We’ve got a big challenge before us with learning the Kovol language and planting a Church. It’s easy to fill post after post commenting on the hardships as they come. The scale of the challenge means our mission has also taken steps to support us in numerous ways. I could Read more…
We can now add big earthquakes to our list of life experiences after PNG was hit by an earthquake measuring 7.6 on the scale.
We’ve entered a marathon in taking on this ministry of Church planting. This language learning section of it is pretty tiring and there are times (like last week) when I hit a low ebb in my energy and encouragement. Like the tides, it comes and goes, with the most important Read more…
So far language learning progress has been steady. It’s taking time, but month by month I can look back and see improvement. I understand the recordings in my audio library better, things I had found hard became easy and other little things like that showing we were getting there. I Read more…
I’ve been spending my language time recently transcribing audio recordings of Kovol stories that are about 100-200 words long. I started to feel like I was spinning my wheels a bit. I’d take a fresh story, work on it for 1-3 days and then I’d be done and would move on. It felt a bit like I was putting lots of time into writing these stories down, only to nibble on them just a tiny bit before moving on. It’s also a pure comprehension exercise because there’s no way I can speak anything like the fluent Kovol I see in stories.
Voice recorders are great things. Every day or two we’re using them to record phrases, stories, explanations and vocabulary lists. Often we record things above our current level and we’re able to come back to it later.
One such story was this little myth about how Sigol and Peme – ancestors of the Kovol people, possibly even the first people (they’re not sure) saw how the birds lived in homes and decided to steal them. This explains why people are civilized and live in houses, and birds live out in the jungle.
I’ve done the 20-minute hike to the village and then back again 5 times this week and the time spent plodding up and down the mountains gives me lots of time to think and process it all. We’re so glad to be able to serve here. Gradually day by day and week by week we become more and more familiar with what’s going on, we’re learning to communicate and we’re eagerly looking forward to starting literacy classes, and translating and teaching God’s word.
As my leg muscles burned on the climbs for the fifth day this week I was just thinking “it’s worth it”. The medicine I’m able to bring will probably save this guy’s life. In the stories I got from the family they referred to me as “mo”, meaning brother (from outside my clan). We’re starting to belong and soon we’ll be able to share the gospel with them which will tell them how deeply loved and valued they are by God.
We’ve put together a short video to show some of the sights and sounds of a day’s language learning in Kovol. Turns out it wasn’t just a normal day, there was election activity going on.
Unusual week for us in Kovol, it was vasectomy week. I quickly need to say we weren’t the ones doing (or getting!) them. We hired a family planning doctor from Goroka to come for 4 days and provide vasectomies free of charge for the men who want them.
It’s election time in PNG. Passions can run high, candidates hit the campaign trail and the highway fills with buses decked out with campaign posters and loudspeakers. That’s how we’ve experienced things before (in town), but with the date for voting drawing closer, nothing much was happening here in the bush.