Gwahatike Survey Trip (The Story in Pictures)--By Matt

In October I got to do something different from my normal job. I went with a survey team to evaluate the use of the Gwahatike language Bible. The New Testament was finished about 17 years ago.  Jon Jagt currently manages this language group and several new translation projects in the surrounding languages. He asked me to go and evaluate the current translation office and its building needs. As a bonus, I got to spend the rest of the week doing personal interviews for the survey team.

In each village we discussed barriers that keep the Gwahatike speakers from reading their Bibles and strategies to overcome these barriers. Literacy levels and other factors can be real problems.  Sometimes surveys themselves can be a real catalyst for change.

"I can read it.  I understand it and I follow it." An encouraging statement from one young man.  He told me that he reads his Gwahakite New Testament twice a day!

I really enjoyed this break from building.  Pray for the Gwahatike people. Enjoy the pictures!

Personal interviews and lots of selfies because we were working alone sometimes.

Found some friends at the local market. Played soccer with these guys after work the previous day. The guy in red wants to be a doctor!

Joined by a local pastor.

God's blue ocean!

Some people make me feel tall. No, I haven't grown.

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I gave out balloons in one village.  After many kids tried to blow them up themselves they gave up and brought them back to me for help #whyaretheseballoonsallwet?

Rachel leads a discussion on Bible usage!

My Russian Connection (Matt)

For four years now I have been searching for a new radiator for our vintage 1992 Toyota Hiace truck. The owner before us had been soldering the radiator since 2007. The truck was imported to PNG from Japan.  In 2013, I ordered the radiator from a company in Japan, the only place I knew where to look. They came back to me only to say that the radiator was discontinued and they could not get it. It was re-soldered and still continued to leak. I kept nursing the truck along and kept looking. This year it developed a worse leak and got to the point where it was draining completely everyday.  This year a company here told us they could get one out of Japan and we ordered again, but after waiting 6 weeks we were told they couldn't order it after all! I found one on a Chinese website and we ordered it only to have our money credited back when they came up empty-handed. I had looked into having it rebuilt, but the price was high and I would have to take the radiator out of the truck and send it overseas. Frustrated. Demoralized.

 Our one-of-a-kind 1992 Toyota Hiace truck.

Finally I found one, but it was in Russia. It was in South Eastern Russia, as close as you can get to North Korea! The website was not in English, and I would describe my Russian as "weak".  They were able to help a bit with a chat person who spoke some English. I was not ready to buy at that time. After taking a break for a few months I decided this was my only option. I used Google translate to translate the first page, but could not get it to work on anymore pages.  After spending an entire morning translating every word one at a time through Google, I got to the payment part only to find out they would not take credit cards and I had no way to pay them! Also, they could not ship internationally. Extremely frustrating. At this point I realized there was nothing more I could do and decided I needed to leave it in God's hands.

"What's wrong with your truck?" "What's a radiator?"

Progress?! I found out that my friend Jon Jagt had some sort of confusing connection to Russia. Jon said he would contact his Dutch cousin, Marcel. As I understand it, Marcel used to live in Moscow and had a friend there named Boele. I think Boele is the kind of guy who get things done. When Boele was contacted, he was also unable to ship the radiator internationally. To my surprise however, he just ordered it and had it sent to himself in MOSCOW. Say What?!! That was the wrong direction and about twice as far away. I knew shipping would be high from Russia, but 1100 Euros ($1,300 USD)? That was bad news. I figured I could just pay Boele for the radiator and he could keep it, since I had no intention of paying $1,300. Marcel then figured out that it would be less than 300 Euros to ship it from the Netherlands and because Boele or one of their friends was flying from Moscow to the Netherlands they decided to check it as a part of their luggage. Astonishingly, they were not charged customs and they were able to ship it from the Netherlands to our purchaser in Australia, Martin (who had also tried to find this radiator for me more than once). Our aviation department then flew the radiator from Australia to our center here in the Highlands. I almost can't believe it!  This week our radiator was installed by our mechanics and is working great! It would not be here if it weren't for the huge help of Boele and Marcel! 

Our Radiator has seen parts of the world that I most likely will never see.

 

The Jagt girls!  Providentially the Jagts were walking by when our package arrived.

If you have read this far down, you must like radiators or cars. Thanks to everyone who helped us with this endeavor: Marcel, Boele, Jon Jagt, Martin, Auto Shop, our Aviation Dept, those who helped with the finances, and God!

Boelen's Python-Snake on a Plane! --By Matt

Some of you who hate snakes, will also hate this story and all the pictures. This is the story of our Boelen's Python. While at work one day, one of our electricians, a Papua New Guinean named Brian, came rushing up to me with a picture on his phone of a snake I've been hoping to see for a long time. He said that he found these guys walking down the road with this huge snake. Shirking our work duties, we rushed off together to go find them. The snake is a rarely-seen Boelen's Python. It only lives on this island, in the highlands like where we are. They don't live outside of Papua New Guinea and the other end of our island Papua, Indonesia. This is its home, however most people who live here have not seen this kind of snake, and no one I've talked to has seen one this big. In fact, it is the most protected reptile in PNG!

We encountered the snake in the road near our center, however these men caught it in the jungle a couple hour's walk away.

The guys told me they were going to eat it and have a feast so I made them an offer and then let my wife know that we had a new pet! She loves surprises!

