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After From Martha Wade, June 22, 2008 "You shouldn't say that the child will die. When you say that they think that they have given too much medicine. Instead you should say, the child won't get better," Sepa said as he tried to coach me in using a better teaching technique with those trying to learn how to give medicine. He had a point as far as having a more positive impact on the student, but I told him, "Yes, but the child would still be sick and it would die so it is the same result whether they give too much or too little medicine." We had a lot of "dead" children that day as the men tried to learn how to read a chart and lay out medicine for different sizes of children. Once again, I had forgotten that tasks that to me are simple are in reality complex tasks that must be taught one step at a time. Some of the men from the neighboring language group had completed 6 grades of elementary school. Those few years of formal education made a huge difference in their ability to learn new information. At the end of the week, most of those men passed the oral and written tests that I gave and were able to take medicines with them back to their home villages. The men whom I have know and worked with for years in literacy and translation tasks, however, were not able to pass the test. Several of them were relieved when they did not pass the test because they felt overwhelmed by it all. At the end of one very long day during the course, the men said, "When we have the next course, we have to stay for two weeks. One week is not enough." Teaching medical courses is not a part of my training as a translator, but there is no doubt that the course and giving them access to helping their own people was meeting a great need. Please pray for all these new first aid workers as they treat their own people for pneumonia and malaria - two of the most deadly diseases in the area. Thank you for your prayers for my trip to Korea. God's traveling mercies were evident at each stage. The MAF plane that picked me up had to have an alternator replaced, but despite that he was able to take me to Madang along with two patients that needed to be sent to the hospital. After a day in Madang, I had a cancelled/delayed flight to Port Moresby and from there onwards, all flights went smoothly. I returned to PNG on June 22 and will fly to Pasinkap and hike to the village on June 24. Please pray that I can wisely use the next two weeks as I host a group of interns and a media team from the USA who will be at Angguna for the dedication of the literacy building on July 6. Pray too that I can think clearly as I pack up to leave the village on July 14. When I leave, I will be away from the village for more than a year due to activities in Madang (a literacy course and several checking sessions) and due to my plans to return to the USA for about 8 months beginning in November 2008. From Martha Wade, May 30, 2008
We had some interesting practical medicals come to the
village during the medical course that I held during the last week of May. One
of them was a From Martha Wade, May 1, 2008 Greetings! It is now two months until the dedication of the literacy building and I thought I would give you an update and some things to pray about. Praise God with me this current generator -- the third one -- has worked so far -- all of about 10 hours before the guys decided to make a trip to town. Pray that it will actually work and help the guys to be motivated to finish up making bookshelves, tables, etc for the building in addition to just finishing the building. While I was in town, I kept hearing them say they were working on the walls and I kept telling them that the walls were done and they needed to do the awning over the steps, etc. and so forth. I came back and finally I could see what they were talking about and it made sense. They did not like the "openness" of the walkway around the building. So, they decided to put woven bamboo "walls" all around the building from the "floor" to the "handrail." Even though I would never have suggested it, I think that it shows they are taking ownership of the building and making it into the building that they want it to be. It will obviously still be a work "in process" at the dedication day on 6 July, but it is completed enough to be dedicated. Now the people are trying to build houses along the ridge and around the building for housing participants at the courses and for the dedication. I thought they would do it as a unified group thing, but instead it is an each man for himself thing and the young unmarried guys are out-doing the older guys, though they are far from completing anything. Only one water tank is in place and functioning, but people often go there to get water because my tank seems to run out quickly. The first course will be held there on 26-30 May. It will be a first-aid type of a course that will basically teach people from 10 -12 villages how to treat people for malaria, pneumonia, and tropical ulcers/infected sores and other basic things. We will use the first room in the building for counting out all the medicine and packaging it up for them to take back with them. It will be nice to have a room with a floor rather than dirt to work in. My house will definitely be too small for about 20-25 guys spread out counting pills. The girls have surprised me in that they all decided to make bilums/string bags for an offering