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