Lindy the Awesome and My Feelings on Our New Plans

Let me start out this blog post with a shout out to Lindy.
Lindy was my internship leader when I came to Papua New Guinea in 2010. We had mutual friends in Dallas prior to that, so while we ourselves didn't really hang out, sometimes Lindy was in the group that I was hanging out in, and we got to become friendly acquaintances through that.
Then we went on our internship. And Lindy gave out lots of wisdom on that trip, some of it being life-changing.

Well, I've been in town for only three weeks now and she's already at it again. One nugget, I'm pretty sure, is also life-changing, but it's too soon to say that definitively. I'll give it some time. And two are year changing at the least. Those I'll share here.

To say that I was displeased about our delay to allocate until October would be dull. In a more poetic fashion, it made me want to beat my head against the brick wall barricading my path in an obviously futile attempt to break through it.
10 years, my husband and I have been on this road. 10 years from the moment we decided we wanted to go to the mission field to the moment that we moved internationally. And there were many brick walls in that time frame. But we're finally here!!! And behold! Another brick wall!!  
And there's no source of my frustration. I can't be mad at any one because it's not anyone's fault. It's just... the way it is.

Hanging out. In town. Until October. AT THE EARLIEST!
GAH!
Patience isn't one of those things I was naturally blessed with.

But Lindy, in our Bible Study, pointed out our parallel to the nation of Israel after they crossed the Jordan into the Promised Land. That land wasn't yet theirs but they had finally arrived. They were in the Promised Land, but they weren't ready to settle.
And that's totally where we are. I felt called to PNG. Jacob felt called to missions where ever that may be. (We just figured it would be better if we stuck together, being married and all, so he came to PNG with me.) And after 10 years, which I'm just going to say, is a noteworthy fraction of the 40 years Israel spent in the wilderness. I mean, we're comparing the story of a Nation to the story of a Person, so... percentage-wise, I might be beating Israel in my time of wandering (fund-raising).
And now we're here! But not really. I mean, our feet are on Papuan soil, but we have no home here. Our purpose for being here isn't happening right now. We have to wait for that.

But when Israel crossed the Jordan, they weren't all about busting down some brick walls (the walls of Jericho) and rushing the process.
No. Step one was gathering 12 stones to stand as a monument to the work of the Lord in their passage across the Jordan. Step two was renewing their covenant to the Lord.

Now. The nation of Israel isn't really who you want to be modeling your life after. As many times as the Lord considered smiting all of them (and actually did smite large fractions of them from time to time), we need to take the actions of the nation of Israel with a grain of salt. 
So why did they stop and remember rather than bust down some walls? Because the Lord told them to. 
Ok. That's a pretty good reason. Whenever the nation of Israel does what the Lord tells them to, we should follow suite, until the Lord gets mad at them again, and then we should evaluate what they did wrong. 

Now, the other thing Lindy said in an entirely different setting, is that she was really glad I was here. That there are reasons for all of God's timings and, that while she knew it was beyond frustrating for me, she herself was glad I would be in town for a while for self serving reasons. Now, I don't really get this, because I'm not the one spouting off tons of edifying wisdom all over the place. But it is encouraging to hear that she feels like there's a reason for me to be here in town longer. It is encouraging to know that while this isn't the purpose that I foresaw for my first year and I trained for and I prayed for, there is purpose for my time in town. And maybe it's only to hang out with Lindy. And if so, that's totally ok. Because Lindy is pretty cool and she influences me to be a better person.
Maybe there's another purpose for my being here that hasn't been revealed to me.
Maybe it will never be revealed to me!

And that's ok. Because I'm the Lord's servant.
And it's not the servant's place to know the business of his Master.

Sometimes He does decide to reveal His business to His servants, and it's so helpful in understanding, it's so encouraging, and I'm thankful for Lindy pointing out at least one purpose for my perceived delay (which is really just God's timing).

But it's the occasions that He does reveal His business that should give us faith to continue obeying Him even when He doesn't, just as His provision in the past should give us the faith to believe He will provide for us in the now and the future.

 
So now it's our turn to follow Israel's example. To not rush forward but to remember this time and all the times before that the Lord has provided for us a way to complete the job we believe He has called us to. To become a part of a larger story of Bible Translation across the world, which is in turn part of a larger story of spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ. A part of the larger story of God wooing His creation back to Him.
And to pay careful attention to what God is telling us to do, so we are able to fill every purpose the Lord has for our time here.

Pray for us. For wisdom in choosing a language group, for patience in the meantime, and for attentiveness to God's direction.
And pray for Lindy. Because she's awesome. Pray for her to be encouraged and to receive some great wisdom's that change her life for the better in greater quantities than she gives them.

Looking Ahead

What the Plan Was

Our goal upon arriving in to town was to figure out which language group we would be working with long-term prior to leaving for Australia.

There are presently two language groups on the table. We will visit both language groups and spend time praying about whether or not God would like us to work with these people. If both groups are a no-go, then the next step will be survey work to see what other language groups are in need of translation in the Madang and Sepik Provinces of Papua New Guinea.

Why That's Not Going Down

However, due to the nature of the beast, it doesn't seem possible to begin visiting either of these places before we leave for Australia.

In the window of time we have after the Annual General Meeting (AGM) and before we leave for Australia, there are no helicopters that will be traveling in one of the areas, which would necessitate commissioning a helicopter, about $5000 round-trip. This is a hefty expense that gives us pause, especially coming into country under-funded.

The area around the other language group's village where our translators live is very rough hiking, made treacherous and arduous by the rainy season. One translator was delayed coming into town as a two hour hike from his village to the road took him two days.
While we're praying for other ways in to visit these places, the answer to our prayers maybe a command to be patient.

What We're Doing Now

In the meantime, we'll be working as any other town based team, serving in what capacities we can for the 17 different language groups that are considered Active with PBTPNG.

When we go to visit one language group, we'll be doing village checking (reading the current version with people who haven't worked on the translation to check for accuracy, clarity, and naturalness). Presently, I'm working on researching best practices for Village Checking, devising a plan for our checking session, and developing an extensive list of questions for the segments we plan to check.
After that, I'll probably work with teams of translators who need help when they come into town to work on their translations.
Jacob is working on morphophonemics for a suffix in that same language. When they add an ending to a word, they do it inconsistently, and Jacob is trying to figure out a rule for what's happening and how to make it consistently handled. He's also been developing job descriptions for some of our national literacy workers, which is very important because our work visas are contingent on us training and equipping nationals for employment. (That's how the government protects the jobs of nationals!)

After that he hopes to help said language group with some literacy work that they haven't been able to do for lack of literacy specialists in country. Jacob fills that void!

The Trip to Australia

We'll head off to Australia February 20th, my 34th week of pregnancy, the last minute in which we can travel internationally. Our medical visa is good for 3 months, so hopefully the baby won't delay and we won't have problems getting the baby's emergency passport and visa for travel to PNG!

Back in Country

When we return (May 20th), hopefully we'll already have a plan in place (devised while we were in Australia) to go visiting the two languages. And then it's a matter of getting out to visit both places and deciding if one of them is where we'll be allocating. If not, we'll start survey work. If so, however, we'll get started on preparing ourselves to allocate. This means getting our stove ($215), a solar panel system ($2,500), a water tank ($1,700), etc. and all the little pieces we need to set that up, figuring out how much food we'll need to bring and how we'll prep it for longevity (canning vs dehydrating), and starting a little bit of language learning as there are speakers of both languages who live in town!

Allocating at Long Last

Our target date to allocate is October (though needing to do survey work could easily throw that off schedule.)

This timeline also ensures that the new baby is 6 months old before allocating, giving the baby a chance to get a measles vaccine before we leave for the village.

So the goal is to spend 3 months in the village by the end of 2016! Oct, Nov, Dec!

