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...
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