Family Photo and Announcement

We took advantage of the tripod Susan got for Christmas to take a new family photo this morning.  Greg wasn't too pleased, perhaps because we took away his toy truck for the photo.  This is the least-scowly photo that we got of him:

We also wanted to share our news - in September we'll become a family of four!  Susan is nearly 13 weeks pregnant and has been feeling great.  She's one of those lucky girls who doesn't get morning sickness.  (Feel free to hate her).  This is the photo we sent to our parents on Valentine's Day to share the news with them:

The timing works out perfectly with our furlough.  We'll arrive in Oregon July 24, have the baby mid-September, and then be able to show the new little one off in Colorado over Thanksgiving.  That's the plan at this point anyway.  As we know from past experience, flexibility is perhaps the best attribute a missionary family can have. 

flying the "brrrrrr"

It was a nice, calm, overcast Saturday morning today – perfect weather for flying Brian’s RC airplane.  It has been a really long time since we’ve taken it out as a family.  We’ve just been busy, or the weather has been bad… it just hasn’t happened.  I think Brian has flown without us along a few other times this year, but I think the last time Greg saw dad fly the airplane, he was this big (not quite 6 months):

Back then he was more interested in sucking on the ear of his Winnie the Pooh rattle than watching the airplane.  So this time was a lot of fun.  Greg enjoyed watching the plane fly, and giving a mostly incomprehensible commentary about it’s progress through the sky, complete with descriptive arm gestures. 

 

 

Greg calls airplanes “brrrrrr.”  He’s really into identifying things by the sound they make.  He used to say “dog” all the time, but now he’ll only say “that’s an auuuuuuuw.”  

2 down, 34 to go

I (Susan) have really been enjoying my new job doing audio recordings of Scriptures in the Highlands languages.  It's exhausting, but fun.  This week I was working with David and Albert, two speakers of the Fore language.

We spent a total of 10 hours in a quiet corner office to record four chapters of the New Testament.  One of the men would read aloud into a microphone, while the other would read along and stop him if he heard a mistake (like a mispronounced or skipped word).   I was manning the laptop, basically just pressing "record" and "stop", as well as deleting the bad parts and inserting the re-recorded bits, and checking to make sure the audio was coming through clearly. 

Why are we doing this?  Why just four chapters? The Fore New Testament was published in 1974.  38 years is a long time to expect a book to last in a village setting.  Today there just aren't enough Fore New Testaments left to go around.  These recordings will be put onto solar MP3 players and used to do testing in the villages.  The idea is that for the languages like Fore that have already had New Testaments for a while, we can determine how good the translation is or if the language has changed enough that a revision is needed.  We also hope to raise interest in the communities about using the vernacular Scriptures, or perhaps even to get support for doing a recording of the whole New Testament.

My boss tells me that there are 36 languages just in the Highlands region that he would like to have these recordings done for.  Now I've crossed two off the list.  Only 34 more to go.  I know I won't get them all done before we leave on furlough, but hopefully I can at least make a dent in it!  I can't do these recordings every week, because Greg gets pretty cranky if he spends too much time in childcare.  So I have to take breaks in between, as well as allowing myself time to do the editing. But I'm hoping to get at least one or two done each month.

Now that the raw recording is done, I will spend a few hours editing it.  I'll remove background noise, breaths and lip smacks and things like that.  I'll also take out all the extra pauses that you get when you record someone who isn't a totally fluent reader.

Here, for your reading enjoyment, is an excerpt from the Fore New Testament.  It's Luke 15:8-10, the parable of the lost coin:

 Pigoya, Isu to meto kamana maya untiye: Waya ka'waina nayatura'mu mone u'ma mintakana, ka'anto tumiwakanaba kaikiya, a.  Kampaye.  Aeba kane igi'ma nama paga puma aogima aguyosagakiye.  Aguyosama aborama waya aokina kega'e uma maya uwaimikiye:  Monene kaka'waipa pi ago abatama maeyuwe.  Pika ta'mu peno, ukiye.  Pabiyama yekiri abiyo:  Mantari Koti nkenisori kina igeba pabiyama agunta yagara ka waina agu a'wae pekiniba i'mu pikibewe, Isu piya untiye.

the eating habits of toddlers

I’ve always heard that toddlers can be very picky when it comes to food.  Greg has been asserting his independence and creativity in that area lately.  Not only does he have very particular ideas about what to eat, but he also is very particular with how he eats it.

He takes great pride in choosing the correct utensil for each meal.  Applesauce?  A measuring cup is the obvious choice.  And last week, he insisted on eating this dinner roll with the giant spoon from a salad serving set:

This week Greg decided that a slice of cheese is best eaten while lying on your back on the floor, staring at the ceiling.  And if you can convince mom to join you on the floor, so much the better!  And toast must always be eaten on the front porch, preferably with mom safely inside the house, where she can’t interfere with the process of feeding said toast to the neighbor’s cat.

