NTM

Just a quick update…the sea has calmed so we are planning on leaving tomorrow.  We’ll try to update the blog from the island.  Thank you all for lifting us in your prayers.

Pressing on with Jesus

Wayne, Gail, Abby and Kala

In the remote corners of the world, people groups have existed for generations.
They live in fear of the spirits.
They die without hope.
This is Awayo’s story.

Many of you have been regularly praying for us and we cannot repeat too many times how important and crucial your prayers mean to our family life, our health and our walk with the Lord.

Every time we shared about malaria, skin infections, homesickness and many other difficulties via email, we usually get replies within hours, letting us know that you are interceding for us.  This means so much to us and we are honored and privileged to know that we are constantly being lifted up by so many of you guys.

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Greetings from Papua New Guinea!  Our family has been in PNG for over five months now and it just dawned on us during the holiday season that PNG feels like home now.  As we look back in the last few months, we are absolutely certain that all of your prayers and encouragements made a HUGE impact in our ministry and family life.  We truly treasure this partnership and want to thank you once again for being part of the team.

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A few weeks ago, a tribal man came and sat down in front of our house in the bush. This was our conversation.

Man: I am so tired…

Me: Why are you so tired? What did you do?

Man: I spent the whole morning butchering a pig I shot last night. I am really tired now.

Me: Wow, that’s great…how did you shoot it?

Man: I went with my dogs…the dogs surrounded the pig and called for me. I heard their voice, went and shot the pig. Man, I spent the whole morning butchering that thing. I am so tired.

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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  number 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!