5 Best Things About Living in the Village

Lest you think that our arrival in town was all town-loving and village-hating, let me share the 5, kinda big, things that we really loved about the village life:

1. Relationship Building
   It was so so easy to get to know people in the village. Town is much like home in that respect. You come to know only the people at the places you go. Instead of pulling into a garage at the end of the day, we pull into our gated compound laced with barbed wire. Everyone's house is like this (though some people do walk). But coming to know your neighbors is hard.
   In the village, there is no barbed wire, because it's way harder to be a criminal when everyone knows everything. In the village, everybody walks. Everybody stops by and visits. There are some people you spend more quality time with than others, but you don't need to seek an opportunity to build relationships, you just need to sit on your porch.
2. The Simple Pace
   Even when work was to be done in the village, it was a simple pace. Work 15 minutes tilling the earth and then take a break, drink a kulau (green coconut; or perhaps coconut water would be a more explanatory translation), eat some roasting taro kongkong (type of potato), then work another 15 minutes.
   There was no office to be at. No clock to worry about. They told time by sun (though, gauging by my watch, they were most often wrong…)
   The beginning of things was marked by hitting a garamut (a hollowed hunk of tree, that sounded like a deep rich drum resounding through the jungle). That was the signal to come and, when the most important participants arrived, that's when they would begin.
3. The Community
   If someone had a large task before them, like sewing morota for an entire house, their whole family (which is often the entire village) would come to help make the work light.
   James was cared for by the entire village. Everyone loved the white baby who would eat anything. It was pretty much free babysitting all the time. 
4. Spending Time Outside
   James loves loves loves to be outside. And, in the village, outside is where you spend your day, unlike town which has us in the house or in the office. (We live on the second floor and there's no baby rail on the stairs.)
   The scenery was gorgeous, the wind was lovely, and there were a plethora of animal to enthrall James.
5. Price of Living
   Sure, we brought a pretty penny's worth of food to the village but there was no rent, electric bills, or water bills! (except for what you give to the nationals who haul your water for you as a thank you…) The people who live in the village have it even better with gardens which significantly reduces their grocery budget, cooking over a fire eliminating gas bills. And there's pretty much no reason for insurance for the nationals.

We are so very excited to move out to our village allocation and add the work of translation and literacy to the best things list!

3 Hardest Things about Our Village Living with POC

First, let me take the time to distinguish between living in the village and Village Living with POC. The Pacific Orientation Course is a training course for survival and success in the Melanesian region. This is culminated in a "practical exam", where they drop you off in the village for a month, and hope to hear you're alive at the end of it. (Just kidding, they care more than I made that sound.)
But for a month stay, we were hardly set up in the Hyatt.
But it wasn't so much the quality of the accommodations (although, I have already mentioned the house layout) as it was the nature of the beast when considering the limited cargo we were advised to bring. When we get to bring what we want (/can afford) to bring, these problems likely won't be problems and we'll have to generate a new list!

1. Limited Resources
   I touched on this in The Top 10 Things I Really Really Appreciate about Town Living. But there were three killer limited resources: water, power, and internet.
• James' "sister" would haul water for us. We had three water buckets: 7, 5, and 3 gallons. We could normally get by for three days, being very conservative. But on the third day… Hopefully Jenipa hadn't gone to the garden or hopefully it had rained the night before and there was water in the missionary of yesteryear's tank. And our Berkey water filter, while amazing, filtered very very slowly. So if we filled up the head tank before we went to bed, and kept topping up throughout the day, we were normally fine. But woe to us if we had forgotten. And added woe if another family came a-visiting on such a day and asked for water. There were hours where Jacob and I sat in thirst, having given the last of the clean water to James, waiting for the enough drips to fall from the filter to satisfy our thirst. It was an oversight we didn't make often. It was the sort of thing where if an hour after going to bed, we realized we had forgotten, we would get up and get it sorted.
• We had a small solar charger. When it's battery was full, it could charge my cell phone from dead for a few days in a row before running out. But even on the sunniest day, it could get enough solar power to replace what we used each day. So going out fully charged, it wouldn't be many days before it was dead and so were all of our phones. But my phone is my camera, so even on flight mode, it was anxious making to have it just dead. The phones are also our alarms. Our malaria medicine day got pushed back a day because we woke up and realized that with the phone's dead, we had forgotten. (We found out about half way into our stay that a friend had an impressive solar panel system and he would recharge our battery when we got low.)
• In times when power wasn't scarce, internet was. We occasionally got better than 2G data. Guys. No internet is better than slow, unreliable internet. Shrugging and saying, "Better find something else to waste my life on" is way lass frustrating than "YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO WORK SO DO IT!" Though I think I was still in the village when I discovered that Instagram uploads pictures way better than Facebook. That was happy making.
   
2. Brevity of Time
   I am problem solver, not a wallower. At 12, I read Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind, and one thing that always stuck with me is the wizened old grandfather character's admonition, "Focus on the solution. Not the problem."
   So there were a bunch of little "problems".
• My bed was on the floor so I had to sit up, tuck myself under the mosquito net, then hoist my pregnant belly into a squat before standing up from a squat. Luckily we're only talking 2nd trimester here.
• The walk down to the water was really too ridiculous for me to manage, so I would take a cup bath in my room. Towering over a 2 foot wide basin and hoping to catch the water I pour over my head in it was ridiculous.
• The place was a chaotic mess because there were no shelves, no places to put things.

Little problems with obvious and simple solutions, but we were only there for a month. Which was enough time to be bothered but not enough time to warrant fixing the problems. And that was the hardest thing of them all: having a solution to a problem but not being able to execute the solution because it wasn't worth it.

3. The Proximity of the Rents
   No offense to all the parents out there, but we all know that there's a brief window of time when it's cool to crash with your folks. That window ends at 16 and you have to endure at least until 18. And moving back in is almost always really difficult. They're just there. All the time. And you have to interact with them. And coordinate life together. Instead of just being autonomous.
   Our wasfemili lived 10 feet from our front door. Given that our room was an oven, and our veranda was a veranda, and our hauskuk's door was outside our house, we pretty much lived in the same house. Just a very drafty house that had a tendency to rain between our living quarters and theirs.
   But they were right there. All the time. We couldn't walk to the hauskuk without having to exchange pleasantries. We couldn't go to the outhouse without having to exchange pleasantries. And sometimes, some days, you don't want to deal with that. I might even be so bold to say most days, you don't want to deal with small talk en route to the loo.
    

So when we get out to the village where we'll be living (TBD), we'll bring a water tank of some caliber, a solar panel system powerful enough to manage our power needs, a bed frame, that plastic thingy you line a shower with, and stuff for shelves, and we'll have more than enough time to solve problems.
In fact, I've told Jacob, I might be that person who slowly edifies and perfects a house until at the end of our term, we're like, "why bother with an Americanized house? Let's just lay a concrete foundation and call it a day." As long as the bones of the house are quality, it will really take no effort to tear down the woven bamboo walls when I tire of them and replace them with paneling.

We'll have to see how feasible that is, but I certainly like the idea!

Stay Tuned for the 5 Best Things about Village Living!

Top 10 Things I Really Really Appreciate About Town Living

As I was reading over my last effort at a blog post for typos, I was bored senseless. Which may just be because it's old hat to me now, but I'm going to go with, No, For Real, This is Boring. And not post that.

We'll jump that ship of Things I Learned in the Village For My Future Village Living, because really it's just housekeeping stuff, and, unless you care, no one cares.

So moving on!

Top 10 Things I Really Really Appreciate About Town Living

Not all of the following are untrue of village living, per se. But they were things that we were without during the village living portion POC (and many of them POC, too!) Hopefully, #8, 6, and 2, at very least, we will have in our village living time when we allocate.  But in this moment, right now, these are the things I'm appreciating.

