We got our first card from somebody we met in WA about 1 year ago at a mission conference but hadn’t heard from since.  We have been sending them our newsletters.  They sent us Isaiah 41:10 (“fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”), which my Aunt Kathy sent my mom a while ago, and she reminded us of it in the airport, and then in a recent email!  Then I read through Isaiah 41 and verse 10 stuck out to me, so I wrote it on the classroom chalkboard hoping it could encourage others.  Then we got that card just a few days later.  God is AMAZING!!

The bugs aren’t bad.  Mosquitoes are mostly only out around dusk and night-time, and when we wear bug spray, it’s fine.  Just a little bit does a very good job.  There are some BIG moths (one bigger than one of my hands, another about the size of one of my hands).  BIG grasshopper too.  And some beetles.  One flew at me and was really loud.  Kind of scary.  There are some nasty looking/big wasps (or something) here. They haven’t bothered us at all, but it’s kind of scary.  I remember them from last time I was in PNG.

We were asked if we had to pay to download attachments.  We have to pay for everything we download/upload.  It’s about 17 toea per MB (either upload/download).  There are 100 toea in 1 kina, and 2.2 kina = 1 US dollar.  So, it’s about 8 cents per MB.  NOT bad at all!

Please also pray for rain.  We’re running low on drinking water (which comes from rain).  They’ve mentioned a number of times we’re low and today they said they have to move water around the compound in creative ways, suggesting that certain reserve tanks are out/very low.

We shopped in town today for the next 4-5 weekends.  We took cash and bought a lot of the start up things we needed which made our costs higher than just maintaining our food supplies.  We finished off at the local outdoor market where they have fruit, veggies, peanuts, eggs, etc.  We finished up with 5 toea.  LOL!  It was an adventure!

So, this shopping was because we have to cook outside, over a fire or camp stove, with no refrigeration for the next 4-5 weekends.  It’s preparation for our 5 weeks in a village w/o refrigeration.  Pretty crazy, but the kitchen manager/cook has been VERY helpful and encouraging and we have a lot of recipes for the village.  We also “learned” how to light a fire and cook over it.  I say “learned” because we both already know how, but then the cook brought out dishes for each fire (there were about 10-12) and we had a sampler lunch where we could try all sorts of dishes from spaghetti and spaghetti sauce to chicken curry to banana bites (a dessert made from ripe banana, flour, and baking powder and deep fried) to spicy tin meat (tin meat is one of the main sources of protein here: it’s meat that comes in a tin can and has all kinds from pork to corned beef, etc) to fried greens.  The fried greens are popular among Papua New Guineans and very tasty: usually they are flavored with a beef/chicken stock cube which run about $0.18 in town: VERY affordable (especially in comparison to US prices for beef stock: we didn’t buy it there because it was so expensive) and VERY helpful in flavoring all sorts of things.

Our “wasfemili” (host family) is coming to POC (Pacific Orientation Course: we just call the campus we’re on POC) tonight for the first time.  We will be spending a lot of time with them over they next number of weeks.  Tonight we meet them and the kitchen provides dinner for us and them.  Later, we’ll visit their house/village for dinner.  Another time we’ll have them to our “haus kuk” (temporary outdoor kitchen that we constructed) and serve them a meal cooked by us.  We’ll also spend a night in their village.  We’ll be with another family for the 5 weeks, but it will be great to get to know this family too.  They will help us learn Tok Pisin (the trade/market language of Papua New Guinea (PNG) which we’re learning at POC) and about the culture.  It will be fun, hard, an adventure, and more!