Going Where The Wind Blows The Chens Planting Tribal Churches in Papua New Guinea
We are headed into the bush today…which means no internet access (emails only, no web browsing or checking the Red Sox scores) so we won’t be able to update this blog until early December.
If you would like to receive our updates via email, please send us an email at wayne_chen@ntm.org. We’ll send our updates regularly from the bush.
Thank you guys again for being on the team!
This past weekend, we visited an island off the coast of Papua New Guinea. This is the newest tribal work in our region with two missionary families moving in earlier this year. The Biem people (also the name of the island) numbers around 2000 with their unique language and culture. We were very excited to visit this tribe and see tribal church planting in its infancy.
Abby and Kala did amazingly well on the trip. Not too many 3 and 5-year old kids get to ride on a 23-footer out in the open sea and climb on a single-engine plane a few days later (bush orientation).
The Biem language does not have written words (and no bible translation). No missionaries have ever lived among the people on the island before NTM moved in. We spent Saturday visiting different folks on the island and observed their way of life and culture.
This was our first trip out of town since we arrived in PNG a few months ago. We got to see the housing setup for tribal missionaries, the solar system as well as the daily routine of family life in the tribe. The people were very friendly and extended their warmest welcome to us. At the same time, we are reminded of the need to share the gospel with them. Behind every smile is a soul who does not know his or her savior.
One of the core values of New Tribes Mission is the urgency of the task to bring the gospel to the unreached. Spending the weekend on this island reminds us again God’s heart for the nations and why we are here. Please pray for the Biem people and the missionaries in this work (the Buser family and the Depner family). May the Lord finish the good works He has already started!
Oh yeah, on the way back, we ran into a school of dolphins and they swam right next to boat for a good five minutes. We were too awestruck to pick up our camera…
Many thanks to all who prayed for Gail’s allergy! Not 24 hours after we posted it last week, we saw a dramatic improvement. Watery eyes and constant sneezing are all gone . Thank you so much for lifting us up in prayer. Allergy may seem like a non-consequential minor annoyance at times but being free from it really helps Gail’s daily routine.
We started packing for bush orientation already. Today we went to the supply store and bought some of the groceries we will need in the bush. Everything need to be packed, weighed and packed away. “New Tribes Airline” charges by weight – let’s say our family weighs a total of 165KG…plus 58 KG of groceries, we would pay a distance-adjusted rate according to the total weight. So there is a huge incentive to lose some weight! We’ll be flying in on a single engine Cessna, landing on a grass airstrip. Some of you may think anything less than a Boeing 747 is pretty dangerous. Well, did you know that more people die from falling coconuts in PNG than plane accidents?
For the first time since college, I will be completely cut off from the internet for two months. We will still be able to send and receive emails so we will definitely continue sending out news and prayer updates. Please note that we will not be able to receive any emails larger than 100K…so no large attachments please.
During our bush orientation, we will have the chance to visit several tribal locations in the Sepik region (we’ll stay mainly with one tribe and make weekend trips to other locations). We are very excited about meeting tribal believers in the bush and witness what God is doing in some of the more remote places in the world.
We have blogged a lot about interesting cultural stuff, exotic animals and fun stuff here in Papua New Guinea but that is not why we are here. We are here because God has a message to share with these people in the bush. It is our prayer that bush orientation will rekindle this vision and excite our hearts again for tribal church planting.
Overlooking Town
One of the people groups we will be visiting
Some of you must be wondering…what do we do all day? Here is what a typical day looks like for me (Wayne)…
6:30am Get up…make coffee…quiet time
7:30-8:30 Breakfast
8:30-9:00 Prep for language session. Prepping includes going over some new vocabulary, practices some learned phrases
9:00-12:30 Live language session. This is where I meet with people, ask them about pidgin, culture and establish relationship.
12:30-1:00pm Lunch
1:00-2:00 Time for “malolo”…or time for rest
2:00-4:00 Processing language data from notebook and tape recorder. Working on vocabulary and grammar. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, we meet with our orientation staff to go over different topics in tribal church planting.
4:00-5:00 Going to the neighborhood market…hang in the neighborhood
5:00-8:30pm Dinner, family time, putting Abby and Kala to sleep
8:30-10:00 More pidgin review, blogging, email correspondences
10:30 zzzzzzzzz
Gail’s day is a little different since she needs to homeschool the kids in the mornings. Sometimes she goes to her language session early in the morning for an hour or two. On Sundays, we alternate between a PNG national church and HQ church here.
Today also marks the 2-month anniversary here in PNG. Thank you guys for all your prayers. We’ll be going into the bush soon…more updates on that later. Here are some more pics…
This is what we wake up to everyday…
There are two types of “popo” (papaya) here…yellow and red. In the last two months, I probably ate 18 yellow popos and 2 red ones. Guess which one tastes a lot better? Yup…red popo. I finally found a red in the market last week. I left it on the counter and guess what happened next morning? Half of it was chewed up by a rat!!! (hmmm…I still ate the other half…hey, it’s a red popo!) This is when we declared war and put out a trap. We met our friend again the next morning…
Our neighbor’s pet…a kapul (cuscus). The people here told me it is “very sweet”…and they did not mean its temperament!
Abby lost her first tooth today!
