Foreign to Familiar

It’s a weird feeling when you suddenly realize that speaking in a foreign language feels natural. You listen to the conversations that you have at home and notice that you interchange your mother tongue with phrases that would be unintelligible to your friends back in your home country. It feels really strange… but really normal.

Neither of us have had our final language check to officially approve us as accomplished Pidgin speakers. But speaking and listening to it both feel so normal now. It’s so exciting to see where we were just 6 months ago compared to where we are now.

Yeah, we still make mistakes, leave out a word here or there, or have a mind blank where we can’t remember basic phrases. But we are making progress!

One language (mostly) down, one more (Uriay) to go!

Uriay is a much more complex language than Pidgin, so it will probably take us several years of studying to learn it. But we have an advantage because all the grammar analysis has already been completed on the language and the alphabet has been developed, so we can dive right into study without having to figure out all the tough stuff! Hopefully we can kick off our Uriay language study by the end of 2016!

New Year's Motivation

I never thought we’d start 2016 like this. In some ways, it’s a good start, because it makes the reason why we’re here so much more vivid and real. Yet it’s also a really, really hard start.

One of our national friends died early on New Year’s Day. It was very unexpected. And very much not an accident. The senselessness of it all is overwhelming. Yet through it all, I cling to the fact that God is good.

We sat with the family and friends as they grieved. I wish I could describe to you their grief. The wailing. The sobbing. Grown men walking down the road crying like babies. We cried with them. We hurt with them.

Death is real and raw here.

We certainly didn’t expect to start our year like this with hearts heavy and hurting for our friends. But I’m so glad that this family has hope. So many people all across PNG are facing death daily, and their grief is unending because they do not know Christ.

Last week, a very sick man from a nearby tribe was flown out to town, and we drove him to the hospital. He died there a few days later. In that crowded, dirty place. And he died without hope, without hearing the Gospel. The missionaries in his tribe hadn’t had a chance to do any Bible teaching. They had hoped he would survive, but he didn’t. His eternal destiny is sealed, and it’s so, so sad.

We didn’t hear the death wails for this man, but I can only imagine. The intense grief and hopelessness.

Like I said, death is real and raw here.

I’m thankful that we’re here. In this place. At this time. So many people don’t know, and we have the hope they need. As we go forward in 2016, may that hope be the thing that motivates us every day, wherever we are.