Tucked away in the mountains of the Amdu tribe, far from “civilization”, our means of communication with the outside world is through HF radio – talking to other missionaries on the radio and also using a modem that enables us to do email over the HF radio. Well, when we moved into the tribe and were getting our radio set up, we found out that it didn’t work! That meant that in order to do email, we had to take our computer over to one of our teammates’ houses to use their radio. While not the most ideal situation, it was working. But then our computer died! And to make matters worse, our replacement computer was not communicating properly with the modem. The short version of the story is that for over 3 weeks we could not send and receive email! Now we have things working and are very glad to be able to communicate with everyone again!
So, what happened in those 3+ weeks? Here’s a brief overview:
– We officially started CLA (culture/language acquisition). This language has never been written down so we are starting from scratch – using the trade language as a bridge to be able to begin to understand Amdu.
– Three babies were born in or close to our village – all boys!
– We celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary!! Our teammates took our boys for a few hours and made us a delicious meal. It really felt like we were in a restaurant – music, candles, jungle scenery (oh wait, that’s what we see every day!).
– Our bathroom finally has a door. After living here for almost 2 months, we replaced the curtain that was hanging in the bathroom doorway with a door that Bart made out of plywood. There are so many things that need to be finished on our house – we’re just taking things one project at a time!
– Baby Micah started to crawl.
– Luke and Titus are getting really good at cleaning the bundles of greens that people give us. The closest equivalent that you might be able to relate to is snapping the ends off of green beans. The people bring us big bundles of leaves that they pick from their gardens. Sometimes they are pumpkin/squash leaves but most of the time they are another leaf called tofi here. They have little curly vines attached and long stems that have to be removed before you can cook and eat them. Sometimes it feels like we are being overrun by greens! The people here eat a whole bundle (or more) for one meal but we haven’t worked our way up to that amount of consumption yet!
– Several other major projects (and lots of little ones) were finished on our house.
– Four planes landed on our airstrip. Occasionally we hear a plane and it is just flying over on its way to some other place, but for the most part, if we hear a plane, we know it’s coming here! Then someone shouts, “A plane is coming, a plane is coming” and lots of people pour out of the village to watch the plane land, see who it is, help unload the plane, and then watch it take off again.
– We got back into a good school routine for Luke and Titus. Because of all the moves and transitions, school this year is looking more like year-round school!
– The number of bugs in our house at night has decreased significantly since we were able to fill in some of the gaps near the roof.
– We have gone from just being able to say some basic greetings like “good morning” and “good afternoon” to being able to understand some of what is being said to us and haltingly give an appropriate answer – sometimes!
– We are learning more names and piecing together the family relationships. We recently found out that a man isn’t allowed to say the names of anyone in his wife’s family!
And we are just scratching the surface of all there is to learn and know!
Please pray for us as we work to learn the language and culture of our Amdu friends and as we seek to build meaningful relationships with them. In various ways, it is evident that we are in a spiritual battle. Satan does not want us here. Even when you do not know specific things to pray about for us, you can always pray for these things – unity as a team; ability to learn this language and understand how the people think; safety and health for our families; encouragement when times get tough; and a close walk with the Lord.
Thank you for your part in reaching the Amdu people!!