to use to decorate the building inside. I'm not sure where they got the idea, but again it shows initiative and I am thankful for that. Next week they are finally restarting the school for the kids and it will be meeting under the building because there is still no church building in the village. Thank you again for your service to God and to the Apal people for coming here to build the literacy building. It will be years before we see the full effect of it. Please pray that the dedication will be a time a evangelistic outreach to the many neighboring areas who are not Christian. A group of media specialists from PBT's office in Dallas will be here for the dedication and will take lots of pictures and video footage so I'm sure that you all will get to see some good presentations of it all. Please pray for the time or repentance/returning to God that is scheduled to happen in May for the entire village. For some people it has been 6 years or more since they excused themselves from any leadership role in the church. Pray that Satan will not disrupt the plans for repenting in this formal ceremony. Pray for unity in the community despite repeated attempts by Satan to bring chaos into the community.I From Martha Wade
As I looked up at the pastor, I couldn't believe my eyes, he and the young man
who was the offender in the incident had their arms wrapped around each other in
a bear hug and both were crying and talking. The young man was repenting of his
sin and the pastor was extending grace. I tried to transpose this incident to
the USA and all I could picture was the pastor with a shotgun in his arms aimed
at the young man. The young man had committed adultery with the pastor's wife
and about torn the pastor's heart out and almost destroyed his ministry and yet
the pastor stood there extending grace and forgiveness to the sinner. The
pastor's wife stood just a few feet away as she repented of that sin and asked
for forgiveness from the many women in the community whom she had offended over
the years. Both had just made public acknowledgment of various sins and failures
in their lives and after that the community had come forward to cry with them
and extend grace. From Martha Wade, 1/30/2008 Below is a story from January. Originally it looked like my dog Nala and I would be the only ones on the plane with a minimal amount of cargo - mostly computer equipment. On Saturday, the scene began to change. David, a pastor from the neighboring language group, came back for follow-up on a tropical ulcer he had on his knee. For two months we had been trying various treatments/antibiotics, but nothing seemed to totally clear up the infection. I thought about taking him to the hospital if there was space on the plane, but he assured me that he was quite willing to go to the Health Center at Kwanga, if my boat could take him there after dropping me at Chungrebu. He thought that a shot (rather than oral antibiotics) would clear up the infection. I agreed to that plan of action, but in the back of my mind I was still wondering, "Is this one of those strange Buruli ulcers that is caused by bacteria similar to TB?" Shortly after David left, another older man arrived who had had the misfortunate of being in a village when a "tame" cassowary (slightly smaller than an ostrich) went berserk and almost killed a woman and then knocked the man down and clawed him near his mouth in October. The woman's injuries had been life-threatening, but she had gone to the Health Center and recovered. Most of the man's injuries were minor and healed up nicely with antibiotics, but the wound near his mouth had never totally healed and once again that side of his face, was hard and swollen. Infections near the mouth concern me a bit more than an ulcer on the knee so I told the man that I thought he should go to Madang and have the doctors lance the wound because there must be something still inside it. He was agreeable and so we had a plan. Two men (the patient and his son) would be going on the plane with me to Madang. The plane was now full. Shortly after having made that decision and after I passed that information along on the Saturday afternoon radio sked, a men walked in carrying his young daughter with a very obviously broken arm. Triage! Neither one of these patients were dying, but it was obvious that the broken arm rated higher than a long term infection and I had to break the news to the older man that he would have to go to the Health Center with David and see if a shot would help him, but I told him I would double check the space on the plane on Monday. A few minutes before radio sked on Monday, a crowd came up and I heard them calling for me to come look at a child who had been injured. As I looked at the boy and heard the story, I knew that this boy would have to go on the flight to town if he was still alive in the morning. The boy had been in the garden with his mother and then he tripped and fell onto a sharpened stick that had punctured him just below his left ribs. His father said that about 4" of innards became "outards" and that he had poked it all back into his son to keep it from drying out. Having done that he laid his son in his canoe and paddled for three hours up to Angguna to get medical help. I immediately put the child on the strongest antibiotic that I had and gave the father things to bandage the wound. The father immediately left to paddle back to his home village and prepare to go to Madang