A Weekend Away

Mondomil in the distance

This weekend we went up to Mondomil for Saturday and Sunday.  This was for a little R&R, and because I was invited to preach at a church near there, at a little place called Kamang.  Kamang has been a favorite place of our son Sam, since it is the home area of his "PNG Mama", Esther Tausi.  Sam has spent a fair amount of time in and around Kamang, and refers to Esther's male relatives (at least the adult ones) collectively as "The Uncles".  The Uncles is a diverse group.  Some of them have been Jesus followers for a long time, some are notorious sinners.  At least one has been a talented marijuana farmer.  A good number of them have made commitments to Christ in recent weeks.

Kunje

I'm telling this story out of chronological order, in the spirit of "most important first."  In the service this morning, we heard testimonies from 2 people who mentioned that Sam was influential in their coming to Christ.  One is one of the "Uncles", and the second is the wife of another.  The first is the local Councillor, or elected village leader.  He said that Sam's influence contributed to the planting of the church there.  The second was Kunje the wife of Wilson, a nephew or cousin of Esther.  They had named their new baby Sam, in honor of Sam Bennett.  One day when Baby Sam was learning to walk, he toddled into the fire, badly burning his legs.  At first they intended to try to care for this at home, but Big Sam talked to them, and urged them to take him to the hospital, even giving them some money to pay bus fare and other expenses involved in going to Kudjip.  Then later at the hospital, Sam talked to Wilson about the importance of Christian fathers, and his need to turn his life around, for the sake of his son, if for no other reason.  In the next few days both Wilson and Kunje gave their hearts to Jesus.

Wilson and Sam

Kunje then asked Judy and me to stand, so she could thank us for Sam's role in their salvation.  Well, anyone who knows me knows that tears were streaming down my face.  I can't take credit for Sam, for his salvation, his love for the Lord, or his love for his PNG family--it was God working in and through him, and he made the decision to follow Jesus.  But of course, we were proud, and happy.

I preached my Prodigal Son sermon--the second time in Pidgin.  Three people came forward, I think all three committed Christians just coming to pray, not new believers.  That's OK.

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Well, more about the weekend.  We had wanted a little time away, and had thought to go to Mondomil, a place we love, and have been to numerous times before.  We invited Stephen and Amy Hollenberg to join us, as well as Dr. Steph Doenges and medical student Christiana Metzler.  We went up Saturday morning, and planned a hike up "Elephant Mountain" (named for it's shape), for the afternoon.  It was too rainy to try the steep, clay-mud trails.  So we enjoyed a warm fire, coffee, hot chocolate, tea, food and games in the holiday house.

Warm fire, good friends, good coffee, good food.

Stephen, Amy and Judy

They said that it looked like I was smoking something.  I am not.  I'm using a piece of pipe to blow air on the embers.  It worked well.

Steph is knitting, if you wouldn't have guessed!

This morning we had a pancake breakfast, then headed off to Kamang for church.  I preached, and Judy and I gave the congregation a Coleman lantern for use in evening services (there is no electricity in this area).  They had prepared a lunch for us (despite our telling them in advance that we could not stay), but we had to hurry away.

The steps were slippery.

This little guy was already asleep.  I wondered if he'd heard that I was scheduled to preach and was already bored!

The very young missionaries sat on the floor.  With Amy is Christina Metzler, a medical student from California.

Christina and Amy

After the service we went back to the holiday house for a quick lunch, packing, clean-up and a fast get-away to try to beat the rain, and the risk of an even muddier road.  We were home in Kudjip about 2:30.  Here's a look at one of the views we had on the way back down into the valley.

AB

Sign, sign everywhere a sign. Do this, Don't do that. Why don't you read the sign?

This falls under the general category of mundane daily life on a mission station.  I have noticed these flyers posted on or near the garbage bins around the station.  Our maintenance crew is responsible for collecting the trash, so I suspect someone from Maintenance posted them.

Read my translation first, then go back and study the photo:

"Notice:  Please do not put dirt or plant material in the rubbish bins.  Only put plastic or metal (in the bin).  Whatever material you can make into compost in your garden, do not put in the rubbish bin.  Please pay attention to this notice.  If you continue to put these things in the bins, you will pay a penalty.  Inform everyone in your house."

AB

The Big Party

We missionaries, we really know how to party.  And some amazing people show up for our parties!  Just look at this!

Dr. Einstein graced us with his presence.  He also brought a nice popcorn ball cake that was very popular.  I thought it was odd that he'd have to carry a reminder card in his pocket.

Who knew that Dr. Einstein was such good friends with Hawkeye Pierce?  Oddly, Randy Goosen was nowhere to be seen whenever Hawkeye was around!