New Flash – we have updated our most current prayer requests found on the “Ministry & Prayer” page on top. If you ask anybody on the street, “what is your favorite food?”…ten out of ten people here will say, “saksak!” Saksak is the main staple food here in the Sepik region. It is said that the people will not think they had a real meal unless they ate saksak. The process of making saksak is laborious and complicated (at least for me!) Saksak is made out of sago tree which are generally found in swamps. It is pretty much all starch. People cut sago trees down and remove the bark. They take their wooden axes and just beat the pith into a pulp. Water is then used to dissolve all the starch in the pith and “saksak water” is collected. After the starch settles, saksak is collected, dried and stored. People here in town usually just buy the dried saksak instead of making it themselves. We will have a chance to see the entire process when we go into the bush next month.
When they want to eat it, they cut off a block of dried saksak and just let it dissolve in water. It looks like a “flour paste”…
Then they mix hot water with the saksak mixture and the liquid paste solidifies into a jelly-like mixture…
People here usually eat saksak with some veggies cooked in coconut milk. I brought a piece of fish the other day and they smoked iand put it into the pot…
All done…ready to serve!
Well…how did it taste? I did manage to flush down two “balls” of saksak and my friends were very proud of me! They all said, “you are done learning…you are a Papua New Guinean now!” Food is always a big part in any culture…so venturing into their world of fine cuisine definitely went a long way in building relationships. The taste…well, let me put it very “politely”…is an acquired taste. There is no gastronomical equivalence of saksak in our western cuisine. Let’s just say I “took one for the team” today!
Some non-missions/PNG related musings…
I was reading Dallas Willard’s “The Spirit of the Disciplines” again this morning and been thinking all day about this quote. Willard was talking about the problems in the contemporary church of “undiscipled disciples”.
Dallas Willard writes…
But the cost of nondiscipleship is far greater – even when this life alone is considered – than the price paid to walk with Jesus.
Nondiscipleship costs abiding peace, a life penetrated throughout by love, faith that sees everything in the light of God’s overriding governance for good, hopefulness that stands firm in the most discouraging of circumstances, power to do what is right and withstand the forces of evil. In short, it (non-discipleship) costs exactly that abundance of life Jesus said he came to bring (John 10:10)
This is how Willard describes a disciple…the disciple of Christ desires above all else to be like him. The disciple is one who, intent upon becoming Christlike and so dwelling in his “faith and practice,” systematically and progressively rearranges his affairs to that end.
I have rarely thought about the consequence of “non-discipleship” as a “loss”. Disobedience maybe…but losing out on an abundant life? That hasn’t crossed my mind too often. Some of you may think we have got it all figured out…being a missionary in Papua New Guinea and all…and you’d be wrong. Still under construction…baby steps every day.
In our language sessions, we are moving away from “material culture” (acquisition of nouns, names, places) into more customs and social structures. I get to spend all the mornings with different people up in the buai stand. Sometimes they invite me to go into their house and garden. Other times, we just sit there and “get wind” (translation: sitting around and just chat). Learning a new language may be difficult…but if you learn it through relationships with the people, it makes it that much more enjoyable.
Today, an unexpected guest showed up! The people were teaching me how to put a pig to sleep by scratching its ear. And it actually worked!!!
Many people have emailed about “buai” or beetle-nut. I’ll write more about buai and its cultural practices later. Right now, I would say 99% of the people I’ve met chew it regularly. How young do they start chewing? Well…I got a picture of this boy today…
Some neighborhood kids playing marble…
We shipped most of our things to PNG last Christmas from Missouri. It traveled in a container on a ship across the world this summer and finally made it here. It’s like opening up gift boxes at Christmas. Abby and Kala got their stuffed animals and toys along with their homeschooling materials. We have been waiting for our kitchen stuff too…a lot of things just aren’t available here in PNG. Most of the stuff will be going into the bush with us next year. Many thanks to all of you who have given generously so we can purchase the necessary supplies and cover the shipping cost.
Another thought…when the clothe we packed away 9 months ago smelled better than the clean clothes you have here…you know you are in the Sepik!
It’s just so good to see something from home…
While we are in orientation here, one of our biggest thrills is to meet fellow missionaries coming out of the bush for some break here in HQ. We’ve treasured the time to pick their brains about bush living, church planting and different aspects of tribal ministry. We had a family over for lunch the other day and I asked them about some of the oppositions and tensions in their village. This particular tribal location has a vibrant growing church…at the same time, there is a sizable opposition group. The believers and the missionaries have been verbally challenged and physically threatened. We asked them how they are doing in the midst of these issues.
They replied…”you know, a little persecution is good for the church. It has helped the faith of our guys to grow stronger. Having opposition means you are doing something right.”
Persecution in the early church is as common as Chris Tomlin’s songs in our church today. Every book in the New Testament was written in the midst of heavy persecution. We as church planters teach the tribal believers to model after the early church. Isn’t it amazing that persecutions actually affirmed to the tribal believers that what they have believed is true! Jesus said to his followers in Matthew 10:17, “all men will hate you because of me”.
When was the last time we heard “persecution” as an element in a church planting model? I’ve been through numerous church meetings…I never once talked about “persecution” as an agenda item. I imagine if some day…some kind of “persecution” hits our church back home…I’ll probably be calling emergency elders meetings, forming crisis church task force, organizing prayer meetings so that God will remove the hardship. It just dawned on me over lunch that day that God’s plan is a little different than ours. Now, I am not saying we somehow need to intentionally look for hardship or persecution…we should thank God for the freedom we have to worship Him. But you know what? My heart longs for the day when I’ll be able to sit down with my tribal brothers and sisters…and I’d be the learner, they’d be the teacher and just listen to their unique faith experience and glean from it.
Romans 5:3-5 sure rings true, doesn’t it?
Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.
And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
Some unique cultural observations and fun stuff we’ve experienced here in PNG…
You know you are in PNG when….
PNG, land of the unexpected…