the next day. At the radio sked, I asked Nancy Ann Wilt to plead with the MAF pilot to make space for both children to go to town, but since it was the end of the work day, I had to leave the village the next morning not knowing which patient(s) would be allowed on the plane. After a long boat trip with lots of motor problems at the beginning - spark plugs, fuel lines, etc., we finally made it to Chungrebu and 15 minutes later the plane arrived - talk about perfect timing. Thankfully, the pilot was one from Mt. Hagen who has know me for a number of years. When he heard about the medical situation, he brought the plane that could carry the heaviest load and he made sure that both children and their fathers got to Madang safely. Praise God for support staff in town and MAF pilots who care about the children of PNG. Please praise God with me that the boy, who was injured by the sharp stick, healed up nicely after surgery to repair his damaged spleen. Praise God too that after the doctors were finally able to anesthetize the little girl, her arm was set and it is now in the process of healing. Lord willing, she will regain full use of her arm after the elbow fully heals. Triage! Making hard decisions is one of the things I least enjoy about life in the village, but thankfully the outcome this time was very positive. Thank you for your emails and encouragement. At this time I am scheduled to leave for the village on 17 March. From Martha Wade, 1/15/2008 My email radio broke several weeks ago so that is why you have not heard from me. On 17 December the new generator arrived and that got the young men once more interested in working on the building. I think there is a universal thing about power tools and men! The old generator was "repaired" several times in Madang, but after each repair there was another problem and finally the director told me I should just cut my losses and get a new one. The new one is a Yamaha benzene generator with a 6 month warranty. [P.S. Jan 13 -- the new generator just had a major problem. It has stopped producing power unless you count 12V instead of 240 V as putting out power. I will be taking the generator to town and trying out the warranty on it if we have space for it. Medical patients, however, are a higher priority than a sick generator.] A week or so ago, the final pieces of wood were put in place to hold the bamboo walls firmly in place. So, winds are no longer a major concern. They have also made several trips to get more of the limbum (PNG linoleum) to finish off the veranda on the back part of the building. The girls and I finished organizing the last of the supplies in the building, but we can't complete the rest of the books until we get more plastic bags. As you will see in the update I will send out soon, there are over 8,000 books of various types in the two rooms that have been counted. I'm guessing it will be closer to 10,000 by the time we go through the last half dozen boxes. Most of these are little booklets, but still it made me wonder how I had room in my house for anything, especially since my house still feels too full. Unity is still the major prayer need. They had an exchange of food on New Year's Eve to supposedly resolve everything, but within two days there had been two major fights. One was over something stupid and was sort of resolved by monetary payments within a few days. The other resulted in a major beating of parents by a son (Tony) who then left with his wife the next day for her home village. I have heard various sides of that whole story and I still don't know what the truth is. One thing I am sure of is that Satan has his hand firmly on Tony and his family and a very talented young man's skills are not being used for the good of the community. Please continue to pray especially for Lambert and Tony and Tony's parents. Praise God with me for the baptism at Uavu (about a 6 hour hike from here) at Christmas. I'm not sure of the exact numbers, but I was told that 14 people of various ages (all older teenagers and adults) were baptized. A week after that major time of celebration in the life of the church, there was a very sudden death of a healthy young man in his early 20's. He was fine one day and dead the next. I have seen this happen and you can imagine the dampening affect this has had on the church especially since it was a relative of the major church leader in that area. Please pray that they will continue to stand firm in their faith despite the difficulties. Thank you for all you did for the Apal people in July. It is going to take a while for them to develop the leadership skills needed to oversee the building and to run programs there and it is obvious that there is a major spiritual battle going on, but we know that God will ultimately win the real battle. Praise God with me! The Gospel of John is now complete and ready to be checked by the village men later this year. From Martha Wade, 11/7/2007 During these last few w Please pray for unity in the community. Satan has been hard at work distracting people from the task of finishing the building. Pray especially that men from another village will come later this week to work on finishing the building. I will send more details in the next week or two, but I wanted to send these pictures out with Jaymi while I had the opportunity. Hopefully, these were not too big for your email systems. From Martha Wade, 10/4/2007 There has been slow, but steady progress on the