PNG Cooking Adventure!

One of the most exciting things about being home on furlough is the FOOD! :) We eat a lot of "Western" style meals in Papua New Guinea, but it's a lot harder to cook there when you only get groceries every 6 weeks or so, and you have to cook a lot of things from scratch! And we can't consistently get things like good hamburgers, frozen pizzas, fresh salads, or even deli meat sandwiches. So we always enjoy eating those when we're home!

Sometimes, I wish my friends back home could come to PNG for a week just to see how different cooking can be there. Even relatively simple meals back home can turn into quite the ordeal if you don’t plan ahead. 

Here are a few meals that we make often when we're in Wabuku: homemade pizza, tacos, grilled cheese sandwiches, rice with various toppings or fried rice, and spaghetti.

Want to try your hand at cooking a Western meal in PNG? The following 15 statements set up a situation and allow you to choose how you might cook one of two meals. Choose carefully or you might end up with a disaster on your hands!

1.      It’s 4:30, and time to start working on dinner after a long day of language study. What meal do you want to make tonight? If spaghetti, go to 2. If chicken tacos, go to 3.

2.      You’ve chosen to make spaghetti. Time to grab your ingredients! If you go get your spaghetti noodles from the pantry, go to 4. If you get them from the fridge, go to 6.

3.      Chicken tacos coming right up! Better get that chicken cooking. Question is, where is it? If you get your package of chicken out of the freezer, go to 5. If you get it off your kitchen counter, go to 7.

4.      You go to the pantry and grab a package of spaghetti noodles. You rip open the package and… yuck! Bugs! If you decided to cook the noodles anyways, go to 10. If you decide to do chicken tacos instead, go to 3.

5.      You grab your package of chicken out of the freezer, but it’s as hard as a rock. No microwaves here, so there’s no way to defrost it in time to make your meal. Bummer! I guess you’ll have to make spaghetti instead. Go to 2.

6.      You open the fridge and grab out a package of spaghetti. The cold air in the fridge protects against and/or kills any bugs, so you don’t have to worry about those. You get a pot of water and prepare to light the stove to cook the noodles. You grab a match and turn the burner on, because it doesn’t automatically light itself. After several tries, it still won’t light. Then, you realize the gas bottle is empty! Go to 8.

7.      Good thinking! Getting your package of chicken off the counter means you planned ahead and pulled the package out of the freezer earlier in the day to thaw. You get a pot of water and prepare to light the stove to cook the chicken. You grab a match and turn the burner on, because it doesn’t automatically light itself. After several tries, it still won’t light. Then, you realize the gas bottle is empty! Go to 9.

8.      You finally get the gas bottle changed, the stove lit, and the water boiling. You dump the spaghetti noodles into the water to cook. Now for your sauce. If you get a jar of prepared sauce, go to 11. If you make your own, go to 13.

9.      You switch out the gas bottle and the stove finally lights. You boil the chicken, shred it, and add taco seasoning. Now for your tortillas. If you go look in your freezer for a package of prepared tortillas, go to 12. If you make your own, go to 14.

10.  You cook the spaghetti noodles, bugs and all. Most of the bugs float to the top, so you’re able to scoop them out with a spoon. Now for your sauce. If you get a jar of prepared sauce, go to 11. If you make your own, go to 13.

11.  You go to the pantry to get a jar of prepared sauce, but you can’t find one. Then you remember, you forgot to order any on your last grocery order! The next one isn’t for another three weeks. Oh well, I guess you’ll have to make it from scratch. Go to 13. 

12.  You search your freezer for tortillas, but can’t find any. Then you remember, you forgot to add that to your last grocery order! The next one isn’t for another three weeks. Guess you’ll have to make them from scratch. Go to 14. 

13.  Thankfully, making spaghetti sauce isn’t too hard. You get a can of plain tomato sauce, add some Italian seasoning, salt, and garlic powder, and throw in some cooked sausage or ground beef and onion. Perfect! You finally have your meal ready, even though it took longer than expected. 

14.  Tortillas are easy to make. Mix flour, oil, water, and salt; roll flat; and cook in a frying pan for a few minutes. Those are done… now for the toppings. Go to 15.

15.  You quickly mix up some sour cream (one package of thickened cream plus 1 tablespoon of vinegar) and shred some cheese. You do have a jar of prepared salsa, so you grab that as well as a can of refried beans. Put all those on the table, and you have a yummy chicken taco meal! It takes some time to make, but your family will love the Mexican flavor!