10. Microwaving Rice
    We had a single burner kerosene stove. So it was no joy to occupy it with a pot of rice, more than doubling the time we would spend cooking our meal in the already too hot hauskuk. 10 minutes in the microwave and it's perfect every time and waiting for us to hurry up with the entrée already!

9. Driving
   Can I even express how much having a car makes me feel like an adult? PBT has lent us one of their fleet for driving around town while we're here and it is sooo nice to grab my car keys and walk out the door when I want to go somewhere.

8. 2 Bedrooms
   This extends past village living, past POC, past our three months in Dallas, to the entirety of James' life. With the exception of a couple homes that we briefly stayed at on our PD trip across the world, James slept in our room. There was always worry of waking him. And now, we keep it down, of course, but there's no need for silence.

7. Stores
   You know when you're like, "I would really like _________" so you jump in your car and head to the store and grab what you want and go home? Yeah, in the village that doesn't happen so easily. Now there's no Walmart here and I fiercely miss being able to stop at one store and get everything I need and go home, but compared to village living, many things I need are just down the road.

6. Power
   We had an ill-equipped solar charger in the village. It could only get enough power from the sun each day to charge my phone to 60%, though it's battery was capable of doing much better. Constantly fretting about whether my phone was in flight-mode or off and if I would have enough power for those Kodak moments… It was stressful. I'm not used to limited resources. (Even at POC, we had one outlet and one plug adapter.)

5. Free WI-FI
   We got internet in the village and at some points it was even faster than the office internet, but the office internet is free and when you're paying for the mb (THE MEGABYTE! For comparison, cell phone plans are sold by the gigabyte (1024mb in a 1gb) and home internet plans are sold on the speed with UNLIMITED INTERNET! We don't have that) free is so so nice.

4. Indoor Plumbing
   When your options are going to a spider infested outhouse down a muddy hill or using a bucket which then needs to be emptied in said outhouse, a toilet really does look like a porcelain throne.  Also not having to worry about the water, that was hauled a 10 minute hike uphill, running out when washing dishes or drinking is really nice.

3. Morning Sounds
   The ocean is two blocks from our house. I can see it through the palm trees on days when it doesn't perfectly match the sky. …I guess even then I can still see the ocean, I just can't discern the ocean… But the sounds of the waves crashing on the rocky shore wafts through the silence to greet us in the morning and it's much more lovely to wake to than roosters, who do NOT say cock-a-doodle-doo, but scream like a woman being murdered right outside (and many times under) your house.

2. Cushions
   This was another thing that in the village, we were like, "we cannot leave for village living again without:" cushions. I mean, I can sit on the ground or a wooden bench as well as the next guy, but not all day every day forever. I would wake up in the morning, sit on a trunk to drink coffee, and moan at the soreness that had not alleviated during the night. Here, the cushions aren't great. I can still get sore. But comparatively?  Really really appreciated.

1. The Refrigerator
   Guys. Friends. Supporters. Loved Ones. I can not tell you. how many times. in the village. I have said. "Everything would be so much easier to handle if I just had ice." I mean, really, village life wasn't overwhelmingly rough but there were some key stressors and if I could just have some cold water, or Pepsi, or Mio enhanced water, or whatever, I could really say, "I hear you annoying me right now, but I really don't have time to focus my attention on you because right now I have an ice cold glass of water that demands my appreciation."
   Pulling a pitcher of water out of the refrigerator here...
   Guys.
   Friends.
   Supporters.
   Loved Ones.
   I had forgotten water could be that cold.
    

Village Time in Wasabamal - The Hauskuk

How many times have I sat down to write a blog about our month in the village?
It's just so broad of a topic.
It's like when I come visit a place and ask what's new.
"Oh. Same old, same old."
And it's pretty unlikely that nothing new has happened in anyone's life since I last saw them, which is often a solid chunk of time. But the question is so broad that, unless something really major happened, it just seems like there's nothing worth reporting.
But I hate it when people answer that way. Because it ends the conversation. So I'm going to try.
…
…..
Ok here goes!

My main objective going out to the village was different than most of the students at POC*. While they were going out to get a taste of how people lived in the village on the day-to-day, we had already seen and experienced that during our time in Anguna in 2012 and my time in Samban in 2010. So our objective was to figure out how we were going to live life in the village on the day-to-day.


So the first thing, I guess, is house layout. When you're doing tiny living, layout and organization is key. Our space was about 350 sqft. The hauskuk (kitchen) had a dirt floor, where the rest of the house was on stilts. A window from the "veranda" (or room with windows, as I would call it) had a window opening into the hauskuk (which was very nice for passing things up and down!) That was the only window in the hauskuk. And it had a copper roof. So, needless to say, it was hot. But I digress. The hauskuk had a door that had been repurposed into a table. Which would have been enough space if we didn't need to set our stove and "sink" (two wash basins) somewhere. So we prepped at the table on the veranda and passed things up and down through the conveniently located window. But then Jacob was in the hauskuk manning the fire and washing dishes while I prepped the food. Well, this isn't really culturally appropriate behavior for a man.

Yes, yes, I hear your outrage and indignation at outdated gender roles. Yay feminism, boo dominance in the name of tradition. But this actually ends up being a mysticism issue. My sources tell me that Papua New Guineans believe in something that they do not call, but we would, juju. And a man engaging in woman's work is bad juju. And if you try to do things with a man with bad juju, then those things won't go well. So people may like Jacob just fine and recognize that he's serving his wife and that's all fine and good, but as long as they believe in juju, Jacob will be ostracized from various things. And that's not really a good position for a missionary to be in. So we'll combat juju when we can do it in ways that won't jeopardize our ability to share the Gospel, and where we can't, we'll trust God to as He transforms lives in Papua New Guinea.

Observe the inlaid basins

So we need a better hauskuk layout for sure, to maximize square footage.
An area for prep.
We'll bring out a more real stove ($215), so it won't demand counter-space (and to have more than one burner, and an oven! And not have to stand on tip-toes to look into the pot! Oh, I'm swooning!)
Windows. It was so hot, it was miserable to be in there.  
A spot to have my wash basins in the counter, you know, like a real sink.
And a pantry sized rat box (a box that rats have trouble getting into (rats can chew through concrete. You can't really keep them out but you can make it more of a hassle than it's worth).
....



Bam! Look at that! That's a decent sized blog post! With a description of our time in the village, a cultural tidbit, and a glance at the future?! Nailed it!
Let's see if I can pull off a continuation of at least equal quality tomorrow!



*Pacific Orientation Course - The three month training course on how to survive in the jungle that was concluded with a month stay in the village and just successfully completed by us!

Missing A First World Christmas

I'm going to say words. Because they're true and honest. Not because I have regrets. But because I have feelings.

One of the hardest things right now in this Holiday Season so far from home is that I'm a first world girl in a third world country. (I know. You thought I was going to say family. But really, I had braced myself for that. That was an expected struggle. This caught me unaware.)

I miss the hustle and the bustle of the holiday season. I miss putting on my pea coat and scarf and boots (oh! How I miss boots!) and going to the mall, all decked in Christmas cheer with seasonal music playing and people with parcels talking and laughing as they flit from store to store. I miss going to Starbucks and getting my red cup, regardless of what design is or isn't on it. A triple grande peppermint white mocha. And I miss looking through their ornaments and mugs and watching people pass by the glass windows while my coffee is being hand crafted. And I miss following whoever I'm with as they work on their Christmas shopping, because, let's not play, my income level was on the low side, so I wasn't actually involved in much consumerism myself.

And I miss finding the exact something I was looking at in the mall (but was a little too expensive to buy for myself, especially during the holidays) under the tree, because the person I was following saw me eyeing it and thought to get it for me.

I miss the spirit of giving that's found back home with all the atmosphere of the season mixed in. (Not that there's not a spirit here! These are some of the most generous people I've ever met, but the atmosphere is a little lacking…)

I know that the spirit of giving can become a little corrupted with the spirit of receiving and consumerism, but for a lot of people, I think that the "pagan" aspects of Christmas still have Christ at the heart, reflecting His gift to the world in our gifts to each other.

