What a DAY !!!

It is the 29th of February, isn't this a grand day just because it comes once in 4. Thank you for all who said hey...I need affirmation once in awhile to feed my insecure self :).

We found this little boy on a hike we took. He was sitting in the gardens all decked out with really no where to go. Just decorated and sitting waiting for us to arrive and take his picture or admire his war paint on his little innocent face.

He is in the Mbua, his teachers are sitting in Wamena waiting to get their money from the government but instead of coming back to teach, they keep sitting in Wamena. Meanwhile, this little boy has no one to teach him...he is waiting too. The Papuans get a lot of money from the government, this island is full of natural resources so to placate the masses...money is given but no responsibly to work is required. Money, but no power or responsibility. It is a lethal mix...but the question to ask, where is this little boy going to get his education if none of this teachers need to teach to get their pay? Multiply this island wide and you begin to see what a slippery slope this is becoming. So he waits for his teacher who is waiting for his money.

But on this day this wonderful day of the 29th...get all dressed up and go, eat a fresh garden salad with all the trimmings and a big fat steak with all the flavour just because you can and we can't. We'll get dressed down and walk in our shorts and eat rice with cooked greens just because we can on this the 29th of February.

So...

Why have I not heard from most of you? Mijo took this picture and I have no idea if the 'look' is because she was taking my picture or that I was contemplating some abstract thought...no, it was because she was taking my picture. It has been quiet out there in virtual space and don't really know what is going on with you who read this blog. So drop me a note, post on the site something...I am missing you.

Indolent...

Disinclined to exert oneself, habitually lazy, for those of us who have not used this word in a sentence recently. Harold, a Papuan from the Wissel Lakes area, an Ekari has been coming to our house on Sunday afternoons to practise his English. This is a word he chose to use in a sentence. He was talking about himself and his indolent behavior in practising his English. Ya...may I be struck with some of his indolence. He went on to ask us how to use the word embroil in a sentence. I am impressed with him...I think he has collected some words in a dictionary and is trying to figure out how to use them in a sentence. I keep forgetting how rich our language is and how many exceptional words there are at our disposal. Well, I only have to ask Harold... I am sure next week he will be his 'indolent' self and have a list of new rarely used words to practise in a sentence.
This man came up to us while we were using the bank and asked us if he could practise his English. He went on to say that he targets foreigners with the idea that maybe one or two will take the time to work with him. He was persistent and gracious all at the same time. He found Scott in town and again had asked to come to our house so that he could put his desire for speaking English into practise. He showed up at our house last Sunday...he is far from being indolent...I will have to be sure to let him know.

You guessed it!!!

Woke up this morning to the sound of the falling rain. Usually that is a wonderful sound, this morning it mocked us in our attempt to go to the beach. BUT...always a but, our internet works at home so we can paruse the net at our leaisure in the comfort of our own home. Mijo did walk up to the school to use the computers there though so she can IM her friends back home, she did not have the patience to wait for all of us to get off. Scott and Nick are going to the library I am sure to see if they can find more war books. We will again try for the beach tomorrow...

We went on Sunday..and we had a wonderful day of rest.

A collection

Every time we go to the beach we have collected shells. I am no great collector of things but I have become a bit over the top about collecting shells. Believe me this is just a smattering, I have jars full...and some of them are just like others I have collected. I like the hunt..I like the find...I like the trophy. What is nice...Scott seems to enjoy the collection as well so tomorrow we hope to add too. It has been a long time since we have been to the beach, I know for those of you in the throes of winter you are not feeling much of our pain, but we haven't and the collection seems much less because it has not been added too. So..if all are healthy, weather cooperates we should have a day at the beach. Wish you were here !

When you come...

A friend of mine said that there are three ways that you view a new culture, or that you view this Papuan culture specifically; scenery, machinery and finally relationally. I have found this true over and over again. Scenery..of course when you see men in all their war/celebration refinery you want to take a picture. When you first get off the plane you are taking pictures of anything and everyone you see.

After a while, the people are not so much part of the scenery but part of what can make living here more comfortable. They help in the home, around the house, at the store, they become part of the machinery of living here in Papua.