The party was invaded by this band of pirates!  It turned out that they were quite friendly.  Notice that the smallest pirate (Ethan Goosen) wears his eye patch up on his forehead!  The medium-sized pirate is known as Jo Radcliffe in his other life.

I believe Quinton Schmelzenbach was a blind beggar.  Maybe he wasn't blind.  Well, maybe he wasn't a beggar.  I'm pretty sure it was Quinton Schmelzenbach.  We usually just call him "Q", so that we don't have to type "Quinton Schmelzenbach" as ofter, since "Quinton Schmelzenbach is long, and hard to type.

This medieval princess is sometimes known as Allison "Alley Cat" Dooley.

Can you read their name tags?  They are "Jean" and "Gene" and dressed in blue.  You figure it out.  Stephen and Amy Hollenberg.

There was even a concession hawker.  Lydia Radcliffe didn't manage to sell much.

This, I believe, is a Gypsy fortune teller.  I don't usually patronize fortune tellers, so I wouldn't know.  She does look a lot like Jessica Myers.

And my personal favorite costume, Karla Deuel as a refrigerator door.  It is decorated, as all good refrigerated doors should be, with missionaries' prayer cards, held on with refrigerator magnets!  I do notice that our prayer card is not there.

Every good harvest party needs games.  Bobbing for lemons didn't turn out to be the most popular.

And, of course, treats.  Each family brought something to cook for themselves on the fire (most popular were "hobo dinners"), and a treat to share.  There was enough.

The foil packets on the fire are the hobo dinners.  I wanted to include a few more missionaries, and this shows Jordan Thompson in the red shirt, Scott Dooley cooking 3 hotdogs (I'm sure he was helping his kids) and Tim Deuel in the white shirt.  And of course, Hawkeye Pierce on the far side of the fire.

As you can tell, we have a lot of fun together.  We are blessed to serve with a wonderful, compatible, congenial, godly, faithful group of missionaries, and we love getting together.  We thank God for them.  I'm sorry I can't show them all.

AB

The Gas Boys

These are our nurse-anesthetists.  They are all graduates of Nazarene College of Nursing, and of the Post-Basic training program in anesthesia in Port Moresby.  They have all three proven themselves to be careful and serious about their work, and they all have great attitudes toward service to the people here.  When we have to do something after hours, it is a great blessing to have staff who come cheerfully without complaining.  They are David, Petrus and Las (pronounced "lahsh").

AB

The Big Wedding

Many of you know that we've been building up to a really big event here at Kudjip--the wedding of Dr. Becky Wallace, and MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship) missionary Matt Preece.  Becky is with for a year, as a volunteer through World Medical Mission.  The story (many stories, really) can be found on their individual blogs at here (for Becky's now discontinuing blog) and here (for Matt's side of the story, and the one they will do together from now on).

Well, Saturday the big day finally arrived.  I'll try not to tell you too much detail, but understand that other than a skeleton crew left behind to keep the hospital functioning, all of your Kudjip missionaries, and many of our national friends were away for the day.  MAF is a much larger group than we are, and although only a fraction of their folk could come, it was an even larger group than the Nazarenes!

The wedding party and the musicians went up to Randan Ridge Friday evening, a group left at 7 AM Saturday to help with decorating, and the rest of us, in 4 more Land Cruisers left Kudjip about 8.  Most of us got back between 5 and 5:30 in the afternoon.

Randan Ridge, for those of you who don't know, is a hotel.  It's high up on the mountain to the south of the town of Mount Hagen.  The road is very rough, but once you get there, things are very nice.  They usually ferry their guests up in a huge 4-wheel drive bus.

There is the main lodge, a long, curving building, with a large covered patio within the curved part.  Beyond that is a long, winding fish pond.  There is a foot path that goes all the way around the pond.  The wedding party stood on the foot path, across the pond from the guests.

The wedding party was Dr. Erin Meier, Becky's sister Tammy, Becky, Matt, Matt's friend Mark from Australia, and Daniel, Matt's good friend and wrokmate at MAF.

Our table at the reception, with Brad and Nikolai Ballin and Cherith and Mikelle, and Simon and Esther Tausi.

Jim Radcliffe speaking on behalf of Kudjip Hospital.

Matt and Becky sharing at the end of the reception.

By the way, most of the PNG Nazarene Missionaries who blog have stories and photos.  See our blog roll on the left of the screen.

