Mission Helps' Ladies Team Members in PNG

We ladies of "Mission Helps Team PNG"--there, I just dubbed this momentous team and trip with a name!--

had a wonderful time together. 

Here we are, Linda Paulus, myself, and Louise Holderbaum with Aunty Rosa.

We ladies spent much of our time just trying to keep water drawn, food shopped for (on foot), meals cooked and cooled, laundry done, and everyone reminded when it was his or her turn to take a shower--

or more often, a sponge bath. 

Some of us only got two showers the whole time we were there.

Don't worry. The rest of the time it was sponge baths. We did try to be aware of each others' noses. 

And the one person who one time dared to take more time than the others never lived it down. 

So wow, nobody dared to take too much time!

Here I am doing the laundry New Guinea townhome style.

I wanted to go see the PNG "department" store with Sharonna and Louise who were setting off on a walk to the store for supplies, but Sharonna reminded me I was in the middle of laundry and must finish!

You wash in the big side, and then spin in the small spinner, and then you empty the dirty wash water and refill with clean water to rinse the clothes. Then you spin them again--sometimes having to readjust the clothes several times before it will spin without clanking the machine to pieces!

Sometimes we had to dip rainwater out of the barrels to the right to fill the laundry tub.

But more than once when the rain barrels were empty, too, we'd have to watch for when the water came on and hurry to fill the laundry tub, from which I would dip and dip and dip and pour big basinfuls into the rainwater barrels to try to keep up with nine people's needs.

The ladies coming home with groceries to put away into the small refrigerator.

Sharonna kept extra bottles of ice in the freezer to put in the frig when the electricity went off.

It was quite a feat keeping ahead of the electricity and water going off--and internet.

We seldom had a chance to send emails or post anything on Facebook.

Wednesday morning, we ladies were to have the chapel service at the ACE school at the Mt. Hagen PNG Bible Church. 

We are preparing our visuals and activities.

Louise was such a help. 

She doesn't like to speak up front, but she loves to help and I don't know what we would have done without her on this trip.

The school has 600 students, and they all attended that morning!

I counted 16 in one pew!

It took them about half an hour to all file into their seats. 

I figured I should be more nervous, but these dear people make you feel like a million even if you have only something simple to offer.

Actually, I think the simpler the better.

They spend a lot of time introducing you and thanking you, plus thanking you in lieu of all the missionaries that came before you.

It was an amazing feeling--to be thanked for work and sacrifice and tears that others before you have given.

Majorly humbling. 

They are so thankful and grateful and sincere and precious.

Here Louise and I are doing our introductory activity--having a race between a boy and a girl

threading a needle, before telling the story of the rich man who came to Jesus asking what he must do to inherit eternal life and how Jesus said it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man, or one who trusted in himself and his riches and his own works, 

to get to heaven.

 My next point was the difference between a strong Christian who depended on God,

and a weak Christian who depends on himself.

I compared the two to a rock, which Louise is holding in one hand, 

and a balloon, which she is holding in the other.

She kept blowing up more balloons as I would pop one after another with a pin as I talked about Satan coming along with different temptations that may destroy a weak Christian, 

while the rock solid Christian is completely unmoved and stays in one piece--

even when God says no to dear prayers of ours, as He said to Amy Carmichael's prayer for blue eyes.

And I told the story about that and how God knew she would need her brown eyes down the road.

The children absolutely loved the balloons popping.

Then Sis. Linda Paulus was in charge of teaching them the verse pictured below.

She picked out different children to pop one balloon at a time.

This is an all-time favorite way to teach children a verse.

Then we sang a couple songs I'd visualized.

It was nothing spectacular, but the school people seemed so appreciative.

Below, the staff is singing a song for us.

Now the high school students are singing.

This lady below knew the Pauluses long ago, and she cried and cried on Linda's shoulder, and when Linda had to sit down, this lady knelt right down on the floor and buried her face on Linda's knees and sobbed some more.

She was so very grateful for the missionaries bringing the truth to her and her people.

It was so touching!

This lady is the principal of the school. 

As I understand it, she has good order and does a good job.

Children were not allowed to misbehave.

Even the older students sometimes had a ruler with which they swatted a younger student if they got out of line.

There is very good discipline there, even in government schools. 

Children are not allowed to rule the roost like they are in America.

Here is a scene of the Mt. Hagen PNG Bible Church from the side, with the school buildings to the left.

Jiwa, Aunty Rosa's husband, backed their pickup close to this pile of gravel and sand to make it easier for us ladies to clamber into!
Most of the women and children are either barefoot or wear sandals.
Because of the heat and because I have to wear shoes to keep my neck and shoulder bones in place,
I wore cotton socks.
Sorry to all the people who want to make rules about how women have to wear full length hose at all times.
I saw no such thing as hose in PNG, yet most of the women dressed more modestly than some of our holiest women in America.
Let that be something to chew on.

