Kuman dedication

This weekend I was privileged to be able to travel a few hours west to the town of Kundiawa for the dedication of the recently completed Kuman New Testament. It wasn't quite the atmosphere that I was expecting, which I think had a lot to do with the fact that the dedication was in a town rather than a rural village setting. Still, it was a great experience.

Kuman is the third largest language group in PNG, with 120,000 speakers. Apparently some Lutheran missionaries had begun translating many years ago, but never finished. Dunc and Mary Pfantz, working with SIL, spent the last 17 years on the Kuman NT, and were finally able to complete it.

We drove into Kundiawa on Friday morning, and the celebration began after lunch. A local trumpet school put together a small brass band and there was a miniature parade down the street to the rugby field where the dedication was going to take place. There were probably 250-300 nationals and about 100 "whiteskins" who came for the dedication. The band played for a bit while everyone found seats in either the grandstands or in the grass. (The pictures below are of the parade as it approached the field, the grandstands filling with people, and the same band as it played after everything was over)

For the next few hours, various men gave speeches to honor the occasion, but most of them were speaking in Pisin. Scott Bauman gave me general translations, and I definitely came away knowing a lot more Pisin than when I started! We were welcomed probably more than 30 times, but interestingly, the nationals there knew how everything works. Instead of thanking just SIL in PNG for bringing them the New Testament, they also said, "We want to thank everyone who is supporting the work of SIL for making this day possible." You had a part in this too!

One of the other speakers said, "English is a foreign language to us, and Pisin is a foreign language to us, but KUMAN is OUR language, and our hearts know this language!" The crowd was calm and mostly unemotional during the afternoon, but this was one time that they lit up and you could see that they were excited to be reading the Bible in THEIR language.

SIL director Jan Gossner read John 1:1 in the original Greek, then Spanish, then English, then Pisin, and then finally in Kuman. The crowd really got excited to hear it in Kuman, and I also got a better understanding of why it's important to be able to have the Bible in your heart language. Having had a year of Greek, I understood most of that, and having had two years of Spanish, I understood most of that too, but then when it was read in English, it was a lot more powerful and meant a lot more.

Another speaker challenged the people to use their New Testaments, rather than letting them sit on shelves and get dusty and eaten by cockroaches. He said that other people get their Bibles and are excited, but then sometimes they'll forget about them and it doesn't do any good. He said that the Kuman people weren't going to do that. They were going to use them all the time and recognize how valuable God's Word is.

The regional director of SIL also spoke and started his speech by saying, "These mountains weren't here at one point, and these trees weren't here at one point, and the animals weren't here at one point, and people weren't here at one point, but God spoke, and created all of this with His words, and now you have His Word in your language." We could see the nationals listening intently and looking around at the things which he was describing, then suddenly realizing how powerful God's Word is, and getting excited that now they could read and hear it in their heart language.

After all the speeches were over came the most memorable part of the dedication for me. I was asked to oversee/help with the sales of the New Testaments, so I went down to the tables in front of the grandstands to set that up with a few other people. As we were getting everything ready, the nationals started to bring a few boxes of Bibles from the truck to the table. As they did so, they were holding the heavy boxes high above their shoulders and shouting triumphantly. One man would start a single yell on a certain pitch, then everyone else would join in for a few seconds, and then they'd repeat the cycle. They brought the boxes to the tables, and as we started opening them the nationals started getting more excited. They kept up the yells as they walked in a continuous circle around us and the tables. I wish I had gotten a chance to get a video of that, but at the moment I was setting everything up. Then again, had I not been setting up, I wouldn't have been in the middle of it, and it wouldn't have been quite so incredible.

There had been pre-orders of Bibles, so many of the people had blue tickets to turn in for Bibles, but plenty of others gladly paid 12 Kina there for their copies. A local member of Parliament was there and had given a speech or two, and he bought 3000 Kina worth of Bibles (250) to give out free to local churches. He opened one box on the field there and said they were "free to the first people who get them" and nearly caused a stampede. At another point, Leah Pfantz started reading from the Kuman New Testament and gathered a large crowd around her as she read. The picture below was actually one of the Pfantz's guests telling stories, but it was the same effect both times. (The difference was that I couldn't get close enough to get a good picture of the crowd around Leah)

After it was all over, we split up and ate meals with various pastors and church groups in the evening. They were very welcoming and glad to have us there. After a good night's rest, we traveled back through the mountains to Ukarumpa on Saturday. The shot below gives you an idea of what it looked like. The road across the bottom of the picture is our road, but I'm not sure if the road through the middle was ours or if that one just leads to a village somewhere. Either way, that's what the roads look like through the mountains, though these were more often paved fairly well. You can also see a massive landslide in the top right of the picture that took out a village and part of the highway too.

This week, as I've already said, won't be spent in the Finance office. I'm leaving tomorrow morning to go with a mission trip to nearby Yonki until Friday. More on that later...

On the road again

Tomorrow morning (early) I leave for Kundiawa and the Kuman New Testament dedication, and about a day after getting back, I'll be leaving again to serve in a different way here. Instead of working in the finance office next week, I'll be helping lead a VBS for the national kids not far from here in a place called Yonki. I'll have a lot more to write about both of those events after they happen, but in case you don't see any updates in the next week, it's because I'm not going to be around much.

