You’re going where? For how long? And what will you be doing there?
In just a few days our family will be getting on a little Cessna 206 and landing for the first time on a jungle airstrip in a remote tribe in the mountains of the PNG Highlands for bush orientation!
So, what exactly is Bush Orientation? Well, let me recap a little first. We have been here in PNG for almost 4 months now! That’s hard to believe, but it’s true. After having some time to get settled and feel more at home here, we began the task of studying the trade language (Melanesian Pidgin) and the culture of the people around us. Eventually, our goal in the future is to locate our family among a tribal group that has never heard the Good News of Jesus Christ. As we celebrated His death, burial and resurrection today, we couldn’t help but think of the hundreds of people groups in this country that are still living in spiritual darkness! But before we can go and live among a tribal group, we first have to complete our national language and culture learning.
That’s where bush orientation comes in. For 6 weeks we will be living in a tribe where a church has already been planted to help us get a taste of what living in the bush is really like. We will continue our Pidgin and culture study and hope to make great progress over these next weeks. While many of the people most likely speak only their tribal language, there are some who speak Pidgin as well. We will be able to see an example of the goal that is before us – a mature, growing church that is reaching out to the people surrounding them. We are also looking forward to all that we will be able to learn from the experienced missionary family that has served in this tribe for many years.
There will be many new things in the days ahead. Our electricity will come from solar panels on the roof. We will go from living on a mission center to living very close to the tribal people. Our minds will probably be swirling as we are daily bombarded not only with Pidgin but the tribal language as well. After the near constant heat and humidity of the coast, our bodies will have to adjust to the cooler temperatures found at 5,000 ft. elevation. (We’re looking forward to that change!!) The boys will have a new homeschooling classroom for a few weeks. And there are sure to be many other changes as well.
A few weeks ago we had most of our food and supplies flown in. We won’t be going to the grocery store for 6 weeks so I sure hope we sent in enough toilet paper!! We’ve never had to buy supplies for this long of a time so it will be interesting to see how well we calculated. Someday we might be buying groceries for 3 months at a time, though, so this is good practice!
Please pray for us in these next weeks – 1. That we will make good progress in our language study. 2. That God would continue to direct us regarding future ministry. 3. That we would get a good understanding of what bush living is like.
We will fly back out of the tribe on May 17 and then have a few days to debrief with our regional leadership before heading back to the mission center here. We will not have internet access while in the tribe, but we are experimenting with some different ways to keep people updated. (This post is one of those experiments!) If we aren’t able to send updates and photos here to our blog, then we will catch you up on the news when we get back.