The next step is the hardest...interacting with the Papuans relationally. Would you want these men over for supper, hanging around your living room playing with your kids? There are two men we have built a relationship with here in Sentani. We interact with more but more often then not they either work for us or work for someone we know. These men do neither but one asks for money every time he comes over to visit, the other wants to practise his English. Both men are using us towards their own ends but you can predict who we like to have visit more often. We don't know the language yet but I find it hard to find any Papuan and Westerner just hanging out together. We minister to them...but do we relate with them? It is an interesting dynamic to watch, a love for the people of Papua but not a love that translates into an easy friendship.

Cross that bridge.....

I have always liked the phrase...we will have to cross that bridge when we get to it. What happens though if that bridge when we get there looks a bit like this one. What if the bridge we eventually have to cross is scarier then the road getting there? This bridge was a good 100 feet above the raging river and as you can see, some of the slats aren't quite joined. What happens when the bridge you have to eventually cross defines what you fear?
Getting older, getting sick, being insignificant, loosing loved ones, loosing your job etc, some bridges are amazingly scarier then the road leading up to it.
In our group of 19 students we had several who loved the challenge of these bridges and some who lay awake at night dreading when we would have to cross. Inevitably on that fateful day when we had to cross, as a group we applauded the daring, encouraged the fearful and all got across. The fearful amazed that they could and the daring wanting to do it again. I think what made the journey across successful was the company of both. Those who could encourage those who couldn't. Maybe thats the key, it isn't the condition of the bridge but the company of the travelers. It's all about community...the company you keep.
OK...I am waxing maybe not so eloquent. Maybe I realize that as a MK, I need to figure out my community and soon. I see a lot of bridges ahead.

Don't we all !!!

The cross is a great touch. Reading my past blog I wanted to reassure you that even though I may have issues and my angst may show show through once in awhile :)...I know you have your share of issues as well so I am in good company.
If you don't know by now, our intention is to return to the States after our one year here. So come June we will be packing up and heading back to the good ole...issue driven US of A. I have so many mixed emotions about the return. Other then missing friends and family, there is very little else I miss. I know though...that there will be much I miss here. I knew that this would be the gamble in coming here and even as the payment day gets closer I find myself trying to figure out how to make it less painful. I don't even know if that is possible. I am not the only one dealing with these issues. There are missionareis who after 15 years are returning for good to the States. Every senior graduating is also dealing with a permanent closure to a lifestyle and home they have known for most of their life. How do you begin to deal with that pain? They don't have a home they can go to in the States as I do or a community they are famililiar with. My leaving here is so much less then their leaving but we all have our own issues of leaving and dealing, we just don't all wear the T-shirt.

Sometimes its through the haze

Maybe its because we have been interior for a few weeks but reading the news lately in the US makes me want to never return to that soil ever. It seems to safe here for us Westerners..it is safe for us Westerners. Scott calls it the poormans Hawaii. We are protected, cacooned and sheltered from not only what happens in the big bad countries of the West but also from all the wrong that happens just at our doorstep. I went home for a bit today and talked with Ibu Senti, she is the wonderful lady who helps us survive here in Sentani...survive maybe not survive but makes life much more simple. She was telling me about another helper who was killed by her husband not too many days ago for something I could not quite understand. It is so easy to become so scared..scared of what may happen, scared of what can. The missionaries here in Sentani can so easly live so apart that we no longer live with...a haze that blinds us to the needs and at the same time shelters us from reality. I lay in bed last night so afraid of returning to the States. Fear cancels so much of my freedom. God lives in the States still doesn't He? Do let me know...I keep forgetting.

O....n the E..xposure

I have been trying to get some pics on but some of them happen like these...others just refuse. It is day 7 after OE and I still am trying to get over it. I still have this nasty cold that I was exposed to and Scott is trying to get over the 6 day fever he had to endure. From these pictures you can see how attached these boys became to him. He was called Imde by everyone in Eipomek as well as on other villages...everytime he walked outside you would hear a chorus of voices calling Imde and running to be where he was. Imde is pronounces (im-day) so if you have ever wanted to call Scott a different name then the one he has...Imde will work , he seems to have warmed up to that name.

We just had a teacher come back to class today from trying to get over the intensity of OE. It was hard work and nothing was simple to do. The nurse has been telling us to de-worm or de-ameoba ourselves from all the exposure we had to whatever was out there in the mud, water and air. This will be my last post on OE...not only becuase I can't think of any more OE titles but things are settling and there are other things I will want to write about. OE will continue to shadow my thoughts though so I am sure you will hear more, just not in such a condensed form. Thank you for your kind attention and always for your on-going interest.

