With the goal being a mature church among the Kovol people, the Kovol language is an essential, indispensable tool. We, as missionaries, needed to learn the unwritten Kovol language.
A friend of ours put together a video to think about how that works, and Kovol features in the video 🙂
Oops, there go the plans that all seemed to be lining up. As there will be follow-on appointments it doesn't make sense for us to fly into Kovol on Monday as we had planned. We'll need to push things back 3-6 weeks while the wrist heals. It wouldn't be wise to be a 45-minute helicopter ride away from the doctor if there are complications.
Life in Papua New Guinea is so very different from back in Europe. After a week in PNG we've been acclimatising again. We've been finding that it feels at the same time familiar and different.
We're recovering from our 36-hour journey back to PNG this week. The jet-lag is still making us mega tired in the evenings, but otherwise we're happy to be back in beautiful PNG! I remembered to get my camera out on the journey and the result is a video that shows you a little bit of what it is like to leave home and travel to the other side of the world.
4 Comments
Lois S. · 07/10/2025 at 10:38 pm
Thanks! Enjoyed seeing you all in the language learning process!
SteveStanley · 15/10/2025 at 5:54 pm
Glad to make these videos available 🙂 Summer has gone a great job putting them together with footage from all different places.
Wonita · 15/10/2025 at 9:46 am
Excellent explanation. It seems to me, though, that I’ve heard it takes four years to learn language. Am I wrong in saying that?
SteveStanley · 15/10/2025 at 5:51 pm
No, not wrong! It depends is the answer. It took me 3 and a half years and Kovol is a medium difficulty language.
There are harder languages out there and then it’ll take longer. It can be a bit quicker too, for example if work has already been done and a grammar and dictionary already exists.
Circumstances, learner ability, availability of learning materials and language difficulty all play a part.