I also forgot to mention two things about Madang. First, there are thousands of giant flying foxes (a type of fruit bat) in town there, roosting on trees everywhere and flying over the town after 6 in the evening. They have about a 3-foot wingspan... and it's surreal to see them all filling the sky. Here's a shot of one of the many trees that they sleep in during the day:

Also, I saw these construction workers in front of one of the stores in Madang. They were putting those metal pylons in front of the building to prevent cars from being able to run into it, and in order to do so, they had to make holes in the nice brick sidewalk you see here. Well, the two guys using the large irons to bash holes in the sidewalk were wearing flip flops, and often mashing them into the brick just inches from their feet. They do things differently around here than in the States, that's for sure! Oh, and the guy welding was sparing in his use of the mask too. I don't know how he did it, but he wouldn't put it on. He'd just hold it in front of his face every so often, but not even during the whole time he was welding.

Madang

I just got back from a relaxing weekend on the coast, near the town of Madang. It's in the center of the northern shore of PNG, and it's a beautiful place. Basically, think of the most perfect setting for the description "tropical paradise", and you'll get some idea of what it was like where we stayed. The resort was called Jais Aben, which in the local language means "resting place". Warm temperatures with a cool breeze, coconut palms and orchids, white sand beside clear blue water, coral reefs and tropical fish, clear skies and exotic birdsongs... yeah, it was nice. Our rooms were about 30 feet from the ocean, with great views of the bay and the nearby islands covered with palm trees. Here are a few pictures that don't really do it justice:

While Jais Aben was quite nice and deserves its title of "resting place", the ride down to Madang wasn't quite as restful. Right now it takes about 5.5 hours (by car) to go north from Ukarumpa into the Ramu Valley, across the Finnestere Mountains, and into the Madang region. I say "right now" because the road conditions are variable, and the current conditions are not so favorable through the end of the Ramu and the passage through the Finnesteres. The only road is not paved for 42 kilometers (about 26 miles) of steep uphill and downhill driving through the mountains. There are large potholes and rain gullies everywhere, and it took us about 2 hours to navigate it on the way to Madang. I took a six-minute video of it on our way back to Ukarumpa, so when I get home some of you will be able to see that and get a better idea of just how rough it was.

The end result of the journey was well worth it though, and the journey itself wasn't all bad. There were some great views throughout the trip, first from the top of the Kassam mountain pass as we came out of the highlands down into the Ramu. Then, in the Ramu, it was quite a sight to look up at the towering mountain ranges on both sides of the perfectly flat, 10-20 mile wide valley. Finally (in between bouncing in and out of potholes) I got to see some of the incredibly vertical and jungle-covered Finnestere mountains, where there were also more colors and sizes of butterflies than I even imagined existed.

The highlight of the trip was definitely snorkeling. We spent a day by the water at Jais Aben, where we saw some nice coral and quite a few brightly colored fish. The water was a little cloudy 10-15 feet down because of the previous night's rain, so it was still nice, but not necessarily spectacular. The second day, however, was absolutely incredible. We went up the coast a bit to a place called Rempi, where someone known by SIL had built a private little cabin beside a perfect lagoon. There was a coral reef and a small narrow island about 100 yards from shore, sheltering the 30-foot deep lagoon from most waves. The water was perfectly clear, so even in the deepest water, we were easily able to see every detail of the bottom. The coral here was much more vibrant, and there were thousands of fish here, much more numerous and varied than what we saw at Jais. It was amazing to be able to swim in warm water, surrounded by schools of bright yellow or electric blue fish, with their colors complementing the golden or orange-red or nearly ultraviolet colors of the coral below, all of which could completely fill your field of view and be patterned with lines of sunlight from the gentle waves above. I really wish I had an underwater camera for that, though I'm sure nothing short of the experience itself could come anywhere close to being as incredible as it was.

After arriving back in Ukarumpa, I was refreshed and re-energized to go back into the office today and work again. It was a good experience to get out of the centre here and see a little more of PNG - not just Madang and the coast, but also the land in between. I have a better perspective on the diversity of the geography here, why more than 800 languages have developed in the country, and why there are actually still areas where many people have never seen a "whiteskin". The mountains offer few places to put a runway, and the roads (if they exist) are as described above: barely passable. The landscape is breathtaking at times though.

I won't be here in Ukarumpa long, as I'm leaving Friday morning to go to the Kuman New Testament dedication. That will be another experience that I'll have a lot to say about. It should be exciting since it's the culmination of many years of work, and it's the real reason why everyone is here serving with SIL in Papua New Guinea.

I had asked for prayer for the visa situation lately, and God has been answering those prayers. Everyone who needed a visa before the end of June now has one, and to my knowledge, all of the many families leaving in the last week and a half were able to go on time. Continue to pray since there are still others planning to leave in July... but the biggest problem is past, and everything went well.

Another prayer request here is for the Kuman dedication this weekend. The family who did the translation said that there has been a lot of spiritual warfare in this during the last few months, and currently there are some issues in getting the bulk of the printed New Testaments to the dedication site and in a condition that they can be distributed. Pray that all the logistics will be worked out and that things will be ready on time.