O...nly in E...ipomek

This valley holds about 8-9 different villages with as many churches. The gospel has been there for nearly 50 years. The people are small, friendly, expressive and kind. It rains every day and everything is on an angle. Everywhere you walk is either up or down. The only flat area is the school playground and the airstrip. It is full of rocks, mud and water. There were more waterfalls that you could see then anywhere I have ever been. Like the Mbua it is nestled against a mountain so every day the weather rolls in and stays till it rains itself out. It grows great potatoes and has started growing coffee beans. When you walk anywhere you have company. There will be one or two holding your hand as long as you hold it back. Wherever you are there they are watching. I felt at times we were the circus in town and whatever we did was worth watching even if we were just watching back. They are tenacious tough workers and hands down can work harder then any of us would want to.
I know...I need to have some pictures but in my attempt to write while it is fresh I have yet to transfer them. Te-le-ve or telep is how you say hello, thank you, good morning and everything else that you can wrap up in a greeting. I had been so used to saying Wa in the Mbua that I kept saying Wa-Te-le-ve. I am sure this was confusing for them as it was for me. The sweet potatoes are the same as is the pig feast.
82 of us arrived and filled up the valley with hoopla. School stopped and kids watched every move we made. It became a bit disconcerting as we ate our meals on the porch of their school house as they watched us silently from the playground. When we had our services they would sit on the same porch and talk and listen and watch. I wish I knew what was going through their minds...we seemed a world apart singing the same gospel message that should have tied us together. Our cultures could not have been more different...I wonder what could have been our common ground.
There is one thing that we did in our Kids club that seemed to be the high light for them and scary painful for us. It was called the candy shirt. We had glued candy on a T-shirt and one brave highschooler would put it on and run for his life. Meanwhile every able bodied child, mother and eventually man would run after and attack. Pushing the poor soul down into the nearest mud pit and grab for every piece of candy. The battered student would get up with red scratch marks and a story to tell. Finally, we got the idea to put it on one of the national men...now that was a much better competition...he ran better, farther and they did not feel the need to push him down into the ground. He was also grabbing for as much candy as he could off his own shirt. It may have been our common ground but not one that was significant. Only in Eipomek.

O..ver the top E..xhaustion

It went something like this..."Guys ( my group of 18) we need to go to Imde to show the Jesus film, even if we can't spend the night there we should at least show up with the film." Everyone was thrilled with the idea and I was prepping them in how to be careful on the trail, when they should be back and what to do if..scenarios. It was then I realized that I needed to go with them because the group staying back was much more secure then the group leaving. If I had known before we went what the trail was like....we would not have gone. The first hour of the trek we went straight down. It was slippery and wet and if the nationals had not been there to hold us up we would have invented the first slippery slide made of rocks, mud and tangled underbursh. It took us an hour to manouver our way down to the river and then we had to start climbing up. Imde is right across from Lumdankna...the village we were camped in, right across the valley. We could see the smoke from their huts...so close but so very far away. I began to mutter under my breath at each turn of the path..."where is that stupid village". Every turn we were told it was just around the next...maybe they don't like telling the truth or maybe they think we are so worthless as hikers that they need to give us continual hope to keep us walking. We finally made the last turn and began to show the Jesus film...all the while I am thinking of alternatives to the same way back. I could not imagine climbing back up what we had so successfully slid down. It was not to be..there were no other viable alternatives and we had to go back the same way we came.
Sorry to tell you all this but I had reached my limit on the way back down. My legs were sore, my arms were sore...and I had not even started to go up from the going down. I started to cry. I was so tired and so overwhelmed with all that had transpired to that point that for the sheer weight of the stress of it all, my soul needed to weep its relief. Unbeknownst to me...the national people do not cry at all for anything. In fact...they will beat their children when they are crying until they stop so when they saw me begin to cry it got very quiet and very serious right away. One of the men ran up to one of my studetnts to let her know in Indonesian that the guru(teacher, me) was sick and weak and we needed to stop. They were far ahead of me and stopped to wait and see what was to be done...I came alongside and said as simply as I could. "I am exhausted..I am sore..I can't imagine climbing back up and the tears are just an expression of stress. Nothing to be concerned about...just my body relieving its stress in a natural way". The students understood...the nationals on the other hand put two strong men on either side of me and literally pulled me up the slipery slope. We made it...I made it and so had Scott. He had hiked to our village with a fever but wanted to be with us the last day. Imde had taken it out of me...but being with group 57 put it all back in.