And I miss the whole shebang.

Here, stores have some garland and a garishly decorated tree. Sometimes Christmas music is playing but often it's a bit odd… Like the mash-up of Hark the Herald Angels and Dame La Gasolina we heard the other day. And it's really no weather for a pea coat and the lightest of scarves would be stifling. The other day I thought it felt like a nice spring day and looked to see it was 90*. 

How I miss all the little things "The Season" entails…

But even while I get tucked into bed with visions of lattes dancing in my head, I know that the reason for the season is Christ coming to the world for everyone. Even these people with tacky Christmas trees and an utter lack of winter here in Papua New Guinea. And we're here, my little family of 3 1/2, to help see transformed lives, through translation, literacy, and incarnational living. To help those far from God, to help the skin Christians (nominal Christians), and to help those with the cargo cult mentality (a mix between consumerism and the prosperity gospel) be raised to true life through the most precious gift of all: Christ Jesus.

So I'll download a Christmas music playlist, and decorate my house as pretty as I can, and watch Christmas movies, all shamelessly in the name of teaching my son American culture so he won't return to America as a bushkanaka (jungle hillbilly). And while I'm relishing in the semblance of Christmas culture I have cultivated here, I'll busy myself with work to help bring the Good News of the birth of Christ to the people here in their heart language, so that it can truly change their hearts.  

All of our work is done through generous people who are willing to give a bit of their income to the Bible-less of Papua New Guinea. If you would like to extend the Spirit of Giving this Holiday season to this ministry, whether through a special gift or a monthly commitment, you can check out our giving page or email me personally and I can let you know how you can help! Thank you! 

A day in the village

At about 5:30am, my eyes pop open. Usually this is due to the sounds of the village up and about around us. Light shines through the holes in the woven bamboo walls, illuminating the room like a disco ball. It isn't long before James wakes up, talking to himself. I can just make out his silhouette through the gossamer of my mosquito net, his blue mosquito net, and the mesh of the pack and play. He's sitting up, playing with his octopus.
Jacob and I untuck the mosquito net on our respective sides from between the 4" foam mattress and the linoleum sheet we had laid out to keep the bugs from crawling up between the rustic planks of our hardwood floor and into our mattress. I change out of my pj shorts and into a skirt before tossing the shorts under the protection of my mosquito net so a spider doesn't take up residence in them during the day.
Jacob is changing James' diaper. This temporary setting isn't ideal for washing cloth diapers, so we switched to disposables, using an empty pocket diaper as a cover to protect it from the grueling wear and tear James inflicts on it.
I make James a bottle. He's weaned but still taking formula and has made the switch to cold formula, which is lovely because its a hassle to get a fire or the stove going each time he's hungry.
The Berkey filter The Rising gave us provides "indoor plumbing" (as long as we keep refilling it with enough time for it to filter). I lay James on his back on the linoleum we have laid out in our living room (? They call it a veranda but with three windows and a door, it seems like a room to me) and give him his bottle.
Jacob takes a days worth of diapers and a bucket out to the outhouse to dump before returning to fiddle with the kerosene stove and get coffee started.
I tidy upstairs. After night falls, there's not enough light to bother with prep dishes or personal dishes that lasted past dusk. I pass dirty dishes through the window whose left half opens into the hauskuk, the room designated for cooking and washing dishes. There really isn't enough room to do prep as well so I do that upstairs and pass things ready for the heat down through the window.
We enjoy our coffee upstairs with James running around playing. The wasfamili is happier when he's not playing outside and its nice to have a good excuse to have some time for ourselves.
At some point, we're brought breakfast from our wasfamili's fire. The reciprocity culture here says we should bring something back but we don't make breakfast so we'll worry about that at lunch.
When James gets fussy, we go outside to let him play in the dirt. It's usually 7:30-8ish. Then its time to decide what to do with the day. Usually its too late to join people who are planning on trekking a long distance, which I'm ok with.
Sometimes we go to where the men are making thatching and Jacob helps.
Once we went to a garden close by and helped with planting yams. Today there's supposed to be a reconciliation feast we want to see. Sometimes its just a day to catch up on dishes or laundry or on writing.
Around 9, James starts to get sleepy. I'll put him in a bilum and give him a bottle to soothe him into sleep. The women normally walk the babies around until they sleep but I'm not strong enough to walk around with this chunky kid.
If we're at the house, we'll hang him in our living room, right in the center of the cross breeze. Jacob will pick up all his toys and I'll sweep the room with a bush broom that looks like a witchs broom without the stick.
If we're out, we'll find a tree or post to hang him on and shade him with an umbrella if need be.
His morning nap normally doesn't last an hour.
Before you know it, it's time to start lunch. I go upstairs to prep and let James run around with his toys.
Jacob goes down to make sure at least the dishes we need for this meal are clean and he passes me kitchen utensils as I need them.
We normally cook an abundance, enough for ourselves, our wasfamili, people we want to develop relationships with, and anyone who's around when we come out to share.
Cooking so much over a single burner means we're often in a race to finish before James afternoon nap, anywhere between 12:30-2. If James' wassister is at the house, she'll often come and take him, entertaining him while we cook. If we don't finish cooking by his nap time, we won't be able to rest while he sleeps.
After James' afternoon nap, normally between an hour or two, our son is lost to us as all the village children are back at their homes and just love to hold a white baby.
We try to start thinking about dinner at 4. If we're not finished by 6, well find ourselves cooking in the dark. Our lanterns are less than impressive and we don't have a big enough solar charger to use our phones on something as frivolous as light.
5:30 is an excellent time to go visiting and if dinner is done we can bring food to our friends, thus building relationships.
6:30-7 James starts getting tired and reappears out of the night. We give him a bottle before changing his diaper and putting him to bed.
Now if we were good, we would go outside and talk around the fire from 7-10. But normally we're exhausted, the heat of the day sapping all our energy, with the heat radiating down from the tin roof making it impossible to sleep that portion of the day away. And normally, as early as 7, the only people around the fire are our wasfamili who aren't the most stimulating conversationalists.
So we sit inside, enjoying some time just us. Catching up on writing if need be. When we get too sore sitting on wooden stools or the wooden floor, we move into the bedroom.


After getting tucked back into our mosquito net, we put a handful of skittles between us and enjoy a snack while chatting before we turn in for the night.

Christmas Wish List

Christmas Wish List
I guess it's starting to near that time. The questions been asked: What would you like in a Christmas Care Package?
Which is kinda a confusing question, because I'm thinking, "Care package items? Or Christmas items?" I think there's a nuance there...
So I made a list that includes both!


Snyders Pretzels Original
French's Yellow Mustard
Starbucks Latte Via (Jacob likes mochas, I like white mochas, cinnamon dolce, and peppermint mocha, specifically peppermint white mocha but i don't think they make the via form of that.)
Hot Cocoa mix (Jacob likes dark chocolates. I like milk and white chocolate. We both like mint, sea salt, orange, raspberry )
Silica gel packets (You can buy these but even the ones that come in bags or shoeboxes are nice to toss in our spice jars to keep the moisture out.)
Taco seasoning (we normally buy it in 23oz containers because we use so much of it)
Italian seasoning
Grill shakers Garlic Seasoning (we can normally only find this at Sprouts).
Sleepytime Vanilla Tea
Bavarian Blackberry Tea (We think the brand is Lipton..?)
Goldfish for James
Peppermints (rounds, stirring sticks, canes, we're not picky)
Orange extract
Peppermint extract
Candy (Reese cups, skittle, starburst)
Beef jerky (peppered or teriyaki) (If you claim this on the mailing slip or leave it where it can be seen in an inspection, it will be stolen. Everybody loves beef jerky)


Tortilla press
LED battery operated mounted light (bonus points for a remote)
Latest seasons of Once Upon a Time, Forever, Bones, Arrow, Flash, Gotham, the 100 (I don't know how overlap could be avoided except by sending iTunes cards)
Kindle gift cards are always nice. Jacob wants to start getting James some Dr. Suess books
And as always, coffee mugs are loved. (the wish list can be found on my Pinterest. I would post a link but internet in the bush is finnicky... My username is ElizabethVahey! ...i think)


You can send packages to
Pioneer Bible Translators
C/o Jacob and Elizabeth Smith
Box 997
Madang 511
Papua New Guinea


It takes about a month for packages to arrive. Possibly longer as people start going on holiday.


