Lets Catch Up

Since there is not enough hours in the day (even here in PNG) for us to keep up the blog with all the happenings in our family, we are going to give a summary of highlights from the last few months. We are about to go unplugged for 6 weeks at POC (Pacific Orientation Course) until March 7th, so we thought we should get this out there before that.

Babysitting

Meliah was asked in November to help put together a “nursery” type thing for the video service that happens each Sunday before the main church service (like a Sunday school). So she has been recruiting other teenagers to help her each week and made a schedule.  The ages of kids has been 1 ½ to 3yrs.  She has done a great job! And the best part is that mom hasn’t had to be a part of it!  As of the last week or so she has gotten a babysitting job, 3x a week for a toddler and an infant while the mom coaches soccer.  The kids love Miss Meliah! 

CTS Bung (Party)

Every year each department here in Ukarumpa has some sort of Christmas Bung (a pidgin word pronounced boong and means party). Well since Chad is the manager of the CTS department (Communications and Technical Services) , this was his responsibility to plan and organize it.  He has made quite a few friends within his department, he is manager over 11 nationals, and 9 expatriates. So the nationals wanted to do a mumu (pronounced moo moo). A mumu is like a big bbq with pig and or chicken cooked in the ground with lots of vegetables and cooked bananas. They all were happy to do the mumu at our house!  So the planning started and Ruth wasn’t so sure about all these men planning something this big.  Well long story short, Chad went and got a live pig from a farm about 3 hrs away.  And he was very excited about all the happenings of this.  The pig was whacked in the head with the back of an axe and then cut up and put in the ground to cook and then later some chicken was killed and then cooked in another mumu pit next to the pig.  Chad was enjoying each step of this whole process which was about 36 hrs long! Lots of pictures were taken.  It was an honor that the nationals wanted and did the mumu for the whole department.  It was a great opportunity for all the folks in the department to bond, and celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ together.

A Bible Dedication - Part 4

This would be the last day of our time with the Tuam people of New Britain PNG. I woke to the sound of gonging bells which was the announcement to the local area that there would be lotu (church) this morning. They must have a series of gongs that tell people how long before church startes, but I didn't catch enough of the pattern to know how it worked really.

Actually what they use for the bell gong sound, and you see this all over PNG villages, are old oxygen/acetalene tanks or other gas tanks (which they call bottles here). They hang them from a tree and use a peice of iron or something metal to whack them. They are suprisingly loud and make a really nice gong sound.