Greetings from PNG! We arrived safe and sound, Saturday the 7th after a long but uneventful late night flight from Los Angeles (and a tearful goodbye to Darren and Heather who met us at the airport). Praise the Lord there were no hang ups or problems with anything along the way. We made all our connecting flights and breezed through immigration and customs in Port Moresby. For the time being we are staying at our PNG Highlands Headquarters in a cozy little guest facility while we sort out our affairs and make plans for the future.
Has it only been a three weeks since we arrived? It feels like a lot longer as our days have been full with all the details of settling back into PNG life. Of course, we won’t really be settled until we are back living in the Dom permanently and that sad to say will not be for a little while yet. Judy and I went up on Friday the 13th just for the day to see the house and all our Dom Christian friends. (Thankfully, our Christian friends had repaired our road down to our house so we could drive to the gate.) It was an emotional time for them and us. We love every one of them so much.
It was startling indeed to see all the damage in person. We definitely will not be able to merely repair the house where it stands. Both the house and the garage will have to be torn down and rebuilt for sure. The ground right next to the house is also beyond repair. It is now a big sink hole. And it turns out that what we thought was an earthquake was actually one of those PNG massive land shifts that happen from time to time due to heavy rain and the unique geology of the country. The result being a subterranean slippage that causes the top crust to sink and follow gravity downhill. According to our Dom friends, it had started early in the evening and continued all night. So praise the Lord they had time to run away to safer ground. The effect though was much like an earthquake; all that power and energy knocked the house down!
We met with our Highlands leadership yesterday and discussed our options. We will have to move and rebuild but the question is where? We have inquired from both Gena and Kapia Joseph about possible parcels of land that may fit our needs but the pickings are rather slim. There are only a few Dom people we can trust to be good, honest land lords and they have only so much usable land to offer. So we are still weighing our options in that regard.
Very soon Jim will make another trip up to the Dom by himself to investigate further into all this. He also needs to start getting our little clinic set up as a place to live for a while. The clinic is rather small, 12ft by 16ft but it has a shower/toilet room and kitchenette. We can make do for as long as we have to. We are tentatively planning on moving up to the Dom the first part of September and stay in our little clinic-turned-cabin while we take the house apart and rebuild wherever the Lord leads us. We just want to be back in the Dom among our people.
In the meantime we are keeping busy here at our PNG Highlands headquarters. Unpacking, repairing our truck, doing all the paper work PNG requires, shopping for building materials and getting to know our potential new partners, the Wuests, who are living here at our headquarters just across the way from us. Plus Jim is already doing translation related work here in our apartment as he has time.
We have many challenges as you can see. Please pray for us that we will know God’s leading and have peace about which options to take. Please pray that we will learn to trust the Lord ever the more for all our needs and that we will rest in His timing. We are so thankful that God knows all things and we just want to learn what we are to learn through all of this. God is good all the time so we rest in His goodness.
Thank you so much for your prayers and support.
Jim and Judy Burdett
Dom (dome) Tribe, PNG
Business Address: New Tribes Mission, 1000 E First Street, Sanford, FL 32771, USA
Translation account: Make check out to New Tribes Mission with attached note saying for the Dom New Testament Burdett account House Rebuilding Project: Make check out to New Tribes Mission with attached note saying for the CIP-Burdett House 744M98 |