We are like children
It’s 8 am, I’m out the door and I head up the hill to where some of my friends live. I see one lady I know named Oinike sitting with some of her kids visiting with another lady. I greet them and ask what they are up to. “We were cleaning the coffee garden and then this lady came by and we were visiting with her for a little.” “When you go back to cleaning coffee, can I come with you?” There is an awkward pause as they all look at each other. “I was just walking around to find some ladies to follow and learn from." I tell her. “Yeah, you can come,” she says. “Let’s go.” They immediately get up and we start walking on the road to their coffee garden (probably one of several). As we are walking, they teach me how to say, “we’re going to work.” This coffee garden is very close so we come up quickly, which is nice because some of their gardens you have to hike over mountains to get to. The young girl and little kids look so excited and they hand me one of their big knives. I watch what they are doing and do the same, although not nearly as good or as quickly as them. In the coffee garden there is also some other food planted so I’m cutting carefully so as not to ruin the planted food. Oinike comes up to me and says, “do it like this.” and just completely clears the ground perfectly super fast. She tells me not to worry about messing up the small food planted amongst the coffee. I think they can do it quickly and still work around the food, but she just didn’t want me to feel shame if and when I accidently cut one of them. As we work, I get a little better at it and I learn some new words and phrases in the language. I also asked questions about who does the work of cleaning the coffee - is it just women and kids or do men do it too? A young lady named Maylene while she was working found a rat and she caught it. Not only did I learn the word for rat, but I heard how they say, “Maylene caught a rat.” And in that I am starting to learn how they construct sentences, which is different than in English. It was something like, “Maylene, rat, one, she caught.” I work for a few hours and then I decide to go back home to review some of what I have learned before going back out again in the afternoon to practice speaking. One of the young girls says, “let’s go see my mom and then you can go.” So we go back to her house where her mom Oinike is cooking. “You sit down with the girls over there and wait for the food to be ready.” Right. They cook for their workers. Since I’m a learner and didn’t do a ton of work, I guess I didn’t expect her to feed me lunch. I told the young girls we could go back and work some more before the food was ready, but they refused. So we sat there and talked. They gave me some avocados to take home and when the food was ready, we ate and Oinike thanked me for my work in her coffee garden. After lunch, the young girls actually came back to my house with me and wanted to help me get some ground ready because they knew in a few days Luke and I were planting peanuts with another family. The Uruwa people seem very happy and excited to see us out and about, doing things with them and going places with them. This is our first week of full time language and culture learning. We have communicated many times to the people the 4 things we are here to do - learn your language and culture, teach you how to read and write in your language, teach God’s Word, and translate the Bible. So the first step is learning. We tell them we are like children. We don’t know anything and you need to teach us!
We pray that as we are in the role of a learner our lives would be effective witnesses for Jesus and that as we understand their beliefs and worldview, the Holy Spirit would give us insight into what to say and questions to pose that will challenge what they currently believe and get them to be interested in hearing God’s Word for themselves.
In our previous update, Luke wrote about the situation with the “disgruntled Uruwa man.” They both said sorry in front of the community soon after we moved into Uruwa. Luke feels like the issues were never truly addressed, they just said sorry and moved on. When things were discussed it was always in a vague way. There is a lot more for us to learn culturally and we pray that the future Uruwa church would be convicted by God’s Word and the Holy Spirit on how to live in unity and deal with conflicts as they arise and are dealt with appropriately. There are times to give grace and forgive, but there are other times where issues actually need to be addressed, not just in a vague way and then brushed under the rug. But that’s beyond us for now. So they said sorry and are “wanbel” meaning at peace with each other. We have seen him in the community since and it seems he is no longer angry.
Thanks for praying for us as to which dialect to learn. Although what we were really asking prayer for was which “neck” to learn, as they say in PNG. The dialect we live in and will be learning has 5 different “necks.” It would be something like if you had people from Minnesota, New York, Texas, California, and Missouri all living within 15 minutes of each other. They have different accents and even different words for some things, but they all speak the same language. As a team, we decided and communicated to the people that we are learning this dialect and it doesn’t matter which “neck” we learn. So we can learn from anyone instead of ostracizing many people if we were to only learn from people from one of the necks or areas in the community. In the future, we may have to pick one neck for the Bible to be translated in, but for now we are just learning this dialect from people of any neck.
Prayer and Praise
Praise the Lord for the people’s excitement to teach us their language and culture.
Please pray for continued opportunities for Christ to be on display.
Pray for God to help us learn this language and culture.
Pray for God’s guidance as we seek to build deep friendships and find a few main language helpers.
Please pray for our team to remain strong and unified in the Lord as we work together and make many decisions.
Pray for the Brendles as they just left to head back to the US for their first home assignment after being in PNG for 3 years. They will be seeing family, visiting churches and other individuals, and are expecting a baby as well, they will be gone for about 9 months or so.
Please pray that my Australian visa would be approved. We are headed there for some medical appointments and a break in a few weeks. Luke’s was approved immediately and after a few weeks, mine has yet to be approved.
Pray for the continued strengthening of our walks with the Lord as well as our marriage.
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