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