These packages will receive a fair deal of rough treatment so go overboard on the packing tape so everything makes it. Once the integrity of the box is compromised, it's all downhill from there.


Thank you all so much for taking care of us. Through financial gifts, prayer support,  and even your likes and comments on Facebook that remind us that we're not alone, we really appreciate you.

A Liklik Haus Story

It's said that missionaries have a relentless thing about bathroom stories. That and weird foods. And it's probably because bathroom stories are the most traumatic stories of all.  

But this is a bathroom story.

And it has to do with things that would lead someone to need to use the facilities.

As hilarious as this story is, if you don't want to read about that, by all means! Skip this article!

Just please don't be offended if this article mentions some things that aren't the most ladylike to be discussing in a public setting. I'm a missionary now and missionaries have a slew of bathroom stories.

This was our second overnight stay with our local wasfamili*. We had gone to bed about an hour before and I woke needing to use the liklik haus (the outhouse). But tired, and not particularly eager to get out of bed, I decided to ignore this feeling as long as I could. 

Well, not much time had passed when James woke up screaming and wouldn't settle back down. It's always hard to get him to nurse in such a new setting so I figured I had better try again. But first the restroom. So I had Jacob go to grab the screaming baby as I went out to the liklik haus. But the front door was locked.

Now as a safety precaution, locks here need a key on both sides. Too often screenwire is a main building material of a door or the window/wall right next to it, making it too easy for someone to cut through the screen and turn the lock from the inside.

But the door was locked. And apparently our wasfamili had gone visiting.

The baby is screaming. Jacob is exasperated, both by the baby and his inability to solve this problem. And my bladder is about to explode.

So I do the only think I can think to do. I take the small peanut butter jar we had reused to bring them milk powder for our evening tea, pour the rest of the powder into a milk powder jar she already had. And left Jacob and James in the living room while I returned to the bedroom.

Guys, the jar was nearly too small.

The second I had capped that lid and thrown the whole jar into the wetbag we brought for dirty diapers, our wasfamili walked up the stairs and unlocked the door.

Jacob gave James to me to nurse and went out to use the liklik haus.

We threw the whole jar in the liklik haus later. I deemed it unclean and would not want to reuse it again.

When we lay in bed, with the baby finally asleep and all bladders empty, Jacob let out a sigh. 

"What's wrong?"

"This is rough."

"Why?"

"Because the baby's crying! And you had to urinate in a jar!"

I laughed. "But it's over now! James is asleep. The deed is done. There's no reason to continue to be upset about what's done. It's probably never going to happen again."

I think we have a choice in this life. We can harp on things done and past and let them ruin our moods and our next moments or we can accept that not every moment in this life isn't perfect and move on. Focus on the good things instead and that will come out in your attitude and life. **

"... whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things." Phil 4:8 NIV  

*a wasfamili, literally "watch family", is the non-biological family who looks out for us. In the village, all interactions are done with a strong emphasis on "how are you related to me?" Consequently, throwing people who are related to no one is very perplexing for the village. To overcome this, we'll be "adopted" into a family. During our time at POC, we had a wasfamili who we "practiced interacting with". In our POC village living, we'll have another wasfamili who will take care of us for that month. When we allocate to the village we will be working long-term, we will likewise have a wasfamili there.

**This is not to shame Jacob as his true source of anxiety was that I was upset (or he thought I was). He's such a good husband to be bothered that I'm bothered and try to empathize with me if he can't fix it. 

Leaving for the Village

On Wednesday, we'll be leaving for the village living portion of the Pacific Orientation Course. This is the practical.

Over the past two months, we've been having lessons in Tok Pisin, the trade language here. We've been interacting with the nationals more and more. We've been learning and practicing cooking, both over an open fire and with local ingredients. And now it's time to prove that we weren't just day dreaming all day long.

So we bought food for a month. (Or what we thought was food for a month… How much rice do you eat a month? Do you know? Or do you, like us, just go to the store and buy more whenever you run out? Toilet paper? Sugar? Add a complete change in diet because none of your normal fallbacks are going to fly without a refrigerator and you might understand our confusion.) We bought basic household needs:  a bed, a bucket for hauling water, wash basins for dishes and laundry, mosquito nets, tarps for collecting rain water, etc.

We've spent the past week dividing and packing everything we own into what stays at POC and what goes to the village. (My sewing machine, our laptops, most of our clothes, etc can stay behind for such a short trip without electricity anyway.) (We do have a solar powered cell phone charger.)

We're so excited to head out.

There were some concerns. But we proceeded on the child like faith that we pretty much live our lives on.

With the same confidence that we had when we left the States underfunded, we are eager to leave for the village where, just a week ago, the house we're to stay in was a questionable state, an outhouse had not been prepared, and no idea what to plan for food for a month.

But Thursday we were told that if our waspapa (the man who will act as our father in the village) takes the time to buckle down and get the house up to snuff, he's going to be a great waspapa. And if he doesn't, there's a fallback village that has a solid reputation.

On Friday, we were told that the house is looking good. There were a ton of people actively working on it when they pulled up to see how it was coming!

And we brought 20 kilos of rice so I would be really impressed if we did manage to go hungry!  

So both of my worries that I decided would accomplish nothing by me worrying about and that God would sort out one way or another seem to have been sorted out!

So we have a few odds and ends that still need to find their way into boxes. At this point, we've fallen into the Oops Box phase. (Ordinarily, I would link back to my post about How to Pack Like a Rock Star, where I talk about the Oops Bag, but I pay per mb for internet here, so if you're really interested, I posted it approximately June 2014.) But we have two days (with the nursery open!) to finish up before we're off!

I have no idea what the data service will be like at our allocation. Even here on this mountain with 3 bars and just under 3G internet, posting pictures is a feat.
But I'll be back in town on December 1st! Completely done with POC! And hopefully I will have a good flow of blog articles to regale you of our time spent there and here at POC.  

Life at POC at 5am

It's 5am and I'm wide awake. If I were in my own place, I would just get up and start going about the tasks of the day. Today, we're going to town for a massive shopping trip and buying everything we think we'll need for the month of village living, trying not to err on the side of not enough and going hungry (or being stressed by eating PNG cuisine all the time) and trying not to err on the side of excess and perpetuate the mentality that white people have endless access to tons and tons of unnecessary cargo.

I need to prepare a diaper bag for James (between diarrhea and diaper rash, that kid has been going through a lot of diapers!). I need to double check my shopping list and empty out my bag so I can put in my wallet, my cell phone, and have room for some purchases. I also wouldn't be opposed to a cup of coffee.

But alas, I'm not in my own place. I'm in a room where James sleeps three feet from our bed and all our stuff is "neatly" stacked inside. Luckily, a POC veteran advised us to bring shoe organizers to have places to put some things and that's helped a bit. But when the schedule is as jam packed as it is, we only really use our room to sleep and collect/drop off our belongings. As in, we grab our clothes off the line, drop the basket (which is also the hamper) on the floor and run to our next class. So, the next time we have dirty clothes, they go on the floor until we finally get around to folding.

