This is an update on my last trip to PNG Sept. 18-Oct 27, 2011. It was a very different trip than most and it shows that difficulties can be a good thing sometimes or more accurately, God can use difficulties to His advantage.
Perhaps "difficulties" is not the right word, because that is more the way I might perceive what happened. It was not really a difficulty, rather a mere change of plans and a slight problem to overcome. Nonetheless, we are to use our circumstances to bring honor to God in every way we can. Easier said than done for people like myself who by default will complain and see the worst case scenario. But I had a couple of people around me who were helpful in seeing things from a different perspective and who could see another way of doing things.
As I head to PNG each time, I always wonder when I will actually arrive in Alotau. The reason for this wondering is that somehow or other flights get changed without notification and delays happen nearly every time I go. This time, the only problem was in Sydney where upon my arrival there was a baggage handlers strike. This meant a slight delay in getting from the international terminal to the domestic. But with the help of a very friendly Aussie, I made the connection. In Cairns I retrieved one of my bags which had been trashed, but the customer service was extremely helpful and gave me a new bag. However, at the time I didn't know one of the wheels was damaged making movement difficult. In the end I made it to Alotau by Wednesday afternoon, where our center manage picked me up.
I was feeling very exhausted and mentioned to our manager as we were getting into the van that if the boat were to leave on Friday instead of the next day, I wouldn't mind. His reply was "Concerning the boat, it probably will not be able to leave until Friday anyway because it still has a problem." That couldn't be good. He also mentioned that a boat, the Sonoma, was leaving Wed. night around 7 pm. Would I like to go then? Two concerns came to my mind immediately. The first was how in all this world was I too get all my stuff ready to go in just 3 hours when I was feeling the jet lag? Second, how would I get back to Alotau when I had flights to catch at the end of the 4 weeks? This latter issue was important because commercial boats are notoriously hard to get out there and are quite unreliable. So my response was a simple "I don't think so." The manager, however, expected that and had an alternative idea. We went to the wharf to see the captain and met up with Kwadima's (our organization's boat) manager. After a short discussion, the idea was presented of sending a written message via the captain of the Sonoma to ask a couple of men from Nubogeta to get on and come to Alotau. We could work at the center until the Kwadima was operational. So I gave the captain a note asking Siyokira and Tomasi to come in on the boat to work. I also talked to another man on our radio the next day at noon to make sure they understood.
Somehow with all the messages that I sent, it still was misunderstood and only Siyokira came in. Try as we might to get Tomasi in, no boat ever came by enabling him to come in.
Siyokira came in on a Sunday evening. Because there was no room for him to stay at our center, we decided that he would stay in town with a relative by the name of Gilbert. He was around 3 1/2 km away. We tried to begin the next day, but it did not start off well because Siyokira stayed up all night and it was obvious he was sick. Around noon I took him back to Gilbert's house, gave him some antibiotics and told him we would not work the next day. We did complete the first 14 verses of Ephesians that first morning.
On Wed (28th of Sept) we again worked. However I had decided it might be better to attempt to complete John rather than starting another book. So to John we turned. Tomasi had already read chapters 12-21 and made corrections last year when I saw him. The group that worked with me last year for some reason worked very slow on it and we made very little progress. When I got sick at the end we lost an entire week to work on the book.
Siyokira had a copy of John and I used my computer. We read through sentence by sentence making corrections and discussing the more difficult verses at length. Normally we have a blackboard where I write it all out. We didn't have this and had to make use of my either printing out a copy (while the printer worked) or writing out a verse and showing it to him. He made lots of changes for the better.
We had to set John aside on Thursday so I could buy all the supplies I needed for the village. It was a big risk because 1) if I didn't go, I couldn't get my money back on any of it and 2) it would be wasting a great deal of the little time I had. Friday we went back to John and made some good progress on it. We continued to work on it Saturday and then again on Monday. By this time it was obvious that I was not going to the village. So to make the best of it Siyokira and I pushed on and finished John Thursday. It took us 7 days to complete chapters 12-20.
This was encouraging. So we went back to Ephesians. Five days later we had a rough draft of Ephesians. I had not planned on getting any further than this. In fact, I really didn't think we would be able to finish Ephesians. I had also prepared 2 Timothy but had intended to give the people copies to read through until we could work on it together. So I had not brought any books with on for 2 Timothy. I figured we might as well try it and see how far we get. Three days later we had a rough draft of 2 Timothy.
At this point in time Siyokira told me he wanted to go home. I couldn't blame him. He had expected to be in Alotau a week with me. His garden had not been cut yet, he had received word that his father-in-law was sick (in another language area) and his wife had gone to see him so he was concerned about his kids as to who was watching over them. Also, he didn't like where he was living for various reasons. So I told him we would begin looking for a boat. But none were to be had. We got word that one was leaving in a few days and he said he could handle it till then. Not that he had a choice in the matter.
I had prepared Colossians several years ago, but had yet worked with anyone to go through it together. So we now turned to Colossians. I wasn't certain how far we would get since a boat could turn up at any time. We decided to work on it and see what happened. We began Saturday afternoon (Oct 15). We found the first couple of chapters were difficult to the extent that I decided to skip them and go to the second half of the book. Then in the evenings I could work through the first couple of chapters again to refresh my memory and to make sense out of them for Siyokira. This worked out well so that we actually finished the book on Wednesday afternoon (Oct 19). The next morning we didn't work so that I could make 10 copies of the four books we had completed. That afternoon we discovered a boat was leaving night. We got all of Siyokira's things and put him on the boat. God couldn't have timed it better!
In the end not being able to go to the village was actually the best thing that could have happened. I could not have planned things better. We have never worked that quickly and well before. It took 18 days to complete the four books. When I told Tomasi on the radio that we had finished 4 books, he made the comment that we should probably work at the center again to try to finish up the NT. So that is what we plan on doing in March when Roxanne and I will be returning to PNG. We hope to translate 1 and 2 Peter and other book, either 2 Corinthians or Hebrews. Thank you for praying for this trip.
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