Of all his mealtime quirkiness lately, my favorite is that he discovered that he loves hummus with veggies.  I had made some for myself as a snack one day and we ended up sitting on the porch together, just quietly dipping our carrot sticks into the bowl and watching people walk by on the street.  It’s not just that I’m thrilled that he’s actually eating some protein and the occasional bite of vegetable, but rather just the act of sitting down together and enjoying our little routine.

When he woke up from his nap this afternoon, the first thing Greg noticed was the lunch dishes that I hadn’t washed yet, and that the bowl of leftover hummus from last night’s dinner was now empty on the counter.  He acted like the world was coming to an end!  But luckily I had a bit more hummus in the freezer and so I thawed it out and cut up some carrot sticks.  We went out on the porch and after I settled him into his chair he patted the one next to him, so that I would know where I was expected to sit.

Of course, when I went inside to download these pictures and write this blog post, I soon heard Greg making cat noises out on the porch.  Sure enough, he was  letting the neighbor’s cat clean out the hummus bowl...

what it takes to have a date in PNG

Yesterday, Brian and I celebrated our fourth anniversary.  I’m so blessed to have such a great husband!

In fact, he’s such a great husband that he planned a day trip for me to Goroka, a town nearly two hours drive away from Ukarumpa.  We left Greg at home with a babysitter for the day, and so it was just the two of us. Going on a date in PNG is not such an easy thing to do.  There is almost nowhere for us to go!  Kainantu, the town closest to where we live, is a pretty rough-looking place.  It doesn’t offer much in the way of entertainment unless you consider secondhand clothes shopping to be a good date activity (Brian definitely does NOT!).  There is one restaurant at the local hotel, but it’s not exactly what I would consider special.  So we decided to spend the four hours in the car to get to Goroka and back.  

The day didn’t start out too promising when our septic tank started to back up first thing in the morning.  Brian tried to figure out the problem and when he was stumped he proposed calling the plumbers.  Then he looked at his wife’s face and realized that postponing the anniversary outing was not the best idea.  So instead he arranged for them to come first thing the next day.

It’s a beautiful drive to Goroka, and it was so nice to have just the two of us in the car for once.  We had heard about the J.K. McCarthy Museum, and so we decided to hunt around and find it.  We’re glad we did.  They had a pretty big collection of interesting cultural items, WWII artifacts and a whole room full of photos of the Highlands of PNG from as early as the 1930’s, when Westerners first started to explore the area.  They even have a glass case containing necklaces made from human fingers.  Interesting!

Then we went to our favorite place to have lunch in Goroka – the Pacific Gardens Hotel.  It is a very lovely and peaceful place surrounded by greenery.  And they have good food as well.

By that time we realized we had better head home, knowing it would take us another 2 hours on the road.  So we headed back, stopping at the pineapple market on the side of the highway to pick out this big “two-headed” specimen.

We arrived home hot and tired from all that driving in a car without air conditioning, but still very happy that we had a chance to get out and have a real (PNG style) date.

30 Days of Christmas (and counting!)

The postal system here is anything but predictable.  An average letter or package takes 4-6 weeks to get here from the U.S., but there are no guarantees.  Here in Ukarumpa, we didn’t get any mail the whole month of December!  There have been different explanations for this rolling around, but no one is 100% sure what exactly happened.  

Once our mail reaches Port Moresby, it is transferred to our airplane hanger there.  Our airplanes make flights to Port Moresby every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.  Passengers and their cargo get first priority, and then if there is space, the planes bring up the mail.  So if the flight schedule is busy, then it might take a while to get all of the mail up here.  In December, there was no mail delivered to the hanger, so the planes didn’t have anything to fly up.

That means that many of us are having a late Christmas this year.  Our families sent packages with presents, and they sent them with plenty of time (they thought).  My mom said that she got a notice that her packages cleared customs in PNG in early December.  But we haven’t started getting them until now!  Who knows what they were doing for more than a month in-between.

We got our first Christmas package on January 12.  Then on the 16^th some Christmas cards arrived.  One package on the 19^th and one more today.  They funny thing is that the package that arrived today was mailed December 12 – a full week after one of the packages that we haven’t seen yet supposedly cleared customs in Port Moresby!

So, in Papua New Guinea, Christmas is the holiday that just keeps on giving.  We think that there are still a few more packages on the way, so we’ll just keep checking our mailbox.

18 Months

Greg is 18 months today.  My little guy is growing up so fast!

 

Look how much he has changed in the past 6 months.  This is him at one year:

 

Our son is such a joy to have around. He’s always making us laugh.  

His favorite place to be is in the back yard with our dog Ruby.

Ruby plays very well with Greg.  She’ll snatch the ball right out of his hand, but is always gentle with him.