Goroka town has become very familiar to us, but a moments reflection makes me realize how different it is to life back home. Just over a month ago we were in the Netherlands and the UK. Shopping there, when it isn’t done online, looks like this. Drive the car to a large supermarket or shopping centre, park and then quickly get what you need and get home.
I enjoyed several office days of drafting portions of Genesis and carefully checking my drafts to make sure I hadn’t missed any meaning contained in the original. With an upcoming supply flight into Kovol though, I had to step away from “work” to spend 2 days preparing supplies for the flight.
The office time this week then, has been in Bible translation. The first start of the process is an exegetical draft where I study the paragraph to be translated and do my best to translate all the meaning there into the Kovol language. That is something I can work on alone while we are here in Goroka, and so it was to that I turned. It’s a huge task. My attitude has been one of just making sure I put the hours in as that is the only way to keep chipping away and making progress.
I’m building up a stack of drafts, so far Genesis 1-9 that are all waiting for me to sit with Kovol language speakers to start the transfer process.
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.
It is now our last week in the UK before starting our journey back to PNG. We will spend 10 days in the Netherlands to see family before hopping on a long flight for Goroka.
As our mind goes to our return to PNG next month (Wow! That’s soon!), we’ve been thing about what life in Kovol is going to look like. We’re excited that after years of language learning and preparation our team is looking to start our first literacy class.
What can that look like? Here’s a video showcasing a few other places in PNG where this work has been done.
Our time in the UK has seemed to fly by. We kept ourselves busy with visiting friends and supporters for 2 months, and then we it easier for a few weeks and allowed ourselves to just live in the UK. Now we find ourselves in a planning phase once again for an upcoming journey.
With my work on the literacy program finishing (for now), I’ve been able to get into the work I’ve been looking forward to, translating Genesis 1. When I say translating, I only mean the first step, the exegetical draft into the Kovol language. I am incapable of properly translating without Kovol people alongside me.