The following day, Kurt Metzger helped me get it out for the first time. It's good to have an extra pair of hands in case the snake becomes aggressive, but it turned out to be a rather calm snake.

Two months and 4 live rats later, it became apparent that this snake wouldn't eat in this environment. Maybe the cage was too small. This rat, which we meant to serve as dinner, started sleeping in the snake's coils.  The two became roomies and I even started feeding the rat to keep it alive. The rat had to be removed. I had a problem. I then heard about a Nature Park in the capital, Port Moresby. They were excited about the snake when I contacted them, and we made plans to make an exchange. The snake would fly in one of our Kodiak planes.

We generated a lot of excitement with the aviation staff.

Last hugs from the "Ukarumpa Strangler".  Pilot John Mork was not concerned about this odd passenger. Of course it flew in a bag, inside a box.  The snake now resides at the Port Moresby Nature Park. This is a professionally-run and well-maintained park.

Check them out on Facebook!

ENGA

I think God sometimes wants to impress us with what He did, and not others with what we did.

After a slow two years of planning, delays, pre-building walls, roof trusses, windows, and doors, we were off on a three-week building trip. Why I assumed we could build a whole house in 3 weeks start to finish with appliances and painting everything, is beyond me. But there we were: a caravan of three vehicles, leaving on a 12-hour road trip traveling over rough roads toward the center of the country. I had never traveled this far up the Highlands Highway and Adam Boyd, who we were going to build for, was the only one of us familiar with the drive. Three hours into the trip, the driver of the large truck, carrying almost the entire house and tools, swerved to miss a large pothole while coming around a bend.  With half the tires off the road, the extremely heavy truck tipped over and proceeded to plow a large section of the side of the road. The tires and axles were still spinning as we ran toward the wreck along with about 50-100 local Papua New Guineans. And like that, our trip was over…

Under the shade of the overturned truck, Adam took the opportunity to share about Bible translation. Many there had an open ear and they even said that there was a reason that we wrecked there.

One thing was clear: we weren’t going to Wabag to build a house for the Boyds. Adam and Martha Boyd had been working to revise the Enga New Testament ( http://pngboyd.blogspot.co.id/p/enga.html ). No doubt we were facing spiritual opposition to this project. There are an estimated 300,000 speakers of Enga. They are the largest native language in Papua New Guinea. Some of the people have been begging for a revision because it was originally translated many years ago. It is an area that has only had contact with the outside world since 1934, less than a hundred years! But, what could we do now? The project was clearly derailed.

We were thanking God that no one was seriously injured in the accident as all three men slowly crawled out of the only usable door. We contacted our Ukarumpa center and they began arranging help for us: a security team, a car load of mechanics, accommodations at a local missionary center, and a crucial call to a commercial trucking company. Mapai Transport had the resources we needed. However, we had to wait until the end of the day for a super-size rescue truck to turn us upright and tow us. We retreated to New Tribes Mission’s center in Goroka. They put us up for the night and fed us. We were so thankful for their hospitality. We would be headed home the following day.  We all called our families to let them know.

However, after a refreshing night of sleep and some renewed energy we made the opposite decision; to move forward with the project. We would use Mapai Transport again to carry the building supplies to Enga since our truck was not drive-able. We were so grateful again for this company. We stayed one more day at New Tribes and left two days behind schedule.

Removing our load from the broken Hino 700.

Adam buying roadside sweet potatoes on our way to the village.

After ten more hours of driving (including one more overnight), we finally arrived in Enga!  The next few weeks were filled with the excitement of being in a new place, living in a village house, eating village food, cold baths in the streams, hard work, long days, and fellow-shipping with new friends.  We were welcomed with gifts of food and friendship by villagers who had been passed by for far too long. The area has had a lot of fighting in the past and now they are working hard to improve their lives. “So many people are afraid to live in this area” said local Pastor Ekki. He says that as people drive by the area, they say, “You don’t want to stop here. This area is no good.” They are so grateful that the Boyds have decided to call this their home while they work with their translation team on this major revision of the Enga Bible.

The next two and a half weeks we worked almost sun-up to sundown, six days a week.

The children all helped us unload when we got to the village.

This is where our crew slept while we built.

Work begins!!!

 

Carrying in parts of the house through the local gardens, filled with kau kau (sweet potato).

We were building on Pastor Benjamin's land. God transformed Benjamin's life several years ago. His testimony and humility really impacted me.

We had lots of local help as well.

Digging a hole for a septic tank, PNG-style.

Pastor Ekki was one of my favorite people in this village.  He was a hard worker with a heart of gold. I felt like he was my personal guardian. He was always nearby, ready to help and watching out for me.

People were constantly feeding us and bringing stuff from their gardens.

Pastor Benjamin, Martha, and their two kids moved out of their house so we could sleep in it. They had true servant attitudes. They slept in our large tent at the work site watching out for our things. Martha cooked for our whole crew every night

Smoke pours from every roof while they cook each day. Another reason for inside fires is because of the chilly nights.

This small store is near the building site.

From the day we broke ground to the day we finished, was two weeks three days. The house has a tank to collect water from the roof, solar hot water, electricity from solar power, and indoor plumbing. What none of us would have believed was possible on the day of the wreck, was accomplished!

Matthew 19:26 “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."