literacy building during this last months with lots of learning about generators and how to teach men to do new tasks. Praise God with me that the two book storage rooms are now filled with shelves and that a huge mountain of books is now at the building awaiting the arrival of Jaymi Cook, an intern who has graciously agreed to take on the huge task of organizing the books. Thank you for your prayers and emails during these last months. God has been very, very gracious in answering your prayers. Jaymi Cook will be with me for a month. Please pray that we can have an effective time together working on literacy things and teaching another course together at Gandep (October 23-29). Pray too that Jaymi and I will have time to discussing various translation tasks as she sees me doing translation checking and as the national translators and I begin to translate the Gospel of John in November. From Martha Wade, 9/17/2007 These last few weeks have been very slow. Lambert worked for a few days, but we had generator problems and other glitches on the few days that he worked. Tony was gone during that time. He came back Friday night and was planning to escape for a month or so to Madang when I was told that he was back in the village. Thankfully, I was able to offer him an alternate way of getting some things back to the village since I will be going to Gandep to teach a course at the end of October. When I made that offer he agreed to stay this week and part of next to get the two book storage rooms and shelving done so that they will be ready for the intern to organize the books in October. Today we did generator maintenance -- changed the oil and prayed seriously for the machine. Thankfully it started and seemed to be running again -- praise God for his mercy for the mechanically challenged. The wood for the rest of the shelving arrived Friday night. Today Tony put the second coat of polyurethane on the empty book room. Tomorrow he should be able to start putting together the shelving in that room. He also put the first coat on half of the room that has shelves in it and will be working on finishing the floor bit by bit during the rest of the week. On Wednesday the few men left in the village are planning to work on finish up the walls on the building. Pray that they will be encouraged and that they will find joy in working together. They are a rather dispirited group at the moment. Most of the families and all the older kids of the rest of the families left last Wednesday for a very extended fishing expedition upriver. After they finish all the fishing, many of them plan to take fish into an area closer to Madang to sell. Everyone left behind is sort of in poor health anyway and that is why they stayed. Pray that they will work together well in a spirit of unity. Building progress has been very slow, but thankfully translation work of various kinds has been going very well and that has kept me from thinking too much about the building challenges. Another interesting point was that last week as I worked with the Mum language group on their Mark Study Guides, one of them mentioned that the nurse at Katiati had applied for funds and permission to begin serving the Sogeram River area since it lacks service. This would mainly involve period clinics and giving of vaccinations. The Mum group said she was wondering about the possibility of setting Angguna up as one of the centers. I told them that we had a beautiful building with a big room where medical people could store supplies, etc. and so forth. At this point I'm treating it as just something somebody wants to happen, but it was encouraging to hear that a medical person was actually thinking about the needs of the Sogeram folks and trying to do something about it. Please pray that something of this nature will become a reality. Another piece of news, a little over two weeks ago the "church building/school house" collapsed in a storm -- thankfully no one was in it. So, for the last 3 Sundays we have been worshipping under the building sitting on the odd pieces of timber left over from the bearers and joists -- they make nice little benches when put up on some of the long poles that were leftover. Thank you for all that you did to make it possible to have a place that can be used for clinics as well as being used for a place of worship, and hopefully in another month, a place that will be full of books. From Martha Wade 9/11/2007 This has been another good week on the building. Some of the interns worked with a few of the men and got the floor to ceiling shelving completed on 3 of 4 walls in one book storage room. In the process they were also able to teach the village men how to start the generator and use the circular saw and drill. In addition they were able to get the guttering plumbed into one water tank and put the tap on a pipe at a short distance from the building. We had a good rain last night to test the most recent work on the roof and I did not find any drip marks so that is an improvement. We still, however, have to work on the gutters so that water will go down into the tank. There will be no update next week since we are supposed to be doing translation checking. Please pray that the men will actually come to do the checking. The following week men from a distant village are supposed to come to finish up the walls of the building. Thank you for all that you did to make it possible for us to just be doing the finishing stuff now.
