Cole celebrated his 6th birthday on May 20th and we thoroughly enjoyed celebrating with him. The pokemon cake Maggie made was delicious and our homemade ice cream was out of this world. This time we made mint-oreo and cookie dough ice cream. Eating ice cream here in the bush of Papua New Guinea is our number one stress relief. Thank you Shara Moritz for the recipe!
Today we had a grass cutting, pǝgǝna give-away day. (Pǝgǝna means “stuff”.) We invited all the local Pal people (and some not so local) to come and cut all the grass around our houses and chopper pad. Many, many people showed up and in no time at all the grass was all cut. However, the grass-cutting was not the main event of the day nor the reason so many people came. Today was the day we had marked for giving our old/worn out stuff to the Pal people. We gathered all the clothes that our kids have grown out of, the shoes we’ve worn through, containers we’ve emptied, and much more (that wasn’t much more than ‘junk’ to us anymore). We gathered all this stuff and separated it out into separate piles; one pile for each Pal clan. We set those piles out on the chopper pad and then pointed out which pile was for which clan and let the people at it. The Pal people were thrilled to get ‘new’ stuff and we enjoyed seeing their faces light up as they sorted through the piles.
Also, we’ve announced who the students are for our first literacy class. Everyone is excited to ‘go to school’ and in just a few short weeks we’ll be getting started. Pray that this first ever Pal literacy class will go smooth and we will teach them well.
Also, our first visitors, Nate and Maria (Maggie’s sister and her husband), will be arriving shortly! We’re excited to see them and we ask that you pray with us for their travels and for their short time here with us.