Here is a talk I gave during a Women's Event at my church right before heading back to Colorado to join Caleb who was already there working....I am hoping it will give you some more insight into how PNG affected me and the experience we had through my eyes. I wrote this a couple of months ago, so I plan to elaborate more in the weeks to come...
(July 2009...we left for PNG January 2013)
"Our family has served as support staff missionaries for the past 2 ½ years. We returned to America on July 1st
and have moved 22 times in the last 13 ½ weeks.
It has been a rollercoaster ride where we have experienced reverse
culture shock but have had the chance to reconnect with so many of our friends
and family….and now our church community.
Because of all the moves and all the transition, I apologize if some of
my talk tonight is a bit incoherent.
Currently, I am alone with my children while my husband begins his new
job out in Colorado.
Now, let me begin by saying that even though I am here
standing before you calling myself a missionary, prior to meeting my husband in
2000, I would not have been able to find PNG on map. Then, I wouldn’t have known that it is close
to Australia and that it in fact shares an island with Indonesia. I have always been what I call “a city
girl”. And, I would even go so far as to
call myself a “very sheltered city girl.”
I have only ever been to 3 countries- Jamaica for my honeymoon, Mexico
for vacation and PNG for 2 ½ years.
So, if you think that I am the kind of girl who has grown up
reading all about missionaries or that I have dreamed of becoming one for all
my life, you would be wrong. In fact, I
wasn’t even raised in a Christian home.
So why did we go?
It’s not like we just didn’t have anything else to do. When we left for PNG, we both left decent
jobs- Caleb was a police officer and I was a tax auditor. We owned a home. We had a 2 year old. We attended an amazing church (Grace) and we
belonged to a Bible Study group where we found amazing friends we hoped to
“grow old with”. Even now, I cannot help
but look back and think, how could I have just left it all behind? What possessed me to do that?
Well, I do not want to spend a lot of my time tonight
talking about the decision to go to PNG. I have a blog and if you would like to read
that story, it is all there….or we can chat later on. But, to keep it simple, we found out that there was a pressing need for a Security Manager in
PNG. Our organization's largest translation and
literacy center is located in PNG in a place called Ukarumpa. Because there are over 800 languages in PNG
(which is about the size of California), there is a need for a centralized
location for support. This center serves
as that place. We realized that Caleb
could meet that pressing need, so we decided to take a risk. Well, it was a risk…for God. Maybe that contradicts itself- risk for God. But, at the time, that is exactly what it
felt like. Even though in my head, I
knew I was supposed to be able to trust God, it felt like a risk. It felt scary. It felt unknown.
Now let me try to put our experience in context for you-
what did we do there? What was it like?
We were support missionaries. Everyone living on our center was there to
support Bible Translation in one way or another. Think of it this way, what skills and
abilities do you have now? Did you know
they could be used overseas serving as missionaries? I didn’t know that before I went. I always thought that to be a missionary, you
had to go through seminary or you had to have a heart for evangelism. I have a heart of discipleship….really, could
that be used overseas? I am an
accountant….really, could I help further Bible translation as an
accountant? It just didn’t seem to fit what
my preconceived ideas were about being a missionary.
So, in PNG, some of the missionaries were translators. They lived in the village at times during the
year and at other times, they were back at our center, getting the support they
needed. In the village, they had to
learn the language (Tok Ples- heart language), devise an alphabet, then
translate the Bible. Depending on the
situation, this could take 8 years or it could take 30. Others on our center were there
to support those translators- so you had doctors and nurses and dentists, IT
guys, teachers, pilots, mechanics- the idea being that if translators did not
have this support, then they would be pulled from their translation project
every time they needed something. They would have to return to a first-world country to receive this support. This
in turn would make the time to translate the Bible and teach the people in the
village to read it….well, it would just take that much longer. If the translator needed to get medical help
or if his child had education needs, the family would have to leave PNG, go
back to their home country and get this.
Let’s talk for a bit about how PNG is a third world
country. When you think of a third world
country, what comes to mind?
(Discussion)
-
One road
-
Stores/restaurants
-
Houses
-
Haus kuks
-
Chickens
-
Clothing/modesty
-
School
-
Raskols/guns/police
Now, even though we weren’t translators, we still had to
learn what it was like to be translators….otherwise, how would we know how to
help them? So, every new missionary to
PNG was required to go through a 14 week training course. Think “survivor”. During this training, we learned the trade language-
called Tok Pisin. That was the easy
part.
Scripture-
|
3:20 Strong bilong God yet i save wok long bel bilong yumi, na
dispela strong i winim tru tingting bilong yumi. Olgeta samting yumi save askim
God long mekim, ol i no inap tru long mak bilong strong bilong en. 3:21 Olsem na oltaim oltaim ol manmeri bilong
sios i mas litimapim nem bilong God long nem bilong Krais Jisas, inap long
olgeta taim bihain. I tru.
But, we also learned how to live in the place where there
wasn’t any electricity (no refrigeration, no stoves), no other way to wash
yourself, your kids, and your clothes than in the river. Yes, as the bulletin states, I had to bathe
in the river…not for the last 2 ½ years, but for close to two months. Also, we
learned how to live in a place where there wasn’t any medical care. What do you look for? What are the signs that something is really
wrong?
So, let me tell you about our village. You are all here for the stories, right? And again, please just interrupt me if you
have a question or if something is not clear.
I want you to understand, I want to answer questions that you may
have….and I want to share what my life was like overseas.
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