benabena language area. We would appreciate your prayers for:

1) Good times with the Benabena people. Good conversations that glorify God.
2) Accurate, representative data collection. Please pray that we will be able to come closer to identifying the levels and causes of Scripture use.
3) Good relationships in the survey team. There'll be our team leader Bonnie, Juliann and myself. A dentist called Nelis who works at Ukarumpa and is from the Benabena area is coming with us for the first 4-5 days. Please pray that we'll get on well, work well together, get to know each other and God more, and have fun.
4) Safety. We'd like to keep healthy and safe. There have been some tribal fights in this area, so it would be good to avoid those.

Thanks!

Be back in 3 weeks.

God mi laikim yu tru

Here's the words of the song in the video below. I wasn't sure about the translation of 'banis' and 'sori long mi' so had to check with a friend. Often 'banis' means fence, but here means protection and 'sori long mi' means mercy.

God mi laikim yu tru, yu save sori long mi (Lord I love you for your mercy)

Yu save helpim mi long strongpela banis tru (You help me with your strong protection)

Banis bilong God em i strong tumas (The Lord's protection is so strong)

Satan i no inap kam insait (Satan is not able to come inside)

STEP

Over the past few weeks there has been a STEP course going on here at Ukarumpa. (STEP stands for Strengthening Tokples [vernacular] Education in Papua New Guinea.) So Papua New Guineans from all over the country have come for about 4 weeks to learn how to train teachers in their langauge area. On Thursday, during a morning in prayer, we spent some time worshiping and praying with the participants. Here's a (very low quality) clip of a Tok Pisin worship song. I'll post the words and translation tomorrow - when I've asked someone about a few phrases I'm not sure about :)

There have been 12 STEP courses since 1994, when STEP started. In this intake there are something like 15 languages represented.

Exciting survey

The reason I’m looking forward to this survey (we leave on Tuesday!!) is because I think we’re going to have lots of great conversations. The data collection part of language surveys is interesting, but personally I enjoy the informal conversations that inevitably follow each interview. Most interviews are group-based, with between 5 and 100 people present and we often get asked a range of questions - about why we left our countries to come here, about a particular Bible passage, about whether magic is ‘ok’, etc, etc.

And I think on this survey the conversations are going to be extra interesting. Because during the interviews we’re going to saying things like, ‘What do you have to do to get to heaven?.’ And ‘Do you know who Abraham/Moses/Paul is? Tell us about him.’ We want to ask that type of question to find out how much people really understand the Bible. When I’ve asked questions like that before, people give a response and then often say, ‘Why? What do you think?’ And voila – the chance to tell the gospel to the 20, 40, 80 people who’ve gathered from that village.

We hope to go to at least 18 villages during this survey. Although our primary intent is not to evangelise or pastor, we happily answer people’s questions. So please do pray that God would provide opportunities to minister to these Benabena language speakers.

The Madang coast, featuring a WWII gun
Picture taken by Andrew Williamson

Almost time...

...for a SURVEY!!

On Oct 11^th, a week on Tuesday, we will start one of Papua New Guinea’s first ever Scripture use surveys. In that three week trip we aim to 1) find out how much the Bible is being used, and 2) assuming a low usage, to investigate why. I’ve never done a survey like this before.

When I was training for this job in the UK at the end of 2006, I was told there was a need for these types of surveys here but that because no-one knew how to do them nothing much was being done about it. Since then, I and others here have been gradually working up to this point. And finally, it seems to be coming together.

We’ve got permission from the directors to give it a go, we’ve planned this pilot survey, designed the questionnaires, interviewed people from the area and got some very basic maps in order to plan the route. We’ve chosen to go to some remote villages, some less remote, some border villages and some in the centre of the language area. And, God’s provided a very enthusiastic friend and guide who can stay with us for the first 4 days to introduce us to the people he knows in the area.

We’re going to the Benabena language, near a town called Goroka. They’ve had a New Testament in their language for about 30 years but we suspect it’s not being used very much. That could be for the same reason that not many people read the Bible in England. However, especially with a relatively newly translated Bible, there could be other issues. I’ll mention what those are, and why I’m so excited for this survey in my next post. Don’t go away – it’s gonna be a good one :-)

Here are two of my favourite photos, taken on the first survey I went on, to the Sos Kundi language group in East Sepik Province.