From Martha Wade, 8/30/2007 This week the guys worked on the building on Wednesday and basically completed the weaving of the bamboo walls and begin putting the trim on the walls to hold them in place. Jeffrey got the idea of drilling nail holes in the trim pieces and as a result they are no longer splitting and are looking very nice. Tony and Lambert cut the big long shelving unit in half and as soon as the other book room is finished, they will move it in there. This week the wood for the rest of the shelving units was purchased and cut up in town and will be shipped out here by plane and boat in a couple of weeks. Please pray that the leadership will be united and that they will set aside another day this coming week to finish up the walls so that we can proceed to the next step. Pray too for wisdom for the guys as they try to find solutions to other challenging things in the building process. ______________________ From Martha Wade, 08/26/2007 This last week was a disappointment to the people here because the folks from a distant village did not come as they had promised. Because of the death in the village, however, it probably was just as well. The good thing that happened in the last two weeks is that Tony and Lambert worked several times on building the floor to ceiling shelving. They have finished all the shelving in one room and they started on the shelving in another room. Unfortunately, they built a beautiful shelf in the wrong room. After considering various options, they have decided to cut the shelf in half so that they can move it out of that room into the next room. I assumed, falsely, that they were reading the house plans correctly, but they got confused. The good thing that resulted from this is that we had a big meeting on Sunday and the men finally designated James with Tony as his assistant to make decisions and get things going on the building. Up until this point it has sort of just been running without a leader, but that hasn't worked well. Their current plan is to work on finishing the walls later this week. Please pray for James and Tony as they lead in the project. Pray that God will guide them and that I will know how much supervision to provide and how much to allow them to learn on their own. Thank you for praying and supporting this project. In Christ,Martha ================================ As the evening wound down and other leaders shared words of praise and thanks, Mike Harbin the leader of the work team, challenged them to make sure the building is used to glorify God. In response to that comment, one of the national translators said something like, "We have not gone to school. We haven't worked with leaders and been taught to do things. Pray for us so that we can finish the building and use it to do good work." As I tried to translate his comments, I just about got choked up. The speaker was the sharpest national translator I work with -- a man who if he had had a chance could have been a college graduate. Please pray for the Apal leaders as they complete the building and learn new skills such as how to manage a building and run various courses that will strength the church and help the lives of the people throughout the Sogeram River area. Praise God with me that the literacy building is down to the finishing stages through the combined efforts of the PBT teams in town buying and shipping supplies; the leadership of Frank Sanders from the Australian Churches of Christ at the work site; and the hard work of the Southwest Christian Church work team (Normer Adams, Ridge Boynton, Pete Dockery, Mike Harbin, Curtis Mauldin, Doug McNash, Phil Mercer), Brian Wilt (son of PBT missionaries), and many Papua New Guineans. Throughout the 2 ½ weeks of the actual construction time, Celeste Wilt (daughter of PBT missionaries) kept everyone fed and very happy. As several people commented, none of the wood was quite the size that was ordered (pretty typical for PNG), but somehow out of the materials that the work team had on hand, they were able to construct a very sturdy building that has more than enough space for the storage of all the Apal books, a room for a nice library and several other big rooms -- one of which several of us have been looking at and thinking, "Wouldn't it be nice to do our translation checking in this nice big airy room rather than packed into my little living room!" One of the biggest blessings of having the work team come from my home church is that now when I am home in the USA, there truly will be people there who KNOW what it is like and can understand the work here in PNG. The team was truly a blessing both to me and to the Apal language group. One member of the work team has posted pictures to his website. If you would like to see these pictures, check out the following site --http://normer.com/2007/png/pngindex.html After the work team left, I had a few days of transition time and then I enjoyed a week with five interns and their coach. In addition to learning about translation and literacy work, some of the interns and their coach were skilled in construction. During their last few days in the village, they began building floor-to-ceiling shelves for the book storage rooms and trained some of the village men to use power tools and build shelves according to the pattern they had designed. Please praise God with me for his abundant grace and for doing what looked impossible so many times in the last couple of months. Praise God with me too for the checking team from another village that has been making good progress on 1 Corinthians during the last week. Thank you for your prayers on our behalf and for your encouraging notes. Please continue to pray as the people finish off the walls of the building and do other tasks on a part-time basis in the months ahead as well as working on various literacy and translation tasks. In Christ, Martha Wade ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From Martha Wade 8/10/2007This has been another good week on the building. Some of the interns worked with a few of the men and got the floor to ceiling shelving completed on 3 of 4 walls in one book storage room. In the process they were also able to teach the village men how to start the generator and use the circular saw and drill. In addition they were able to get the guttering plumbed into one water tank and put the tap on a pipe at a short distance from the building. We had a good rain last night to test the most recent work on the roof and I did not find any drip marks so that is an improvement. We still, however, have to work on the gutters so that water will go down into the tank. There will be no update next week since we are supposed to be doing translation checking. Please pray that the men will actually come to do the checking. The following week men from a distant village are supposed to come to finish up the walls of the building. Thank you for all that you did to make it possible for us to just be doing the finishing stuff now. ____________________________ from Martha Wade 8/04/2007 To all of you who played a major role in the building of the literacy building; For the next month or so until the building is completed, I will try to send a weekly email that will summarize what has been done in the past week. If there is no update during a particular week it will be because of the fact that there was no progress that week. Last Thursday after the last helicopter left, all of the men had a meeting in which they discussed how to proceed with the building project. I was really encouraged by their sense of ownership. They know what needs to be done and they said that they didn't need my help on things. Because of that I'm trying to remain as "hands-off" as possible on things. My main role is making sure they have the materials they need and then doing or finding people to do the tasks that they don't think they can do. This week after we got in the last piece of ridge capping, the guys put it on and began a thorough inspection of the roof using silicon sealant as needed. We haven't had much serious rain yet to check the roof and the checking process is taking longer than I anticipated, but hopefully in the next week they will get both the roof and the guttering completed and sealed. The rest of the flywire also came on the plane and so they were able to complete putting up the rest of the flywire for the actual walls. On Thursday of this week, a village from upriver in this language group brought down a massive amount of bamboo and people from various distant villages came and helped for a day or two on the bamboo walls. They still have a few external walls to finish and a couple of internal walls to finish. In addition to pounding and weaving bamboo, they also cut the palm wood for securing the woven bamboo and nailed the bamboo firmly in place. In addition to the bamboo work, the ladies collected more gravel and sand and the men finished off the first stand for the water tank, though the tank isn't yet connected up. I had planned for the interns to put on the polyurethane stuff on the floor, but the village men said that they could handle that task and asked me if the interns could instead do the shelving since they did not know how to do that. That sounded fine to me. God must have had this all planned out way ahead of time. Four of this group of interns have done carpentry stuff and built shelving/cabinets. They are very enthusiastic about the task. So, in addition to sending the perfect group of interns, God also worked it so that their time here was switched from being before the building of the building to after the building was under roof. We will be looking over things on Sunday and then Monday-Wednesday of next week I will turn them loose on the shelving and the other interns and I will work on literacy books for the La'o language group. Thank you for your continued prayers for the people and the project and for the people's ownership of this task and involvement in the whole translation checking process. In addition to working on the building project last week, other groups of men were doing checking of the first chapters of 1 and 2 Corinthians. Groups from two different villages have indicated that they will come for a solid week of translation checking later this month. Pray that their ownership of the building project will spill over into ownership of the translation project and that they will be enthusiastic about completing both tasks. In Christ, Martha ………………………………… Work Day 1 In Papua New Guinea ……………………………….. We have arrived in New Guinea. The flight was uneventful except for the 12 hour trip from Detroit to Japan, then a 6 hour flight to Port Moresby. Everyone except Normer got his bags OK. For some reason Normer's two bags did not make it to Port Moresby. We had a one hour flight to Madang today. Missionary friends of Martha's were wonderful hosts. They fed us supper, oriented us to the topics and showed us where we would spend the night.Tomorrow, we will take another flight to the bush and then a helicopter flight to Martha's village, Anguana. We are tired already, dirty (no one has changed any clothes since leaving Friday morning and it is Sunday night now. Hopefully, this will change tonight, some of the men are getting to be pretty rank, and I do not mean heirarchy.) We are anxious to get to
the village and start working. Traveling is difficult at best.
The plane trip and helicopter ride to the mission site were quite an experience and really spectacular. We flew just above the tree line. It was scary, but thrilling. Approximately 50 greeters greeted us upon our arrival. We feel very welcomed with the hospitality. Last night we all bathed
in the river. Some of our clothes have been taken to be washed for us
today by the villagers.