The road in front of the mission where we stayed was under construction, so we finished walking home from our trip to school.

Yes!!! The water was on!!!
Hurry, hurry, hurry! Empty the filter into water bottles.
Then fill the top of the filter again with spigot water (which no one trusted) and fill every water container in sight, including bathing basins.

Sharonna liked the bouquet her husband brought her!

Linda cuts up papaya.
I wanted to eat lots more fruit, but would pay for it later, so had to limit myself to a couple pieces per meal.
I esp. enjoyed fried bananas (a sort of plantain variety, cooking banana) for breakfast several times.

Making a sort of lemonade from a kind of fruit resembling lemons but not lemons.

When the electricity finally came on, I hurried to make copies of a handout I wanted to give the Sunday School teachers at the meeting on Saturday morning. I would have done more handouts, but I could only make one copy at a time, and I had too much material as it was.
Linda had been so good to translate several pages for me ahead of time.

She had gone over one object lesson with Aunty Rosa ahead of time to make sure she was explaining it well enough in Pidgin.
Below, we ladies are going through all the supplies Louise and I had brought, and sorting them.
We are filling about 60 or 70 ziploc baggies with a few visual aids for each Sunday School teacher.

I had found several types of foam cutouts at Dollar Tree that were perfect for what I wanted to share,
and will post more about that later.
Below the men are trying to figure out in the dark outside why the toilet keeps backing up.

Well, here is a lit-up picture of the guys working to clean out the main sewer line.
You have to be willing to do all sorts of things when you go to the mission field!

Well, I'm adding a few more pictures to the bottom of this post instead of doing a new post.
This is Friday morning, where Linda Paulus spoke to about 100 pastors' wives.
Having served as a missionary in PNG for about 10 years and as a pastor's wife in America,
Linda still turned to another pastor's wife for suggestions as to what to talk about.
Sis. Rachel Plank (Harry Plank's wife, who was president of God's Missionary Church for 19 years)
shared some thoughts which Linda passed on to the PNG pastors' wives.


 Her topic was "Keeping Priorities: God, Husband, Children, Church."
She made it very clear that next to God, pastors' wives must keep their husbands first in their lives,
ahead of their children, church, and anything else, no matter how important those may be.
There is a terrible scourge of marriage problems and multiple wives, etc. in PNG,
and Linda addressed how easy it is for a husband to go looking at other pretty young women
if his own wife does not care for his needs as a man, make their relationship wonderful, and make their home a welcoming, pleasant place.

Granted, men have their responsibilities in marriage and home, and my heart felt heavy about all the women who really wanted to do their best but had husbands who had their own issues, esp. here in this culture where men are the big stuff and women are devalued,

but this was a meeting for the ladies.

The women were mostly quiet, but receptive.

I prayed God would protect the message from being twisted by Satan and discouraging anyone.

Aunty Rosa and others let us know later how much this message was needed and appreciated, and that not only the women liked it, but also the husbands who heard about it back home, and others as the word was carried on to others. 

At the end of Linda's talk, she had Sharonna, Louise and me do a panel discussion about ways that we keep our husbands first in our lives, ways that our own pastors' wives have been a blessing to us, and other questions.

She thought this would keep things from getting boring! I thought it was an excellent idea.

One thing I mentioned as to how I keep my husband ahead of my children was a small example of how the children always want to sit beside their daddy in family worship.

But he and I make sure that Mommy always has her place on one side of Daddy while the children take turns on the other side.

It's just one little example of effort being made to let the children know

that Mom and Dad have a special relationship that no one tampers with. 

Dad is king in our home and Mommy is queen, and all the little princes and princesses are loved and taken care of and valued, but Dad and Mom are one and love each other and protect their relationship. 

At the end of the meeting, Linda had a small piece of cross-stitching fabric for each lady, with a needle and embroidery thread.

She and I showed the ladies how to cross stitch a tiny heart and border stitches.

The ladies were tickled to receive this small gift.

I thought it was a great idea and know the ladies will treasure this gift bookmark.

The next day was the bi-weekly meeting for Sunday School teachers.
Aunty Rosa was disappointed that not more teachers came, but I just prayed that the Lord would take the ideas I shared with those 27 precious teachers, and multiply it to many others.
Afterward, Aunty Rosa, who is the Sunday School coordinator for the whole PNG Bible Church took any leftover materials I had, and said she would repeat the next time what I shared this time.
I focused on showing the teachers how they could just take and use ordinary objects as visual aids to enhance their stories and lessons.
"Concrete relational" is the term Bro. Will Byler called it when I told him what I was going to be sharing about.
Here in the front of the church where we met I laid several common items that I showed the teachers how they could use in their classes, such as soap, towel, book, umbrella, and a stick.

