Happy National Liklik Haus Day!

What is National Liklik Haus Day? Well, "liklik haus" in Tok Pisin literally means "little house", but in some parts of the country that's what you call the bathroom. On this most blessed of days (March 19) one of my fellow surveyors had a very close, personal experience with the bottom of a "liklik haus" . . . and by 'bottom' I don't mean the floor. I mean the bottom of the pit. In the survey office we celebrate this day in her honour. Here's a picture of 'my' liklik haus in the village where I lived for five weeks when I first came to PNG.Yesterday was the last day of "Interact" . . . a time when all the language people (and a few others) here in Ukarumpa get together for a week and present interesting things about their work to each other. I presented a bit about our Bena Scripture Use survey, and it was exciting to get a chance to tell people about that, since Scripture Use surveys are such a new thing for us. The most exciting thing, though, was how excited everyone here is about their own work! I loved seeing how much all these people love what they do. Someone from the aviation department told us about the new airplane they just bought. To me, it's just another machine that will get me where I need to go, but this guy's eyes shone as he pointed out the new technology and specially designed rudder pedals that apparently make this airplane amazing for aviation in PNG. With animated gestures and real passion in his voice, a computer specialist told us about some of the new things in the computer world that can be really useful in our work. Linguists shared thrilling discoveries about directional verbs and the differences between Austronesian and Papuan languages. God has called each of these people here to do something they're good at . . . and last week proved to me that He's also called each of them to do what they love! Reminds me of something Fredrick Buechner wrote: "The place where God calls you is the place where your deepest gladness, and the world's deep hunger meet." I've often felt that way about my work here, and I'm clearly not the only one!

Joyce, my friend and next door neighbour, telling us about the language where she's working