Today while talking to Pamela (Normer's wife) on the satellite phone, a flock of bats flew over my head. I believe they were fruit bats and they were as large as buzzards. Chickens are running around in the village. I am definitely in a 3rd world country! Last night we had a really hard rain. The villagers said it was a mild one, but it was a torrential downpour with 4 inches falling before it was over. Today I went in to the jungle with the natives. I was able to get some great video of them cutting trees and bark. It is very interesting to watch them as they cut the trees and glean the bark. The bark from the trees is used on the floors in the building like linoleum is used here on floors. We were in the jungle for 6 hours. Everyone carries a machete. Even groups of young girls carry their machetes. This is an experience of a lifetime for me. I am blessed to have this opportunity and I look forward to sharing this experience with everyone at home. Please continue to pray for us. Martha is a wonderful host and the meals she has prepared for us have been excellent. We are being very well taken care of while we are here. Martha takes care of everyone. It is easy to see the importance of Martha’s work in the village and all that is being accomplished. Martha is well respected for her translating of the bible and her medical assistance to the people. Martha feeds the people both spiritually and physically. Martha is a woman of God and God’s people love and appreciate her. The room that is to be used for the work of translating should soon be finished. This room is 12 feet up off the ground. We plan to start on the veranda next. It has been fun taking pictures and video of the villagers and especially the children are very curious about the cameras. They love posing and then looking at themselves in the view finder. Imagine being surrounded by approximately 50 children everyday wanting to look through the view finder. Praise God, my luggage has arrived! Three men have traveled back to the airport to pick up my luggage. I should have my luggage tonight if all goes as planned. I received my first bug bite while here. I told Martha it looked like a chigger bite. Martha informed me they do not have chiggers. Flea, chigger…it itches. Continue to pray for us. We are all well and we are all working well together. Normer With our stomachs full, we are walking down the path to the building sight to begin another day’s work. It is about 6:00am in the morning here. Passing by us is a small boy that is probably only two or three years old. He is butt naked and carrying a burning stick that he has removed from another families hut’s fire and is carrying it to his mother to start her fire for the day. The fire will be used for cooking, heat to take the chill of the morning off and the smoke will help keep the mosquitoes at bay. At night we bathe in the river in a remote area. We wear our swim suits while bathing. There are no crocodiles to worry about, (this was a worry of Pamela’s) but we do have to be careful of the fresh water crab in the river. The children are amazing here. Even the very, very young carry heavy loads. The children are helping carrying the heavy building material to the building site. We are making great progress. Our building is now looking like a building. All the walls are up and secured and the veranda is finished. I received my luggage yesterday. There were only a few things missing that were of no real importance. I am happy it finally arrived. Please continue to pray for us. It is another day here in Papua New Guinea. Yesterday we put in the trusses for the roof of the building and we mixed and poured the concrete for the stairs that we will build today. We are on track and making great progress. We have stayed healthy and have only suffered minor scrapes and bruises from our building efforts. The natives are very friendly and are eager to share with us their way of life here in Papua New Guinea. We feel very welcomed and appreciated. For one of our meals the natives were eager to share one of their local cuisines to show their appreciation…SAGO. We were gracious. We ate some sago prepared for us. Sago is much like paste in both consistency and taste. Some of you may have tasted it when Martha was home. She prepared it one Wednesday night for those who were brave enough to try it. Pray for us. Normer We are still making great progress with our mission here. The building is coming right a long. Please continue to pray for us. Normer Sunday - Mike Harbin telephoned the congregation via the satellite phone. The building is progressing on schedule. Everyone is well. -------------------------------------- And From: Martha L. Wade Date: July 22, 2007 1:18:05 AM EDT Saturday was another blazing hot day. The rafters were all finished up plus the team mixed and poured more cement for the landing for the steps. They also started putting the purloins on top of the rafters and are learning to work with very crooked timber. In addition, they were able to take a short cultural experience by walking 5-10 minutes to a river where they saw the people spearing and gathering up fish that had been stunned by poisonous vine juice. We are working very hard to finish with our building. Some of the materials have not been the best. We have two more days here to finish our work. Yesterday we had our first near miss accident. Let me just say before I continue, everyone is fine and no one was hurt badly. While working on the veranda and nailing in the last pole (poles are the size of a telephone pole and the veranda is 12 feet up) Ridge leaned against it and it gave way. Everyone scattered. Ridge then grabbed on to another pole behind him to catch his balance and that pole gave way as well. It was scary, but Ridge was able to actually straddle the pole and ride the pole down like a pole vault. We all ran to Ridge including the natives that were gathered around watching the horror. Ridge made it with no injury but some bumps and bruises. Praise God he was not hurt badly nor anyone else hurt in the building area. Poor Frank, our team leader has not faired as well from the near miss accident. The natives were furious with him that he could let something like this happen. The natives are fine now and all is well. Thank you for your continued prayers. Normer