The walls (too smooth to be plywood, but I'm nearly positive it's not dry wall, maybe just sheets of woods?) are so thin, I can see light from our neighbors room coming through nail holes. Needless to say, the function of the walls is more for visual privacy than keeping sound or (*ahem*) smells in their proper place.

I could sit in the courtyard. The doors to all 13 units opens into it. There's a concrete cistern that pokes it's head out of the earth enough to find a seat on it, though it's not very comfortable. And at 5am, I wouldn't have to worry about the sun burning me, though the mosquitos would probably eat me alive.

If it were the weekend, I would good to my hauskuk (the structure we made as a "house" for our cooking) and hope there was enough kindling cut that I could start a fire without splitting firewood, always an unwelcome sound at 5 am. But not only is it not the weekend, hauskuk weekend's are over. The entire structure was torn down yesterday and the next time we cook for ourselves it will be in the village.

Instead, I'm waiting for my family to awaken. (Oops! They just did. Maybe I'll be able to write another post before we leave for the village. Though I hope I painted a nice picture of life here in my 5 am plight. Though, it's 6 now!) 

Pacific Orientation Course

After a harrowing journey up the mountain with steep cliffs inches from the edge of the road and turns that make your stomach drop, we arrived at the Pacific Orientation Course. We live in a dorm setting. Our room has a queen size bed and a pack and play draped with mosquito nets and a twin size mattress perched on wood not as wide as the mattress. James has a nice scrap on his head as he found the edge of the mattress has no underlying support. Luckily Jacob grabbed him before he hit the cement floor.

We unpacked our luggage immediately. When you live in a place for only a few months, it’s nice to rush through unpacking so we can feel settled for as long as possible. A small open wardrobe was provided in addition to a desk and four rat boxes. Two of them will be brought out to the village with us during village living when protecting from rats is more relevant than it is here. Adding a hanging closet organizer and a hanging shoe organizer gave us all the space we need so that everything has a home.

The course hasn’t started yet, though we have had a nursery orientation and a meeting with the nurse. On Wednesday, we’ll start the course in force. In the meantime, we’ve been working at our assigned readings so we don’t have to worry about them on our fully scheduled days.

The nursery has been open allowing us to allow James some time to grow accustom to it while we can still give him a break. When the course starts, he’ll be there from 8-12 and 2-4. There are four national women who take care of the children under the leadership of a woman who works for Wycliffe Bible Translators. When we first left him, we called out good-bye (because we don’t want James to be afraid that he’ll look up and we’ll be gone without warning). He looked at us, gave us a dead pan look, and then returned to his newfound toys. How dare we disturb him from the important things!

There’s a lunchroom where we eat all of our meals. We sit at long tables with benches. High chairs sit at the end of each table. There are 5 babies currently. I don’t know if more will be coming before the course begins. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and two tea breaks are served. They offer tea and instant coffee, but luckily there’s always water on for our French press! Eventually, we’ll have kitchen duties but for now the staff serves us as we get our bearings.

The campus is beautiful. We’re at the top of the mountain with steep drops all around us, revealing the beautiful foliage of the jungle around us. The ocean can be seen in the distance. I’m not sure how far it is but the clarity in the air makes me think it’s only appearing to be so close. The weather is fairly cool, being that the mountain has a fantastic breeze. There have been times, even in the heat of the day, that I’ve felt a little chilly. Though that was inside in front of a cliff side breeze. The nights get frigid. I woke up in the middle of last night to lay a blanket over James and grab several more airline blankets for us. (They’re super thin but heavy! Perfect for traveling, so we collect them from our flights.)

The feel of the camp is that of summer camp: rustic beautiful environment with tons of people living in close quarters. We’ll be here for two months, do village living for a month, come back to debrief for a couple days and we’ll be done at the beginning of December.

We’re excited to start learning. And we’re excited to be done. The fact of the matter is, while we’re still in PNG (yay!!!), this is still training and a step we need to complete to get to our ministry and our end goal of transformed lives through God’s Word in every language.

Pray for rain. When we flew in, this beautiful land we remembered was brown and covered in fires and smoke. People need water to live and to grow food. When people are hungry and thirsty and dying, spending effort on Bible Translation is put on the back burner. Pray that God meets their physical needs so we can return our focus to the spiritual. 

Our Plane Story

Three flights got us to PNG. Really, I don’t know if it’s possible to arrive in PNG faster than we did. If those flights were any closer together, we wouldn’t have made the connection.

16 hours – The number always sounds daunting, but when it gets down to execution, it goes by surprisingly fast. This isn’t a car ride! You get to distract yourself! Watch movies, eat food (they keep the carts coming to help things seem like they’re going faster), sleep. And when you look back and think, “I’ve been on this plane for 8 hours” it comes as a surprise.

Flying with James was super easy. Flying with a baby wasn’t fun. Let me clarify the difference. The activity of flying with a baby is, in its essence, miserable. Not a bit of that was James’ fault. He was great. Got fussy maybe four times on the 16 hour flight. Exhaustion was the worst, because really we just needed to let him cry it out for 5 mins, but we were on a plane… so we bounced and shush a fussy baby for 20. But the luggage. The snacks and diapers and sippy cups and toys. And only four hands. Ugh. No.

4 hours – Apparently someone prayed that we wouldn’t have to deal with 7 items and a baby on the gangplank after I made my  last Facebook post. That prayer was answered. But not at all in the way I wanted. They forced me to checked bags at the gate. Including the car seat! Which couldn’t fly because, though it had a sticker that said it was safe to fly, it didn’t have a number, which Qantas was fine with and this was a Qantas flight too, though on an Air Nuigini – No. Sorry. No. I’m not going to mentally rehash this. It was not the highlight of my trip, having to check bags I wasn’t prepared to check.

1 hour – The previous flight was delayed (I hate everything about the Sydney airport. Never again.) And I had less than an hour to get to my connection. Which includes going through the visa check, getting my luggage from international (waiting until every single thing came through to discover the pack and play didn’t make it and filing a claim), going through customs, transferring them to domestic, going through two security check points for all 6 pieces of carry-on luggage (we checked the carseat for the hour flight, totally not worth it), having to get baggage checked at the gate again. This time they made us check the sewing machine, laptops, and camera bag (last time I checked our personal items), but I watched them get put on the plane and watched them get taken off and brought to baggage claim. We were directed to the wrong plane and finally got on the right one and they closed the door behind us.

Landing – We were greeted with leis of frangipanis and a group of women from the PBT offices there, 2 of whom I already know and love. We found out that our pack and go was found in Port Moresby and it should be sent onto Madang on Monday. (We have a crib at POC and a little peapod bed for that night) We got to our flat for the night and took advantage of some free internet before passing out at 7pm and sleeping til 4am.

Things I miss from America - Free wi-fi
I just paid $18.50 for 800mb of data. MEGABYTES
#thirdworldproblems  

A Self Interview: At the Gate

An interview I meant to post at the gate but couldn't and a follow up question for your reading pleasure:

Well, you've made it through TSA. You are at the gate. Waiting to board a 16 hour flight, the first flight of three, with your infant son. How do you feel?

Good. Tired. Ready to get this started!

What happened between waking up this morning and getting to the airport?

We woke up at 9:30 (read: 5.5 hours of sleep). I fed the baby and went to grab us some coffee while Jacob took advantage of some more sleep. It took way longer than expected packing everything up and getting it into storage and getting the luggage loaded in the car. We finished that around 5. Then we headed to Starbucks to meet with Jacob's parents who came up to send us off. The guy who was going to buy my car flaked out so our home group leaders took it to sell it for us and we left it in the Starbucks parking lot for them to get later. And then we headed to the airport!

Tell us about your efforts getting to the gate?