Hope you enjoyed that cooking adventure! While these scenarios might seem extreme, I've actually experienced all of them before at one time or another! Some of them simultaneously! :) It's just all part of learning to cook in a different environment on the mission field. You can also check out this blog post from a few years ago if you want to read more about what we eat and how we get it. :)

It's actually been fun learning to experiment and improvise and discover you don't just have to follow a recipe every time to make a delicious dinner. And I've enjoyed learning to make things I wouldn't have otherwise, like homemade bagels! :)

Our kitchen (our fridge is there on the left hand side. We have a separate chest freezer too)

The mostly homemade Thanksgiving feast we enjoyed with our coworkers last November

What We've Been Up To...

The blog’s been quiet recently. I used to have a grand plan of posting twice a week about our life in PNG. Now I feel like I’m lucky to post once a month! I want to get better because there are so many interesting things to share with y’all... unique experiences, things we’re learning, prayer needs, pictures. Hopefully I can get a bit more consistent!

Anyways, the past few weeks haven’t felt very “blog-worthy”, but they have been busy!

People ask us what our days look like on furlough. I’m sure it seems like we’re on a 8-9 month vacation since Clint isn’t working a steady job. :) But, we’re actually staying pretty busy. We don’t have a clear daily schedule. But it gives us lots of time to get together with family and friends in the area. We haven’t seen many of our friends for 2 years... some even longer than that! It’s been so encouraging spending time with them and catching up on life.

Plus, our flexible schedule gives us time to spend together as a family resting a bit and doing fun things that we haven't had a chance to do for the past few years. Things like eating at restaurants, playing at playgrounds, and going on date nights.

We're also excited that we get the chance to share a lot about what God's doing in Wabuku! We're getting excited for the day when we can head back and resume language and culture study, probably sometime this spring.

But for now, we'll just enjoy the Walmart shopping excursions, buckets of ice cream, swing sets, paved roads, fast internet, nice hiking trails, friendly fellowship, and fall colors in America. :)

Broken

The past few months have been some of the hardest we’ve experienced since being married. Between several deaths in Wabuku, sickness in our family, the situation with Ashlyn’s family, and being apart for a month, we feel like we’ve been on an emotional roller coaster. A rather exhausting one. We’re thankful for the ways that we’ve seen God working in our lives through each of these events. However, I can’t lie... it’s been really rough.

I’m more convinced than ever that Satan wants to take us down, and he absolutely doesn’t want the Uriay people to walk with God. He has held them in such incredible bondage and fear. Even now, many of our friends in Wabuku are moving their houses so they’re closer to the river because they fear that the spirits living in the jungle are killing them off. It’s so sad to see their fear! And Satan would love it if they stay that way.

But I’m also convinced beyond belief that God is infinitely more powerful than Satan, and His plan is perfect. I don’t see how He can work this for good. Yet He is the Master of making beauty from brokenness. Already, He has provided a house for us to stay in while we are in Georgia. He brought our little family safely together again. Our pastor connected me with an  incredible counselor who has been helping me focus on truth and wrestle through these crazy emotions. I have gotten to spend lots of time with my awesome sisters. And so many people have have been lovingly supporting and praying for us. I’m grateful!

Life is tough. God is good. We are broken. But He will heal.

 

Village in a Box And Other Stories (with a Video)

We’ve been studying the Uriay language for over a year now. It feels like forever, yet we’re excited that each day brings us closer to fluency and being able to share the rest of God’s Talk with our friends!

Most of our study time now is spent hearing and telling short stories.  We practice constantly, probably driving the people a bit crazy with our simplistic tales of what we did today. But hopefully the practice will pay off down the road. 

The verbs in this language are pretty crazy! We’re finding that some things, like the words for “coming” and “going” can change depending on whether you’re going up river, down river, into the jungle, or back to the village. And they can change as well if you’re carrying something. For instance, the phrase, “we’re going” is “mi maimi”, but the phrase, “we’re going on top/up (of the river, village, etc)” is “mi maneteme”. It makes it difficult to keep it straight sometimes!

We’ve been using two fun visual aids (ideas borrowed from other missionaries) to help us with our storytelling. One is called “Village in a Box”. Our coworker, Jason, drew us a simple layout of the village on a piece of cardboard. Then, we use DUPLO people (can you tell we have toddlers?) to act out stories around the village. Our friends always enjoy hearing what stories we come up with, especially when we incorporate little animal figures. It’s an awesome tool that allows us to make our stories as simple or complex as we want.

