spring 2012
TRANSCRIPT
great to settle into our new home with her around!
Greetings from the Pacific Orientation Course! We feel we are becoming more oriented to life here every day and are on a very steep learning curve! We have had language lectures, medical lectures, lectures on kinship, multi-cultural teamwork, food dehydration, 4-wheel driving, cargo cults, fire lighting, water purification, radio skills, together with conditioning days with swimming or hiking (or a combination of the two!), and many many cultural/ language opportunities (often involving food!), including visiting and hosting local families, learning bush crafts, worship services, going to the garden, going to the market, house building, sharing testimonies or just ‘storying’.
It’s been a whirlwind of a ride, but we have enjoyed (almost!) all the new experiences: new sights, new sounds, new smells, new tastes, and new bugs (see the tarantula pictured right!).
End of wet season visit… Immediately after the Pacific Orientation Course, we will move to Wewak (flights booked for April 29th). Laura’s sister, Suze will be visiting us there from May 2nd – May 8th. Pray this short time would be filled with the presence and the peace of Jesus. It will be
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Luke & Laura in Papua New Guinea
Wycliffe Bible Translators
Issue 1 Vol. 2 Spring 2012
News & dates
Learning to live in the tropics…
Finances provided! Miraculously, the whole of the charges for excess baggage have been generously met through supporters! Thank you all and thank You, Lord for this unexpected blessing!
By the time you read this, we will be in a village called Bamaro along the North Coast of Papua New Guinea. We will have the opportunity to put into practice our newly acquired knowledge and skills, but also get to learn more! Day-to-day life will be pretty different: hand-washing clothes and bathing in a stagnant river, collecting rainwater for drinking, finding and chopping firewood, cooking over a fire, and completing linguistic survey work, as well as many other cultural assignments – all in stifling heat and humidity! We’ve heard a lot of people say, “It takes longer to live here”. Simple things that we often take for granted in our home countries become an arduous, sometimes all-day task! We’ve been encouraged to adopt a new pace, to slow down, take one day at a time and set people above goals. PNG is a very relational society – they live in very close-knit community. The community takes precedence over individual likes and dislikes. We, in the West, value independence and privacy; whereas Melanesians tend to value interdependence and communal living. Our main goals for this stint of village life are to consolidate our language learning of Tok Pisin and to make the most of this ‘dry run’ so that when we go to future village allocations in the Sepik we will be well prepared for life there. Prayer
• That God would help us during this time when we are cut off from the outside world and immersed in PNG life proper.
• That the move to Wewak would be smooth and that we would transition well.
• That we would form good relationships quickly with our new team there and be able to begin our work in earnest.
Thanks so much for reading, praying, and loving us from afar.
Bamaro Village life
• PNG has the largest species of moth and the smallest species of frog in the world
• Melanesian Pidgin or Tok Pisin has a vocabulary of less than 2,000 words
• 75% of women in PNG are affected by domestic violence
• Infant mortality in PNG is the highest in the South Pacific
• 60-70% of people in PNG believe that HIV AIDS is caused by sorcery
• 60-70% of Port Moresby University graduates believe that HIV AIDS is caused by God
Luke’s birthday 27th May Laura’s birthday 15th Sept. Anniversary 21st July 2007
A few stats…
Luke & Laura Warrington Tel: +67571226958 PO Box 291 Wewak ESP 531 Papua New Guinea [email protected] [email protected]
“But the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.”
Habakkuk 2 v 14