NTM PNG are cranking out the videos. It’s fun to see lots of Kovol footage being used, but I actually enjoy seeing all the other places a lot more. It’s amazing to think about how many people God has worked in to form the network of different teams serving all over Papua New Guinea.
These last weeks and months have been marked by the deaths of people I know here in Kovol and back home in Germany. My two granddads died and also my dear aunt just a week ago. I miss my family in these times especially and I wish I could be there with them. I find great comfort knowing that my granddads and my aunt are now enjoying being with God their father, because they believed that Jesus died for them on the cross paying for all their sins, and then He rose again, conquering death. I know I will see them again when I leave this earth either when I die or when Jesus comes back. Tragically, the Kovol people lack this comfort in the face of death.
You may have noticed not much blogging activity from us recently. That’s because we don’t want our ReachKovol blog to be filled with our adventures here in the UK. We know people are praying for us though so we want to start posting a little more frequently now we’re out of the hectic newborn phase.
When we arrived back in the UK in January we entered during a national lockdown and got a taste of what life has been like. Even the libraries were closed! In April our twins were born, queue exhaustion and sleep deprivation for the next 4 months.
We’re pulling out of that level of intensity (though twin babies at 6 months old are still tough!), and covid restrictions have mostly lifted so we’re able to start enjoying the UK.
NTM PNG just put out a new video. Right now our team is wrestling with how to spell and construct Kovol verbs, we’re deep in the weeds discussing grammar points. This video was an encouraging little reminder of where we’re going with all this.
Sunday night around 1 pm I was woken up by the sound of voices under our houses. The only people who usually wake me are my kids and my cat, we’ve never been woken by anyone from Kovol. I went to see what all the commotion was about. It was an emergency. A 4-month old baby had a terrible head wound and was in shock. 10 or so people were stood around looking sad and worried in the cold night.
A common thing in PNG culture is to be indirect. Imagine I want to tell my friend that I’d like them to give me their T-shirt; I would say “Hey, that’s a nice T-shirt!” The message comes loud and clear that I really would like to have her shirt. Imagine the potential for misunderstanding as, when we as westerners say “nice T-shirt” we intend to give a compliment and bond with our friend.
What do you want to be when you grow up? a young child was asked. “A missionary on Home assignment” he replied 🙂 I can’t remember where and when I heard that little anecdote, but it springs to mind often as we’ve now been back in the UK for 7 months.
Learning language in Kovol is like trying to drink form a fire hose. There’s always so much and you feel completely overwhelmed with it all. It’s kind of nice to have time to sit and pick over language data in a way you never have time for in the bush. It’s not a productive way of learning language. The fire hose of immersion is a much better way to learn to speak, but it certainly satisfies my sense of completion to be able to spend weeks poring over the data I elicited previously without a stack more arriving in my inbox.
Today when I started my morning language session it was a bit frustrating and discouraging. Nambi, a man who has some sort of authority in this village, came and wanted to tell me all the little names for rats, bushrats, birds, frogs, tree kangaroos and so on. My plan was to talk about pigs and I had already started talking Read more…
A Christian union group requested a few prayer requests from us and we shot this video in response. Silly Millie wanted to be part of it rather than sleeping 😀