Another visual aid is a photo book. Throughout our time here, we’ve been taking pictures of the various cultural events (like hunting, scraping sago, etc) that we’ve done with the people. We’ve sorted each event into 8 or 9 photos on a page, printed the pages out, and put them in a thin notebook. Then, we can pull out the notebook and flip through the pages, trying to tell as much as we can from each story. It’s fun for the people to see themselves in the pictures and remember back to various things we’ve done together.

We still use flashcards and listen to recordings of stories that the people have done for us to help us with our comprehension abilities. But we’re excited at how fun these new methods have made our language sessions! And we hope they will drastically improve our language abilities as we practice.

Here's a quick video with a few clips from some recent language sessions. 

Back to PNG!

After 3 months in Australia waiting for Lance to arrive, we're finally back in PNG! The last few weeks have been a complete whirlwind. We found out that Lance's visa had been approved on Monday, March 12, and we bought tickets the next day to head back to PNG. A flurry of packing and cleaning ensued. We arrived at our mission base in Wewak on Friday, March 16, and our mission's annual conference for missionaries in our region began that evening. For 4 days, we worshipped and fellowshipped with friends, many of whom we hadn't seen for a year. We're so thankful we made it back in time for this special event!

Morning sessions of worship and encouraging messages for the adults with childcare for the kids

Enjoying some snow cones at Kids' Carnival

 The day after conference ended, we shopped and packed our groceries and supplies for returning to Wabuku.

All of our groceries go in boxes and are wrapped in black plastic to protect them from water



All of our supplies for the next month or so

And on Thursday, March 22, we headed back into Wabuku, less than a week after returning to Wewak! The normal 2 hour boat ride turned into 4 hours due to a slow motor, but we finally made it home!



Waiting for the airplane to take us home



Headed to Wabuku!

 

It feels so good to be back, though we definitely experienced some reverse culture shock. For several days, we hardly ventured outdoors as we cleaned, sorted, and unpacked. Today was our first "official" day back to language and culture study, and it felt good to get going again. We're really encouraged at how quickly we're remembering things we've learned. We're also enjoying seeing all our national friends again. They all love Lance and are constantly commenting, "Temrai keri!" which basically means that he's so big. :) Which he certainly is! He's doing so well adapting to his new life, and he's a really easygoing baby. He also sleeps amazingly well at night (sometimes only getting up once!), which is a HUGE blessing to us with language study! Can't believe he'll be 2 months old on the 7th!



A rare moment when all three kids were crying at the same time. Thankfully it's rare. :)
 

Our sweet, happy little man!


Thanks SO much for praying for us as we get settled back into life here and get back into a routine with language and culture study. Sometimes, it feels like we'll never master it, but we are encouraged at the progress we're making.

We Ain’t in Wabuku Anymore

Arriving in Cairns, Australia over a month ago was an absolute whirlwind. My (Ashlyn’s) crazy medevac and hospital visit combined with Clint trying to handle two squirming toddlers through busy international airports left us exhausted and disoriented in an unfamiliar country. At least Australians speak English! 

Kyler and Brooke's first time back in a grocery cart

Reverse culture shock was crazy. We literally wandered around the grocery store, trying to remember what kinds of things we could buy in a first world country. Even driving was a shock. Not just because they drive on the left side of the road, which we’re somewhat used to in PNG, but because the roads were straight and paved! 

Notice the kangaroo burger? :)

Our kids thought it was all crazy too, and they had a hard time adjusting at first. Kyler kept crying and asking to go back to “Kyler’s house”. Poor guy! But eventually, they adjusted, and they now seem fairly used to life in a Western culture.

We’re thankful for the place where we’re staying! It’s made the transition SO much easier. It’s almost like a motel for missionaries. Our apartment is fully furnished and has a kitchen with appliances. Such a huge blessing! There are laundry facilities on site, and they have a pool and playground, which the kids love. They also have cars that you can rent on an hourly basis, and they even have car seats for the kids! We’re so thankful for God’s provision! 

The view from our apartment

The kids love the playground

We’ve had fun doing some “touristy” things, especially now that my parents and youngest sister are here. And it’s been enjoyable having some of the modern conveniences and foods that we can’t get when we’re in the tribe. But we do miss PNG a lot, and we look forward to getting back to Wabuku in the next few months.

We have really missed pizza, good salads, and burgers! :)

The pool has been a huge hit with the kids!

We definitely aren't in Wabuku anymore. Australia is a very different place, but we're thankful to be here while we wait for Baby #3 to arrive. Hopefully he or she will be here any day now! :)