June Newsletter

My June newsletter is up and available! You can click here to read it or head over to the Newsletters tab if you want to catch up on any letters you've missed. 

June Newsletter

On the way to join in the celebration!

I'm back in Ukarumpa and school starts up soon (just over two weeks!). A couple weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go out to a village and celebrate the dedication of the revised New Testament and five newly translated Old Testament books in the Binumarien tok ples (heart language). You can click here to read this month's newsletter and see some photos from the dedication.

April Newsletter

I'm heading back to Papua New Guinea very soon! Next Monday, the 9th, as a matter of fact! You can click here to read my latest newsletter and get the details on my flights and what I'll be doing when I return to Ukarumpa.

December Update

Merry Christmas, everyone! 

I hope you are as excited for Christmas as I am--it's my favourite time of year! (Even though it's much too cold here!) I love the Christmas lights and the Christmas music and all the cheesy Christmas movies! :) 

A Celebration!

What do you think of when you think of missions or missionaries? Exotic foods, beautiful scenery, big bugs, daily excitement? Well, there is some of that, but much of life is just like in the US (or Canada or the UK…you get the idea!)—get up, go to work, go home at the end of the day, make (or reheat) supper, do some grading/lesson planning, go to bed, repeat. On a day-to-day basis, I know that I personally tend to forget WHY I am here and doing what I do in PNG instead of in the US.

A Tropical Winter

Winter in the tropics…sounds pretty unthreatening, right? Typically it just means cool at night, hot during the day, and some random rain showers. But every now and then there is an anomaly—such as last week. One morning last week I woke up less because my alarm clock went off and more because I couldn’t feel my face. No joke.

You Know...

      I was thinking the other day about my "new normal," when I realized that, as of this Friday, I've been in Papua New Guinea for eight months. So, in honor of my eight month anniversary of arriving in PNG, here is a list of things that I never thought I would consider normal.

          You Know You've Lived in PNG for Eight Months When...

1. You get up early to hang your laundry on the line…even though it’s cloudy and will rain later in the day.
2. You wear gum boots outside to hang your laundry on the line so you don’t sink up to your ankles in mud.

Wok Bilong Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea is a country with few large, Westernized cities—most of the population lives in small villages out in the bush. There are many skills that are passed down from generation to generation, from taim bipo (time before, a long time ago). While I was at POC (Pacific Orientation Course), the staff arranged for some of the Papua New Guinean workers to show us how they make a few traditional items. (Oh, I should probably tell you that the title means "Papua New Guinean Work".)

An Ode to Mud

Exhibit A: Watch where you walk!
It's very squishy and slippery!

I thought I knew what mud was—back in Wisconsin: that slightly inconvenient, make-sure-you-wipe-your-feet-off-before-you-come-in-the-house type of mud. But really I knew nothing…maybe even less than nothing. When you live in a country where it rains pretty much every afternoon, you end up with a lot of mud. And generally it doesn’t just rain nice and gentle and stop after an hour or two—it pours. Hard. Sometimes for several hours, and, in the case of a couple weeks ago, for several days in a row.

Bread and Tacos and Cookies, Oh My!

One of my better loaves of bread

If you know me at all, you know that I have lots of adventures—generally having to do with either cars or cooking. Since I don’t drive a manual, or have any desire to deal with a vehicle here, this post is about, you guessed it…cooking! Most of my “adventures” in the kitchen back home involved burned food, courtesy of me getting a little too engrossed in whatever I was currently reading. I’m happy to report that I haven’t been burning my meals—especially since I’ve (finally!) figured out the ins and outs of the gas oven.

Where's the Beef?!

We don’t eat a lot of fresh meat in Papua New Guinea (PNG) for a variety of reasons: for one, it’s quite expensive, and for another, many translators and linguists live in village allocations where there is no electricity, so by necessity we eat a lot of tinned (canned) meat. Think Spam, only not actual Spam (even if the store does have it, it’s a bit pricey since it’s imported). If you haven’t ever had the pleasure, you should try some…it can be reasonably tasty when prepared correctly!

To Market, To Market

One Thursday morning during Village Living, one of my roommates and I decided that we needed to get out of the village for a few hours. We asked our wasmama (host mother), Patrisia, if we could go to market with her later that day; she was pleased as punch that we wanted to go again (we had gone the previous week), so we quickly ate our lunch and gathered up what we needed for our trek through the jungle down to the Mediba market.

The four of us (waspapa (host father) went, too, to help carry the produce to sell) headed down the bus rot (bush road or trail), which wasmama was pleased to inform us was much shorter than taking the main road, as we had done the week before.

Washing Laundry...in a Bucket?!

What does the phrase “do laundry” bring to your mind? The washer and dryer in the basement laundry room? Folding clothes still warm from the dryer? Well, in the village that’s not quite how it goes…

The laundry bucket

First you collect your dirty laundry, which isn’t usually very much, because you typically do some every day. The dirty laundry, laundry soap, a bar of Klina soap (good for getting stains out), and the laundry scrub brush all go in the laundry bucket, which you take down to the river; and since you’ll be down at the river anyways, you may as well waswas (bathe), too. (See my post about waswas here.) After you’ve gathered up what seems to be everything but the kitchen sink, you head down to the river.

A Missionary's Best Friend

During my four weeks of living in a Papua New Guinean village, I discovered that there are several things that could be considered a missionary’s best friend. High on the list (which is not exhaustive by any means!) are: 

• Mosquito repellant, aka missionary perfume: the higher the DEET, the better. RID is the brand of choice, being the most readily available, although its efficacy is hotly debated among my colleagues and I. (Personally, I think it attracts more mosquitos than it repels…)

Here We Go Waswas

For the uninitiated, waswas is Tok Pisin for bathing. Now, you may be wondering why a whole blog post is dedicated to waswas…well, for starters, there is no electricity in the village; therefore there is no pump and no shower. There is, however, running water—in the truest sense of the word—a river. Every day we gather our things and go down to the river to waswas. So, for your reading pleasure, here are 30 steps to a successful waswas experience!

Now We Go Wokabaut

One of the “big” deals of Pacific Orientation Course (POC) is the two day/overnight hike. Basically you hike out from POC until you arrive at the village you’ll be staying overnight in, then the next morning after breakfast, you hike out and catch a Public Motor Vehicle (PMV) back to POC. Well, that’s the short story, anyway.

What's in a Bilum?

Before I tell you what’s in a bilum, it would probably be helpful to know…what is a bilum?! A bilum is a bag made from plastic string, yarn, or natural fibers (like from a tree or something similar).

Two of my bilums; the one
on the left is made of string
and the other is yarn.

The women work on these bags in the evenings while they stori (talk) or even while they’re walking to market! (Yes, I have seen a woman working on a bilum while walking along the road!) They come in various sizes, from small enough to only fit a water bottle, to big enough to carry gallons and gallons of water in small Coke bottles, all their produce coming and going to the market, and even their babies!

One of the babies taking
a nap in a bilum.

The women carry their bilums on their head, with the load resting on their back. Mothers give their daughters bilums with only a little weight in them, then gradually add more weight, in order to strengthen their neck muscles. It's totally normal for men to carry a bilum, too. They generally carry it around their neck, hanging in front or over one shoulder, cross-body style.

You Know You are a PNG Missionary When...

There are several things that were so strange to me when I first arrived, but now, after eight weeks in Papua New Guinea, they seem totally normal. So here you have it:


You know you're a PNG missionary when...


1. Driving on the left side of the road is normal. (Well, actually, it’s whichever side has less potholes, which isn’t always easy to determine!)