We're learning to adapt to daily life here. There are a lot of conversions to do in the head. Pounds to kilos, dollars to kina, 110v to 220v, english to pidgin or even english to english.
It is an interesting exercise in humility when you're talking to people who live here and you can't speak their language, and you so badly want to communicate.
There are nationals all around. They live near us, they walk with us, they work with us. As you would expect the nationals on center are mostly believers because they've been around missionaries.
Today I met a few more that will be co-workers with me. One man said "I know about solar energy, so if you have questions you need answers to, I can help you."
I said, "yes I have a solar need. I need more sun to heat my water."
Everyone laughed instantly. I'm glad my sense of humor translates. He responded "that problem, I'll leave up to God."
The next thing I knew, we were talking about God and about how they are learning in their spiritual training class that there are ten things about themselves they can not change.
Not two minutes into talking to these men, we were having a spiritual conversation! How exciting that is for me.
We have been taught that many nations have spiritual matters on the mind and love to discuss these things, that opportunities to bring up Christ are endless. To experience it was so encouraging because it means that Christ translates, and we can talk about Him on deep levels across language and cultural borders.
God will minister to us through these relationships I know. It is an interesting and humbling position to be in knowing we are guests, we've come to help, but we are guests-in-learning.
That is our attitude. We are here to learn, and to serve, and to rely on God to show us how and provide the path.
HERE is a list of food my daughter has put together that she has found in PNG:
"a list of foods in paupa new guinea" (not edited)
1. Papia
2. Pineapple
3. Oranges
4. bananas
5. carrots
6. cucumber
7. noodles
8. sweet patatoes
9. bisckits
10. crocidle
11. mints/ground beef [mince=ground beef]
12. twistes/cheese chicken, pizza, barbucae
13. cabage
14. onions
15. eggs
16. cheese
17. bread
18. cinomon roll
19. nuts
20. m&m's
21. gopstopers/everlasting
22. giant snicker bar 1 more left
23. ice cream
24. ice cream cones
25. breakfast cereals
26. yogurt
27. fanta soda
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This is the list of food items my daughter wrote down as we visited the store.
So far the dishes we've eaten here are:
tacos
spaghetti w/meat sauce
cranberry chicken w/rice and sweet potato a grautin
fried bologne and cheese sandwiches
and a few others...
but tonight... tonight is PIZZA NIGHT!
the high schoolers were doing a fund raiser and we bought some pizza for k10. (10 kina)
My son is VERY excited. We'll put them in the oven in a bit. and while technically it's monday for us here, back in CA it's Sunday so we still got our traditional pizza night in. (-;
One of the things we did to get the kids excited about trying new foods was we picked up some local snacks and daily at 3pm they vote on which one they will try and if everyone likes it, we pin the wrapper to the corkboard.
It's been fun to see who likes what and how they respond. So far, the two family favorites are:
2 minute noodles (like Top Ramen only better)
Cheese twisties
Kumul coconut biscuit
pineapple from the garden
Take Care and God bless!