AB

Golnamne Church of the Nazarene

This morning we were off to a bush church at a place called Golnamne.  Not hard to pronounce once you practice it a couple of times.  It's the home village of our friend Apa.  We shared his story in April, 2010.  Our friends Simon and Esther Tausi (we've talked about them too many times to link to all of them) and Simon's brother Nason and his wife Neom are here, both for the recent Women's Conference, and for the upcoming National NMI Conference, and they all came along as well.

Golnamne is in an area we've never visited before.  The church people worked on the road, so it would be easy for us to get there.  The road must have been pretty bad before!  Going down a hill, at one point the mud was so slippery that even in 4-wheel drive, the steering had no effect on the direction of travel of the cruiser, and the left tires slipped right into a drainage ditch.  That wouldn't have been so bad if the ditch had been going our way, but it was clear that I couldn't continue to follow it indefinitely!  Apa is a very strong man, and he was surrounded by his strong relatives.  In a few minutes, they had brought a couple of big planks and built a ramp out of the ditch.  I drove right out, and the rest of the road went by without problem.  However, Judy and several of our friends had decided to walk down the hill.

The folks who walked down the hill arrived a few minutes after we did.

 The congregation had prepared welcome signs on the ground made of flower petals. 

The church lined up to receive us with warm handshakes and a welcome song.

 Me preaching

 Visiting after the service

Some people had no confidence in the car, and walked back up the hill.  There was no trouble getting up in the car!

Here's a little video, shot with my pocket camera of the welcome, then of the Tausis and a few other friends singing a special song in the service.  There's also a brief shot of Simon giving a testimony.  It was so moving that I wanted to share it, but I was disappointed to discover that his voice had been too soft for my camera to record.  His face and gestures say a lot.

A Night Away

How our friends Larry and Aarlie Hull came to own a coffee plantation is a fascinating, but long story.  For now, all you need to know is that we have American friends who have a moderate-sized coffee plantation about a half-hour's drive from Kudjip.  They travel back and forth from their home in Centralia, Washington to Madan Estate several times a year.  We have visited them there several times, but never over night.  But last night we changed that.  We drove out right after my work at the hospital was done for the day.  We had supper on their verandah, visited into the evening, then slept in their upstairs master suite.

The Hulls don't use the suite themselves.  I'm sure that this goes back to the days when they were partners in the plantation with another couple, who lived at Madan full-time, and slept in the crow's nest.  Larry and Aarlie still sleep in the same downstairs bedroom that they started using in those days.  The suite has a bedroom with a big round bed, a separate room that was probably originally intended to be a study and a bathroom.  The bedroom has windows on three sides.  You have to understand that it's built on top of a big house that's in turn built on a big hill.  Sorry that we don't have a photo taken from the suite.  You'll have to use your imagination based on the photo taken of the house from across the coffee fields.  By the way, Judy is pretending to be a security guard there at the gate!

Saturday morning we got up and had freshly-roast peaberry coffee (if you don't know what peaberry is, you won't be impressed anyway) on the verandah, along with fruit, toast and cereal.  Then we were off for a stroll around the plantation, along with some of the Hull's delightful employees.  I'll just caption the photos.

The Hulls have built a health clinic on the plantation, and are in the process of finishing a birthing center, which you see in the left background.  In the picture of us with Larry, are the nurse and 2 aides that they have hired to staff these facilities.  Above the birthing center are small apartments for the aides.  The new literacy center and library will be built near-by.  They have already had literacy classes, but the new building will allow them to expand this ministry.

One of the security men told us about some small caves on the hill where the house is.  The local people revere these caves, apparently as being home to "dwarfs" leprechaun-like legendary creatures.  The man who originally built the plantation promised the local people that except for the house (a pretty big exception, I think) nothing on the hill would be disturbed.  When the owner before the Hulls started clearing some forest and leveling some land for staff housing, the locals became upset, but the owner said that as a Christian he didn't care about the stories of the dwarfs.  One night, the security man told us, the dwarfs came and climbed up on the roof of the house, and stomped around loudly, frightening the owner and his wife, who called for help from the security staff (I don't know what they did to help) and then stopped the construction project.  I wanted to see the caves.

In the picture we are in front of the rock structure where the caves are located.

 

The first cave I saw was very small, just a bit of a cleft, with a lower area extending back a few feet, but the second one extended further.  By crawling in a little way, I could see into a chamber that would have been big enough for me to sit up in, but not stand.  

 Here's the crawling part.  I could see an extension, but couldn't tell how far it went, and I didn't want to go through the small passage I would have had to crawl through to get in and see more.

You can see how muddy my legs and arms got.

We went back to the house to wash up and have some lunch (along with some more of the great Madan coffee) before heading home.

All photos by Aarlie Hull.

AB