Tinani!!
Trip Start
May 27, 2007
1
6
16
Trip End
Jul 29, 2007
Alotau,
Papua New Guinea
Friday, June 1, 2007
hope you are all having an amazing day...night.whatever
time of day it is there! I have yet to figure out how
far ahead of you all we are, but I do know that we are
a day ahead! We did not have a Monday at all. When we
went over the "international date line" we lost Monday!
It is so amazing here! We are staying with the
Williams. They have an apartment on the ground floor,
so we have our own room and bathroom. The family is
really nice. They have four boys, but only three are
here while we are, and they have a daughter that they
are in the process of adopting. The guys that came
with us are living with the Ford family. They are
about a 20 min walk from us, but the Ford's are going
back to the states in 2 weeks and the guys will move in
with the other missionary family, the Reese family.
It feels like we have been here for a month, but we
have only been here for 2 days! We left the states on
Sunday night, lost Monday, arrived in Australia on
Tuesday and got to Alotau on Tuesday afternoon. Our
view is AMAZING! We can walk out our front door and
see an amazing mountain range that runs down the middle
of Papua New Guinea. They guys also have an awesome
view, and they don't have any trees in the way.
Yesterday we had time to relax, but Bethany and I both
woke up at 3 AM, and again at 4, 5, and finally at 6
AM. (The only room that has air-conditioning is the
little computer room that I am sitting in right now.
It is not very hot when you are in the shade, but
sweating is pretty much what we do here!) We finally
just got up at 6 AM and read and wrote in our journals
some. It was really nice to get up early and have time
to get ready to be here! Loopie Williams, the mom,
took the three of us to town and we did some shopping.
It is their winter and rainy season here, but it
really has not been bad. It rains a ton at one time,
and then it stops and the sun shines. When we got back
from town and were eating lunch a coconut tree in their
front yard fell towards the window we were sitting at,
but it was far enough away that it did not hit the
house! The lady that comes and cleans the house,
Susan.I can't spell her last name, picked some of the
coconuts off and husked it for us and we got the drink
the juice and eat the meat. It was really good!
All of the people here are so nice. It is a
matriarchal society and it shows. The guys just sit
around all day and stare at people and talk, while the
women really do everything. The missionaries have a
really hard time getting guys to come to church because
the guys don't see any reason to do anything.
Today we got up at 6 AM again and at 10 we went over to
the Ford's home to get our lesson plans because we are
teaching some Sunday school lessons while we are here.
Oh, I don't guess I have said this, but Alotau's
primary language is English. Almost all of the people
speak English very well. Outside of Alotau they don't,
but one of the missionaries knows one of the local
languages, so that helps a lot out there. After lunch
we went to see where we are going to host a 3 day, 2
night youth camp about an hour from town. We also got
to meet the man that translated the New Testament into
one of the local languages. He looked really old, but
I don't know how old he really was. He said it took 10
years to translate the Old Testament and right now he
is working on the New Testament!
I am not really sure what we will be doing for the next
few days, but I will try to send out another message
soon! Love you all! Please keep us in your prayers!
If you can, please only send messages to this thing
because we have to pay by the minute for internet and
it is dial up.so it is really slow! I will try to
respond, but I can't promise anything! Just know that
I really appreciate your support and I hope you are
all having a blessed summer!
Love,
Bekah
Comments
Love, Dad
Bekah,
Sounds like ya'll are getting in the groove of watching for falling palm trees and the other tasks at hand. Take care of each other. You are in our daily prayer and thoughts.
Love,
Dad
Sounds fun
It sounds like you all are having fun and are going to like it there! It's crazy that a cocunut tree fell towards you guys, but I think the fact that you have a cocunut tree in the backyard to fall is pretty cool too. Are you hand writting your journal again? You should make copies and publish all your journals as like a series or something. Anyway, have fun, good luck, and I'll talk to you later.
Timber-r-r-r!
Wow, that was an interesting welcome-at least you got the benefits of the fruit! It sounds like you're going to keep busy and learning and teaching :)
Tinani! and God bless you.
Missing you already!
Wow, sounds awsome bekah! I hope you have fun and really can make an impression for God's kingdom. I know you'll have fun doing the youth camp, my goddness you should be good at it with all the practice you've had over the years ;). Well, ttyl. And please don't get hit by any falling trees, I have enough things to worry about without having to replace my maid of honor! Catherine