Well, we had 5 trunks and one duffel bag, all weighing just shy of 50 lbs. We had 3 carry-ons, 2 personal items, one hiking backpack baby carrier, the carseat, and the pack and go.
A security guard got stingy with the big rolling cart and insisted he help us, so we loaded that up except for the carrier, which James was in on Jacob's back. We asked the desk to route our six bags and pack and go (complimentary with purchase of a child's seat) all the way to Port Morseby even though this ticket only went to Sydney. One less thing to worry about! We latched all of our carry-ons together in a crazy luggage caterpillar and Jacob put a backpack on his chest, while I put one on my back and carried the carseat through security.
I'm a TSA ninja so that was a breeze. Jacob set down the carrier and removed James while I was flipping buckets, pulling out laptops, dropping bags of our 3oz fluids. I took James, went through the security check, and reassembling our luggage was as smooth and taking it apart.

You've been trying to switch to a nocturnal schedule with your 10 month old son in preparation for this huge timezone change. How did that go? What time are you planning on going to sleep tonight?

That's actually been kinda crazy. There are a lot of things to think about and juggle. One of which is the complete irrelevance of the time on the clock. What does it mean now that it's 1pm or 1am? How long have we been awake? How long until bedtime? Trying to keep feedings and, most importantly, naptimes regular is really tough. And if you don't get those nap times down, trying to stay up an extra hour each night is really difficult! And remembering that mommy and daddy need the nap times too is important! In theory, moving one timezone a night keeps jetlag away, and that's what we've been trying to do, but there's no working around the biological connection to sunlight. When it's been gone for a while, you start to get sleepy.
We, however, consistently had trouble staying asleep past 10 am which made it hard to stay up past 3 am. Last night we went down at 4. Tonight we're just playing in survival mode. Get through the 16 hour flight. Nevermind sleep schedules.

What are you going to miss most about living Stateside?

Walmart. Maybe you're a Target person or a local business owner consumer, but the convenience of knowing that, if I need something, I can go to the store and buy it... That will be missed desperately. Especially for an everyday low price.
Also Starbucks.

What are you most excited for about getting to country?

That would be a toss up between my dreams, goals, and aspirations finally coming to fruition and an Orange Mango Schweppes.... mmmm.

What are you most apprehensive about?

I don't know. There are a lot of things that I think will be frustrating and stressful but, like, a little. It's them all piling up that can dangerous. What's the thing that's going to "get me"? Well, hopefully, nothing!

You are not leaving the country fully supported or even at 90%! How does that make you feel?

Actually... optimistic! I think God wants his children, especially his missionaries, to turn to him *all the time*. My marriage is great! My kid is awesome! I don't need to fall on my knees everyday asking for the Lord to move in those relationships, but I do for money. Hopefully, what the lack of sufficient funds means is that this first term is going to be easy! If I had all the funds raised, then God would give me another reason to turn to him *all the time*, culture shock, team dynamics, etc. And, really, *this* is a "thorn in my side" I can live with. Because I know full well that God *will* provide, as he's always done. The fact that we were green-lighted to buy plane tickets in the first place without 90% is totally him opening doors! He's going to orchestrate a way for us to keep on keeping on. And all glory will be His!

How do you feel about standing on the brink of leaving for 2 and a half years?!

The same as I felt standing at the wedding altar or in the Labor and Delivery room. None of this feels real. Even now sometimes it blows my mind that I'm *married* or I'm a *mom*. Maybe it's because it's been so natural. It doesn't feel like as big of a deal as it should have been, as it was made out to be. It's just... another facet of who I am. Sometimes I try to stand back and look at the *gravity* of the situation, whether I try to think about my life as if I was 16, showing 16 year old me my life now, or trying to appreciate my life through someone else's eyes. But while 2 and a half years is a *long* time and while PNG is a very different place, it doesn't seem real. The gravity I think the situation should have feels unreal. But maybe that's because this is just natural for me too! Hopefully, right?!

About what can we pray for you specifically during your traveling time?

I have an anxiety of flying... But I can't pop a Xanax per-usual as I'm nursing my kid and he doesn't need to be drugged. (I think... I'm pretty sure.) My adrenaline spikes, my digestive system shuts down, and those little baggie you find in the pocket of the seat in front of you get used. So we need to keep my anxiety and my adrenaline down.
Fight or flight, and the only option is *gulp* ...flight...
Also pray for little blessings. Once, when a woman prayed for this for us, we found ourselves at the tapering of the plane where three seats could no longer fit, so we had two seat (no random stranger in our row) with space between the "middle" chair and the window (read: extra leg space!). It was so nice! So we regularly ask people to pray for little things that make our flights nicer.
Transitions. Most fearful: the switch between the international gate and the domestic gate at Port Moresby. I did it once as an intern in 2010 but that was a game of follow the leader. Not sort this out on your own! And we only have a 2 hour layover with customs and transferring checked luggage between our gates! Dun dun dun!



You are in Papua New Guinea. Does it feel real yet?

What a question! I mean, yes. It looks like PNG. It smells like PNG (which, in case you're wondering, is not a dig at the aroma. There's a distinct PNG sweat smell, yes. But there are a lot of other scents that make the aroma of PNG unique and memorable.) So, yes, I'm cognitively aware that I'm in Papua New Guinea and this isn't a dream.
But I've thought a lot about the preceding question of similar nature on my very long flight and I've come to this: it's anticlimactic. For 10 years, I've shed sweat, blood, and tears to get to my first term on the field. And now it's here! And that means I'm sitting on a plane for 16 hours. That is my dreams coming to fruition: sitting on a plane for 16 hours (and another for 6 and another for 1). That's it! I'm still the same person I was before. And I travel now just like I always have. So it feels no different at all. It doesn't feel like a momentous occasion.
And that's ok. Because sometimes even momentous occasions are just a blur. But my wedding wasn't about getting married and checking that off my to-do list. It was about being a wife and helper to my husband in a way that reflects Christ's relationship with the Church. And my labor and delivery wasn't for the sake of claiming I made a human being, but so that I could be a parent and do so in a way that reflects the Father's love for his children. And I didn't labor to come to Papua New Guinea for the sake of going to a cool new place. It was so I could be a missionary and model Christ who lived incarnationally to reach the lost for His glory.
I'm not suddenly a different person. But my story will be very different now. And hopefully, so will the lives of many, many others.

Mmm. That's good. Good job, self! Well, since that was so good, and you're exhausted and afraid you might actually fall out of that chair, we'll pick this up later. Which will give our readers a chance to comment with some questions that they would like to ask you. Which maybe you will get a chance to address before you're whisked off to Jungle Camp tomorrow. 

Looking Through the Foreboding Door

In the Labor and Delivery room, they put this small slimy body on top of mine, and I remember looking down at it, thinking, "What is this?!"
I did the magic hour and all that jazz but it wasn't until they took him to wipe him down and weigh him that they called out, "9lbs 9ozs" and I broke down sobbing.
At 41 weeks they had done an ultrasound and told me my son would within a pound of 9lbs 15oz. Within a pound! So he could be 10lbs 15oz!
Everyday I was overdue, I was thinking about delivery, for nearly the 24 hours since I had checked into the hospital, I had been focusing, working, laboring to deliver approximately 9lbs 15ozs.
And when they called out his weight, that was my victory. That's what I had worked for.
9 lbs, 9 ozs.
The whole baby thing had taken a backburner to the immediate obstacle of delivery, but that probably shouldn't have been the case.

In the same way, we've been very much focused on fund-raising recently. Of course, there's no harm in that, actually there tends to be success in focusing on a task. But we can't forget why we're doing this.
For a year we've been on the road raising funds to go to Papua New Guinea.
I started fund raising in 2009. Jacob in 2011.
It's been a major focus for a very long time. But now that we're about to leave for the field one way or another, we need to look past that foreboding gateway to the Land of the Unexpected behind it.