Rye bread rising

When I'm in the kitchen there are inevitably two or three disasters before any success comes my way. Like when, on Saturday, I tried to make ice cream and instead of adding 4oz of sugar to the eggs, I added 14. (I thought the big numbers on the scale were oz but they were 100s of grams.) Then, in the same ice cream-making attempt, after getting the sugar mixture correct, I accidently brought the from-scratch custard to the boil, curdling it. Or when, on Sunday, trying to make bread, I assumed I could just substitute rye flour for normal flour, creating an inedible, stodgy dough.

Yesterday evening, however, it seemed to work

A friend's attempt when he, well, forgot about it

Advice for anyone wanting to work here: 1) learn how to cook, and 2) bring cookbooks that contain recipes with simple ingredients and (if you’re like me) instructions that a 4-year old couldn’t get wrong.

Morning in town

On Saturday I spent some of the day in Kainantu, the local town. A church group has put on a march and had set up a stage opposite the main supermarket to lead worship and preach from. First I went to the market, then headed over to the grassy field to sit and sing and listen to the energetic preacher. It was a nice morning - nice to get out of Ukarumpa (the missionary centre), and nice to experience how God is working in local churches. I need to stop using the word 'nice' so much. Here are some photos.

GingerDough balls and chicken feetAnd, my favourite

On appreciating others

Here I can't choose my friends to the same extent that I have been able to at other times, for example during university. I sometimes find that hard. The number one cause of missionaries leaving the field is because they can't get along with their fellow workers (or so I was told during training time and time again). I was reading CS Lewis' The Four Loves this evening. I found it helpful. In the section on 'Affection' he says:

By having a great many friends I do not prove that I have a wide appreciation of human excellence. You might as well say I prove the width of my literary taste by being able to enjoy all the books in my own study. The answer is the same in both cases - 'You chose those books. You chose those friends. Of course they suit you.' The truly wide taste in reading is that which enables a man to find something for his needs on the sixpenny tray outside any secondhand bookshop. The truly wide taste in humanity will similarly find something to appreciate in the cross-section of humanity whom one has to meet every day. In my experience it is Affection that creates this taste, teaching us first to notice, then to endure, then to smile at, then to enjoy, and finally to appreciate, the people who 'happen to be there'. Made for us? Thank God, no. They are themselves odder than you could have believed and worth far more than we guessed.

The intro bit

I'm 25, have been working in Papua New Guinea since January 2007, went to university in Sheffield, studied Biblical Studies (after realising Economics was for mathematical geeks...one of whom I am not), grew up in Liverpool and Africa, have one mum who's a good cook, one dad who's a bit crazy and one sister. She's getting married soon, which I think is pretty cool. Met the guy for the first time the other month and I think she's made a decent choice (I have to say that, he's probably going to read this...Just kidding Mike).

I do language surveys. I'm a sort of scout for Wycliffe Bible Translators, seeing where there are possibilities for them to go and work. It's fun. We get to hike around villages, chat to people, figure out language boundaries, ask about their traditional culture and language, generally just learn a lot, and hopefully eventually give a bit back. I lead a grade 8 boys’ Bible study every week, and I’m involved in their youth group too. Every Saturday morning I try to get out of the missionary centre on my motorbike. I go to the local town, Kainantu, or take a drive down the dirt tracks of the Aiyura valley that Ukarumpa, our centre, is in. I read, hang out with friends, attempt to cook, spend a lot of time cleaning up the charcoal-like remains of cooking that didn’t quite turn out, help out at a local youth drop-in centre, and now blog!

And this is too long. So I’ll end here. Glad to have got the boring first post out of the way where you kind of feel you have to introduce yourself.

PS Couldn’t think of a clever or funny name for this blog. Yep, that probably says a lot about me :) Any suggestions? Oh, and here are a couple of pictures. Just because everyone likes photos. The first is the valley I live in. The second is of me and one of the guys who introduced me to this country...I stayed with him and his family for 5 weeks in March last year. If you'd like to see more photos, go to www.thebigpicturelibrary.com/whenisurvey

So...

My first blog! A few months ago I had the idea that if Wycliffe members are interested in working in Papua New Guinea, or if friends or others want to know more about what’s going on here, a blog would be a pretty good way of communicating. The people in charge of Wycliffe work here even said they'd pay for the internet use because they like getting publicity! (We have a satellite uplink which costs a fortune to use, so that's a pretty big deal.) So me and a couple of others are starting a 3-month trial blogging period. If it seems to go well, we’ll continue.

So that means that if you’d like this blog to continue, let me know! If you want to know more about life or work here, email me! Be great to hear from you.