Note the beautiful bouquet above!
I told them I was borrowing a theme from John Sherman who spoke at Penn View Bible Institute's Mission Convention:
"Start where you are; use what you have; do what you can."
These teachers are village teachers who have virtually nothing to go on, no money, candy, crafts or prizes.
I told them that they did not have to have any of those things to be an effective and fun teacher.
I told them how when Jesus wanted to teach an important lesson about humility, for example, he took  a towel.
When Moses kept trying to make excuses about why he couldn't lead the children of Israel out of Egypt, God simply asked him, "What is that in your hand?"
It was a rod. Just a stick!
You should have heard the gasp and seen the faces of the teachers when I shared this theme verse.
It was like a light bulb went on, as God helped them to understand this simple idea that could revolutionize their teaching.

Look at how God used that stick!
I had found a stick outside and talked about a whole series of lesson they could teach from the life of Moses, using a simple stick and letting the stick tell the story. 
I threw the stick on the ground for the stories of it turning into a snake, and hit a wall brace in the church for when Moses hit the rock.

They seemed to be gobbling up the ideas.
I also had at least four little activities or games that I had the teachers participate in and showed them how to incorporate into their classes along with a corresponding gospel or character building lesson.
For example, Louise prepared a jar with stones she'd counted.
We had a team of five up front, and whoever guessed the closest got a prize--a sewing kit.
But after that, I also gave a sewing kit to the other four who participated, showing how in heaven God will not just reward the first or best or most important, but He will reward all who are faithful!
Then I explained that they could use the guessing activity to talk about how we do not know everything, but God does. He knows even the number of the hairs of our head! We do not know people's hearts, but God does.
They could also talk about what we can know--that God is, He loves us, He cares for us, that if we confess our sins, He will forgive us, etc.
So I showed them how they could wrap a lesson around a simple activity.

We did a hide-and-seek activity and had four teachers come and hunt for star stickers I'd hidden ahead of time up front, and I had sewing kit prizes for the participants.
I showed them how to use a little game like this as a springboard for a lesson about how we cannot hide from God, or a lesson about anything in the Bible that was hidden and then found,
such as the lost sheep, Moses hidden in the reeds, etc.
After that, Louise and Sharonna passed out our little kits of visuals we'd put together for each teacher.
I went over the visuals, esp. the foam shapes such as hearts, crowns, feet and stars, and gave ideas how to use them.
We also gave them each stickers to use for prizes.
The teachers were unbelievably happy for these simple visuals.

At the end, I finished by having Sis. Linda share in Pidgin language a way to use your own hand as an object lesson.
This is a lesson we had both heard at the Women of Worth at IHC this year, shared by Joy Budenseik.
I had talked to her at IHC and told her I was going to share it with the Sunday School teachers in PNG!

Here, the pastor of this church, who is also a Sunday School teacher, is up front thanking and thanking us for the day's lesson and how they will treasure these pretty little bags of visuals.

He said they will hang them on their walls and keep them clear till the next time we come!!!!

Which wasn't what I had intended, but what it told me was that these ideas and items were very precious to them. They have no flannelgraph or illustrations for stories, and they could copy these things or use them for patterns.

They could not thank us enough.

Here two teachers are singing a song about the Bible being a foundation for our life.

Here Louise was so excited to have a young man named Jack come to see her.

He had been a student at Penn View Bible Institute about 10 or 15 years ago, and had stayed in their home at times.

Now he is married and I believe is teaching or preaching in PNG.

Work Team Begins Work on House--and Christ Became Poor

This is the inside of the handmade adobe brick house that Randy Dimmett had built. They are not planning to stay there in New Guinea forever, just perhaps 2 1/2 more years to help the orphanage get on its feet, unless the Lord leads otherwise.

We were blown away with how primitive they were expecting to live.

We deeply admire their courage and sacrifice.

They are trying to spend as little as possible on themselves so they will not be living richly right beside the ones living in abject poverty beside them. They also want to be the biggest help to the orphanage that they can be. They are also under the authority of people higher up on the board of the orphanage, and so while the Dimmetts were willing to live with an outhouse because of lack of running water, the head of the orphanage insisted on a higher standard of living which is nice on one hand for comfort, but difficult on the other hand because it will use more rainwater which they need for other things.

The biggest thing Randy was asking our Mission Helps team for was some simple cabinets and simple furniture. 

They had no furniture and no cupboards, and Sharonna didn't even have kitchenware!

Here the men are starting to build a table.

That first Monday was a holiday for the country, called the Queen's Birthday, in honor of Queen Elizabeth, even though it was not her actual birthday, because of the country's relationship to Britain in the past.

