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)