So, most of you know that we’ve been living at our PNG mission headquarters for the last year, right? Our latest orientation class started out with 9 students, although we’ve ebbed and flowed due to sickness and associates with short term status moving on to various ministries after a few weeks. After bouncing between class times and village trips, this class is starting to wind down, and shortly we’ll be able to put a lot more time and energy into getting back to translating the Gospels for the Dinangat. Don’t get me wrong, we love working with our orientees! It’s a super fun job to get to show new missionaries the ins and outs of this beautiful country (and to once in a while have someone think you know a lot more than you actually do!) But for us, it’s kind of like the dessert coffee that rounds out a good meal. Working on translation and Dinangat discipleship is the “meat and potatoes” of our ministry, and we tend to feel heavy and unbalanced if we’re not spending much time in these. Our official orientation class time ends Friday of next week. After that, the full time students begin another 2 months of self-driven study, with us meeting with them just once a week for consultation or evaluations. But between now and Friday, the students will have 2 more classes and 3 more village trips. As our ‘grand finale’, we’ll have our students participate in a common cultural event called, ‘subim mambu’. Basically (don’t tell them this!) they’ll be led by our faithful language helper, Aute, in gathering all the ingredients, including live chickens, for a delicious fire cooked meal! They’ll take a trip to the town market to gather firewood and greens, come back to the center, then proceed to prep said chickens to a state in which they’ve been killed, de-feathered and cubed so that they can adequately fit into short pieces of bamboo for roasting on top of the fire, all the while communicating in only their newly acquired tok pisin language skills. You’ve never had chicken like this before! Moist, flavored with onions, ginger and greens, this is one of our favorite styles of PNG cooking. We’ll let you know how it turns out!
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