The country chooses a day and makes that her birthday, and schools and stores are closed.

So the men could not purchase materials yet.

So they did what they could that first day, including getting the generator running, thanks to Dave Holderbaum.

Here is what the house looks like from the one side. A container that had been shipped to New Guinea was held up in customs over six years, and when it was finally delivered to the land, they had to throw away much of the foodstuffs.
But Randy decided to use one side of the container for one wall of their house. 

Here Randy and Dave are working on figuring out how to hang the gutter.

The biggest project done that day was to finish leveling the hole dug for this rainwater tank and to set it in place and get it ready for plumbing.

The girls of the orphanage, who are right now living in Aunty Rosa's own house, spent the morning working in the gardens on the orphanage property.
They dug up the dirt and pulled weeds and found a few stray sweet potatoes, called "kow-kows."

We ladies helped prepare a big holiday lunch celebration.

Since I knew how to cut whole pineapples, my job was to cut up about 8 pineapples, plus orange sections and cucumber spears.

Here is the thatched roof pavilion that was built to dry the adobe bricks,

and is now being used for eating and school work. 

There was a single picnic table under the pavilion--something the Mission Helps team noticed right away and decided to remedy by building two more while they were there.

The orphanage boys had sprinkled flower petals all along this dirt path to the pavilion to celebrate our coming.

It was so dear of them!

Here is the scene of what is there of the orphanage right now: 

The boys' "dorm" is the structure furthest back, with walls of woven grass and metal roof. 

It houses about 18 boys, with cement floor and wooden bunk beds. 

The building closer to the front left here is the home of Namba, who stands as boys' dad and dean.

The dark roof in the center of the picture is the cookhouse where they have a fire in a hole in the floor, 

while smoke curls out the grass roof.

Namba has several children of his own, and recently a brother-in-law was killed in a landslide, so Namba is caring for six of those children as well now. 

Before he became a Christian, Namba had two wives, but when he became a Christian, he put away the first one, but gave her a piece of property and is making sure that she and her children are taken care of.

This is a common scenario in PNG, men having more than one wife, but Christianity makes a difference both in limiting a man to one wife but also making sure that he treats even the ex-wife with the care due her. 

Here is inside the cookhouse where I believe it was Namba's wife and another helper lady were cooking chicken, bananas and kow-kow.

Looking the other direction from this picnic pavilion is the Dimmett's home.

The boys had strung flowers all around the pavilion.

So pretty and so thoughtful of them.

I was amazed at the way these people use what they have, even if it is just the beautiful flowers that God has made to grow all around.

Two pigs are kept to grow and provide meat.

I offered to do the duty of giving it the garbage we'd collected from our cooking the days before.
They had it staked in an empty part of the garden where it roots around.

Randy and Namba try to keep the boys busy on days they don't do school.

Here the big boys are hauling in firewood that another pastor gave the orphanage.

Here is the dear man who had given the firewood from his property.

What a beaming face!

That afternoon, the orphanage received a visit from a government official, assistant to the MP [Project Minister of PNG]!

As I understand it, this man goes around looking at projects that the government can assist with.

This caused quite the stir!

The orphanage staff and children sang him their welcome song, and here Randy is showing the official the property and what each building is.

The official then made a speech saying he would do what he could to see what could be done to help the orphanage.

Aunty Rosa and the Dimmetts are not all that certain that anything will actually come of it, knowing how corrupt the government is, and how little money there is to actually help needy projects after the greedy officials have taken most or all of the money for themselves and their pet projects.

Rosa and Dimmetts, while appreciating the gesture, reminded us that their trust is in the Lord, not the government.

In the above picture, you can see Bro. Wilmer Paulus to the left, who had just been picked up with his wife at the airport.
It was felt that having us Americans present made an impression on the government official, letting him know that this little orphanage was important enough to some in another country that we had come all the way here to help.
The official acknowledged this and appeared quite humbled about it.
Pray that the Lord will use this contact in whatever way He wants.

Meanwhile, some of our crew and Rosa's husband, Jiwa, were staying busy even while the speech was going on.

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Later, while the men were showing the government official all around the property, the young people played volleyball, and for a while Sam joined them.

Here the men have finished the rough wooden table and are figuring and making plans for buying materials and working the next day.

More pics and news later, when I can get to it.
But tomorrow, Monday, is our graduation celebration for Carrie and Sam so I don't expect to have time to blog!
I have enough pictures and news from this PNG trip to keep me busy for a long time, and I'm so thrilled that we got to go.
I can't stop marveling at how God was all over this trip, using us to encourage and help both missionaries and nationals, and in turn using them to encourage and lift us!
He is amazing!