There are three stories that I tell again and again at churches. In fact, you've probably already heard them.
I tell the story of the Somau Garia people who showed great generosity in order to convince the missionaries doing survey work to stay, who when they later realized how it wasn't nearly so simple, decided they were unworthy of the Word of God.
I tell the story of the Waran people who did a checking session with an old man who the missionary thought was about to nod so far off he would jerk awake comically. But when the man heard Jesus crying out from the cross, "Father, forgive them" for the first time in his heart language, the shame and guilt of his sins had truly reached his heart. He wasn't nodding off but hanging his head in the traditional Waran gesture of shame.
I tell the story of the highland man who was murdered as part of a series of retribution murders between two tribes. But this man was a Christian. So instead of going along with the cultural norm and killing his murderer, his family begged their tribe to show mercy and forgiveness.

I love these three stories because they really hit on the major three elements of our mission:
To see transformed lives through God's Word in every language.
Every language - no matter how small.
God's Word - working in peoples hearts
Transformed lives - a proof of the Spirit within them.

We're still 17% shy of 100% of our budget. (Every now and again we hit these weird ruts where we're getting new supporters but only just enough to manage other supporters needing to withdraw their support or a pledged supporter ending up committing a bit less than they originally said or having trouble reaching a pledged supporter. Last time our rut was 71%... We just could not get past it! But then we leapt up and here we are waiting for another boost!)
That's still looming over us as we get closer and closer to Departure Day.
$783/month total.
17 people giving $46/month.

But we try to remember to see past this door to remember why we're even approaching it.
To see transformed lives through God's Word in every language.
Please let us know if you'd like to join us in this endeavor.
I think it's worth investing my life in and the life of my son. (My husband is also investing his life in this.)
And we'd like to ask you to consider sacrificing one of your dinners out a month, one of your Starbucks drinks a week, or whatever your guilty indulgence is, to give an entire language and all the generations thereafter a taste of water that will leave them never thirsty again.

I didn't intend for this blog to be about fund raising, but the fact of the matter is that we can't do our jobs without an income to keep us alive in the meantime and work funds to accomplish our goals. I wish it were otherwise but God has a vision of sharing the ownership of this work with those He hasn't sent to the field. And He has proven again and again that His way is best.

Transformed lives through God's Word in every language.
I know, I know, what it's like to have financial stress. Taking $46/month out of your spendable budget may very well make life a little tight. We ourselves are missing $783/month out of our already tight budget!
But the financial stress is worth it.
The worry about whether the malaria meds I'm giving to my infant son will have persistent neuropsychological effects is worth it.
The living in a bush house with a bucket as "indoor plumbing" for at least two years is worth it.
Because this world is fleeting, but the next is eternal and I want to share that eternity with all people, tongues, tribes, and nations.
But there are still some tongues and tribes and people groups who can't hear about God's Word in a way that will really ruin their hardened hearts and transform them.
Only our heart language can speak to our hearts.
I believe God and His Spirit speak that language and so should His Word.

Why Toys and the Jungle Don't Mix

During our exploratory trip to PNG in 2012, we stayed with a missionary who has been working with PBT for over 30 years. Let me paint a picture of her house.

She lived in an Americanized house made of bush materials. The inner walls were woven bamboo, but the floors were covered in linoleum and the roof was tin. The outer walls were load bearing 2x4s filled in with screen wire to allow the breeze to pass through but to limit the number of bugs that came in. The gutter system feed into the water tank, which daily had to be pumped up the the head tank on the roof to provide gravity fed plumbing to the house.

And the house was filled with stuff. There were bags and bags of empty pill bottles waiting to be reused for people who needed a large quantity of medicine. There were stacks and stacks of empty bags. Every sugar bag was cut neatly at the top to salvage the bag and stacked to the side waiting to be reused. Durable flour bags had the top stitches carefully removed and were gifted to women in the village. Used paper was kept in a stack to make little medicine packets or for any purpose they might serve. A filing cabinet was bursting with old maps of places she had traveled on furlough. Books and books lined the shelves.
If this were found in America, one might cry "hoarder". But in Papua New Guinea, where things are hard to come by, where every ream of paper consumes some of the 400 kilo cargo allowance allowed on the helicopter, where you couldn't run to Walmart every time you needed something and any trash you had had to be burned, you keep everything just in case.

Now our collection of odds and ends will be more petite for a couple of reasons.

1. We haven't yet had the years to accumulate the things she has had. 
2. We love digital things and digitizing physical things, reducing space consumption. 

This being said, we are thrilled that we have so many people interested in sending us care packages, but we want to ask something to save both our generous senders money and us space.

Please, please, please, do not send us toys. When we arrive in country and have some time to figure out what we need and what we miss, we will provide a list of items that will be great to send in a care package. But I know that when there is such an adorable little baby in the jungle, you just want to spoil him rotten with toys!

But:

1. Shipping to PNG is not cheap. We want to respect the time and money you put into your gift to us. 
2. We're not sure what things James will like! In America, kids see things their friends have, things on TV, can go into a toys store and look around and decide what they like. James just won't have been exposed enough to know his preferences. 
3. Even if James loves the toy, eventually he will outgrow it. Then what? There can be big problems with regifting it to someone in the village, choosing one family over another. There aren't an abundance of thrift stores in the village. We have to burn our trash in the village so we can't just toss it. Leaving us with baby toys around the house where hoarding is already a tendency for the next 30 years or so. 

(Now, of course, with a single toy, this won't be that big of a deal, but if everyone throws in a single toy, we'll be up to our eyeballs!)

Additionally:

1. There's the cultural aspect to consider. In a village setting, there's a communal idea. If James becomes attached to toys and doesn't let other kids have them, he'll be viewed as selfish and not willing to share with The Village. 
2. If he does allow children to take toys, there's the concern of perpetuating the Cargo Cult mindset, that white people have things because they worship God and if you worship God, you can get things, too. This is not the gospel, nor a perception we wish to feed. 
3. Other children don't have toys. James will have a number of things that will differentiate him from his friends. He doesn't need more. We recently watched an episode of the Gilmore Girls, where Emily furnished Rory's dorm. Her reasoning was that Rory now owns the space. It gives her the upper hand among her suite mates. We don't want James to have friendships based on manipulation. "It's my toy and I say how we play with it," whether that's an attitude he assumes or a perception that's shoved on him by his peers. We want him to engage in relationships with humility, in a fraternal relationship not a patriarchal one. 
4. He doesn't need toys! He lives in a rain forest! I know my fondest memories weren't playing with my many toys as a child but playing outside! Climbing crepe myrtles, catching fireflies and caterpillars, hiking through the woods at my grandparents house. With so many cons to toys in our context, why distract him from the true joys in life?

So, I will send out a wish list, and I'm sure that there will be times a toy or game will be added here or there, but they will be very intentionally chosen based on interests, longevity, and transfer-ability. 

If the number of toys we post don't meet your spoiling needs, we have a solution!
We opened a savings account for James. Please feel free to spoil him financially!
We hope to give him access to this account at some point when we feel he will truly know the value of a dollar. Whether as a wedding present or a nest egg or a house warming gift. We doubt we'll give it to him as college money as we'd like him to never perceive education as a free ride and only value it as such, but we have nothing written in stone.

Checks can be made out to "James Smith" and sent to:

712 Pritchett Rd. 

Lula, GA 30554

This will one day be a gift that he will really appreciate when he can truly value a gift and the value of a dollar.

Care Packages can be sent to:
Pioneer Bible Translators
Attn: Jacob and Elizabeth Smith
Box 997
Madang 511
Papua New Guinea

Good things to include in care packages are always consumables.
Spices, spice packets, pretzels, goldfish, french vanilla creamer, Starbucks Via, individually packaged jelly (for PB&Js in the bush), Chick-fil-a Honey BBQ Sauce, and always silica gel packets to keep our dry goods (like those yummy spices) dry.
When we get in country and have a chance to look around, we'll let you know what else we miss dearly.

Thank you so much,
Elizabeth