Thank you for praying. God's protection as the men worked in high places was evident and by his provision of strength, much work was accomplished today. After resting on Sunday (as much as is possible in this heat), the men began working full force on various tasks today. The main task was putting railing up on both sides of the building along the verandas. This railing will make it possible for me to actually walk on the veranda rather than clinging to the edge of the building (heights have never been my favorite thing). In addition, the railing serves the immediate purpose of improvised scaffolding so that the men can put the roofing iron and guttering on the building. The actual roofing process began this afternoon despite a lot of gusty wind. Since the PNG men are used to climbing up high trees even when the wind is blowing, they are "taking ownership" of the building by helping with this part of the work. While the roofing was going up, other men were on the ground beginning the task of splitting and flattening bamboo that will be woven into walls tomorrow. They do not yet have enough bamboo to finish the entire building, but Lord willing they will be able to enclose the two book storage rooms first and then after that get more bamboo for finishing the rest of the building. Please continue to pray for safety and good health during these last few days of the work team's time here in the village. We are all very tired and looking forward to returning home to our loved ones. We have worked very hard to make this building a reality for Martha and her work. It has been our reward to help make this dream come true. On a light note, Mike had a little mishap earlier while putting in the flooring; he stepped in one of the many holes in the PNG linoleum (which is a characteristic of the PNG linoleum) and did a tumble. Only his pride was hurt and nothing else. If I were scoring for the Olympics I would rate the tumble a ”7”. Please pray for our safe journey home and thank you for all your prayers for this mission trip. Normer Frank and I are very comfortable here in Madang and are staying with Martha’s Bible Translator’s Support Missionaries. We are awaiting the arrival of the rest of our team. The men are standing by the Bush air strip to be flown out. Tomorrow we will do a fun activity before the other leg of our journey. While in Madang we plan to go snorkeling. We are all looking forward to this time of relaxation. We have worked very hard and have accomplished everything we could and planned to on the building for Martha and her work. My last day at the building site was spent being the mixing truck for the concrete we mixed and poured for the stoop for the stairs. I also help trowel the cement mixture. It was my first experience of pouring and troweling cement. I was pleased with my work for my first time, but no “great job” comments were heard. I guess I will never make a living in the cement business. I did build a rock wall which I do have some experience of doing and I think Frank was surprised and a little impressed at my skill. Please pray for our safe journey home. Normer We shopped at an open market in Madang where the vendors sell there wares. Fruit from the Bush was in much abundance and I gorged myself on it and could have eaten even more and more. The fruit is nothing like the fruit in the states. The pineapple was so juicy and sweet and creamy and mellow; it tasted like sugar had been poured on it. The bananas tasted like caramel and the papaya like a sweet honey due melon. After arriving in Port Moresby we checked into a hotel. We have a six hour layover here before the next leg of our journey home. We are all relaxing around the hotel pool enjoying the good life. We wish you were here! Normer Enroute ………………………………… The Journey Home - Day 4 ……………………………….. Sunday, July 29 We are stuck here in Detroit but have been given a meal ticket and a room. We are now scheduled to be home at 2:00pm tomorrow. We are all tired and disappointed we are not home. Normer Monday, July 30 Thankfully, we are back. Looking forward to a long nights sleep and rest from a long time in the bush. Looking back, it was quite an experience. One the all of us will remember the rest of our lives. We trust that we advanced the kingdom of God in the work that we began in Papua New Guinea. Thank you for all the prayers and allowing us to do the work of God through the Southwest Christian Church. We are home! Normer
|
eeks,
there has not been a lot of progress on the building itself, but there has been
a significant amount of work done with the literacy materials. After several
weeks of solid work, Jaymi Cook and her helpers have y there is sturned a large
pile of books into two rooms filled with neatly organized materials in the two
dialects of the Apal language. Both rooms are nearly full, but thankfullpace
in the middle of each room to add another row of shelving units when we need
more spaces for books.
