Tinani!!

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• Entry from Alotau

  Alotau, Papua New Guinea
Friday, June 1, 2007

Tinani! (that means...hello, good-bye and thank you) I

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