Central area conference 2024

Once a year the missionaries of our central area meet for conference consisting of tribal reports, fun and Bible teaching. The central area consists of the highlands of PNG and the Madang area where Kovol is, so that’s the one we attend. PNG is a large country and so we also have Western and Eastern areas, and they have their own conferences.

Conference is only 3 or 4 days long, but it’s a highlight of our year. We get to catch up with our friends, laugh, hear updates, have our children attend a child care program and exchange ideas. Especially with our having been on our own these last months it was an extra special treat.
A team from a Church in the US travelled over to teach us over 4 teaching sessions and run a childcare program all morning. It’s 9am – 1pm of teaching, singing and tribal reports while our children are doing their own program.

I can’t say enough how special the childcare program is. It’s the only time all year long where our children are in someone else’s hands. It’s the only time all year it’s not just Mum and Dad teaching them the Bible. It’s the only time all year Gerdine and I get a solid chunk of alone time to talk with adults. We get to hear the challenges, milestones, prayer points and praise points of all our neighbouring tribal works. We learn from each other and connect. Upon hearing the Pal tribal update and getting the names of the faithful Pal Bible teachers, I realised that we don’t have a plan or vision for how the Pal and Kovol churches are going to fellowship and encourage each other as neighbours. There isn’t a Kovol church yet, but it’s worth thinking about when and how that relationship might start. It made me realise that I need to be giving those guys a ring to chat with them and pray with them about the issues they are facing in the Pal church. I should be cultivating those relationships right now so that it’s there down the road.

Having recently finished my full-time language study and moving into Bible translation I’ve been asking all my questions to the experienced translators who gathered for conference.
“This translation software does all these cool things, but which ones do you really use?”
“Your back-to-English version of Gen 37 is much, much more verbose than my current draft. How did it come to have that verboseness? Which stage of the translation process introduced it?”
“What language is best to do comprehension check questions in?”
“What resources did you find helpful when you started translating?”
Lots of questions to which I have gotten good answers. I’m excited to get back into Kovol to get back to work on translation.

Conference also involves a lot of fun. Saturday afternoon is waterslide time, which Oscar, Alice and Millie absolutely love. There’s a skit night full of silliness, meals provided for us, pies, and ice cream. What a real treat for us bush missionaries!
It’s also busy! I think Oscar, Alice and Millie were glad to return to the normal routine after 3 days of their vacation Bible school!

The biggest impact I feel from conference is a sense of a renewed perspective. We’ve been in the weeds of Kovol language and culture. We’ve been working away at massive write-ups and now I’m into translation and it’s easy to lay it all out: passage 1, steps 1-6; passage 2, steps 1-6 etc. Then you grind away at it until you can tick the box, rinse and repeat.
It’s particularly encouraging to hear from the tribal works further along than we are. We heard the stories of the church, what God’s word has done in people’s hearts and what life is looking like. It helps me restore a people-focused perspective rather than a checklist-like perspective. It’s easy to think about Kovol people in terms of how helpful they are as language and translation helpers. It’s exciting to think about them again as people who will hear and respond to God’s word.

With conference now finished we have 1 more week until we return to Kovol. We’ll do our necessary supply-buying in town which involves things like filling a shopping trolly with 30kg of oats, buying kilograms of strawberries and freezing them in zip lock bags and blanching bags full of carrots. Imagine only going to the supermarket once every 3 months and you’ll get an idea of the scale and hassle it can be!
Being quite excited to continue with Bible translation I am spending some time reading and studying to better prepare myself as a translator. Even though it is a great use of time, it doesn’t feel like a great use of time in Kovol. When in the village I feel the need to be “visible” talking or working with people and studying text books to brush up on translation theory doesn’t feel good when there are people sitting outside my house waiting to see me.

Conference has been a great refresher, and we’re looking forward to getting back to Kovol to continue. Even more though, we’re looking forward to the return of the Hansen family to PNG. It’s looking like November might work out for them and we’re super excited to see them soon! We’re trying not to be too excited because it isn’t 100% yet, but it’s something to look forward to nonetheless 🙂