O...rdinary E...xtra-ordinary students

If there is one thing I learned in the two weeks we spent together was that the students I had the priviledge to work with were extraordinary in all the ordinary things we had to do. We had to work hard for the first few days. Whether we were digging out a hydro pond, digging up a road, moving and redigging a bathroom, widening the airstrip, painting a house..whatever it was they just did it enthusiastically and diligently. The soil was full of rocks, the mud in the pond was very cold, the weather was rainy and cool..yet, they worked and they did not complain but made the best and worked their hardest. The only way to clean off was a cold river and by the end of the two weeks because of the rain, there wasn't very many of us who had clean clothes and some of us had a lot of damp clothes. Our small room became litteted with clothes trying to dry and on the off chance the sun came out, we put the clothes out just to have them rained on because we were too far away from the clothes line when the rain started. When we went to bed at night, we were all sleeping by 9 PM, we were all tired.
Because Scott got sick right when we were to go to the villages, I took his team with me to ours. Lumdankna was the name of the village and it was a good 4 hours hike away from Eipomek. So instead of having just 10 of us, we were there with 19. We had not worked together as a group and none of us knew what we were getting ourselves into. The last hour we walked in the rain and arrived in our village which was hanging on tightly to the side of a mountain. We settled in quickly into this tiny 2 room school house and got out bearings. This is where the students shone...I sat back and watched as each began to take the reponsabilyt to get water, fix the meals, organize the sleeping quarters, procure vegetables, set up the Jesus film etc. I told them at the start that this was our expreince, I was there to quide but they were there to lead..and they ran with it. 3/4 of us had a fever, the Senior leaders took on the task of taking temperatures and giving out ibuprofin, cleaning sores, arranging rest areas for the sick. Because we had to make sure our water was potable, we had to pump...but the pump was not working really well so we had to organize a rain water collection. Fortunately it rained all the time, so we pumped and collected sometimes far into the evening with attitudes that were encouraging, winsome and diligent. THEY WERE AMAZING !!! We became a community that depended on each other, encouraged each other, hung on th each other and as a result we became bold and daring even in our weakness. My team was number 7 and Scotts team was number 5 so we became 57, Heidi's 57 but really it had nothing to do with me...Heidi just sounds close to Heinz. In our group we had students from Singapore,Germany, Holland, Korea, South Africa, Mexico, Canada, New Zealand and the US. We had all the grades respresented and students who had just come to Papua to those who had lived here their whole life. We had the bold and the timid, outgoing and the introvert, we had the lazy and the industrious...we had ordinary students who became extraordinary in community. It was such a work of God and what was so great...we knew it as it was happening. ...Next time I will tell you about our trek to Imde...

O...the E..ndurance

It is early Sarutday morning and I feel like I am running underwater. I have this terrific cold and I am TIRED. OE....I wish I could let you in on the experience so over the next few days I will attempt to give you a perspective so that you can have some understanding. Let me tell you right away how much I appreciate several things. I LOVE our clean bathrooms. After 12 days of using a hole in the ground...there is something quite beautiful about the porcelain throne. Showers...water that flows over you that is warm ..rather then a cold spout of river water that gushes out. Level ground that you can just walk and not vigilently look to see where the next slippery rock is to grab and trip you. Dry ground that is not saturated with mud from an unending rain. Sheets and a bed, a chair, a table, clean and dry clothes. OE was simply hard work..not only physicially but mentally. Everything was more difficult to do, just going to bed with a flash light, trying to find a dry spot to change your clothes, finding the outhouse in the dark, in the rain...I am very tired and so very glad to have gone, but so very gald to be home.



Scott and I both had to deal with some major medical issues right off the bat, but then that was played out in every student there. I got an eye infection right away and had to deal with pain and blurry vision for about 4 days. Scott had the flu that had infected our students and had 6 days of a fever. He was too sick to go with us to the village for the first 2 days so I took his team...It was me and 18 studetns in a village 4 hours away from the main village of Eipomek. On the first night, of the 19 people there was only 6 of us who did not have a fever. That is the bad news...the good news is..that the suffereing was a great backdrop to the mercy and strength of God. This lesson we learned time and time again...when we have nothing to offer because of our frailty, God was glorified and He still can do His thing despite of our weakness. This was the amazing work of OE. I will post more...but I need to play catch up on the rest.