On Friday I left for my side-trip… a 5 hour journey through windy, sometimes treacherous, mountain roads to “the Dom”. Both the drive and the destination were incredibly beautiful. My side-trip team and I stayed with the missionary family that has spent more than 20 years in the tribe, learning the language, building relationships, and attempting to translate the Bible into their language. I feel like being with them for 4 days was a bit of a jolt of reality to what tribal missions would be like. It was rough! They had a house with a shower and a working bathroom, so that was pretty nice. But every day we had to keep a fire going to heat water, turn a generator on and off for electricity and to keep the water pump going, and they were SO isolated! I can’t imagine how lonely it can get out there with no partners to work with. Yet they keep persevering, through difficult circumstances, to finally finish the Dom Bible translation.
We had lots of fun with the tribal people too. Their Pidgin was harder to understand because their language is more tonal… so their Pidgin sounded more sing-songy than we were used to. They were very happy to see us! On Saturday we hiked down the mountain to a hidden cove with a HUGE waterfall. 
Almost the entire village hiked down with us. Seriously – even the guy who was recently elected the councilman came along. All the white people jumped in the water, swam around, played in the waterfall, splashed each other, and took pictures. We had an audience of about 40-50 Nationals just watching us and laughing. The water was way too cold for them and they pretty much thought we were crazy! Then we found out that they didn’t think we’d be able to make it back up the mountain. They think we (whites) are really weak – which we ARE compared to them. They are nothing but sinew & muscle – especially the women. They are always teasing us about how weak we are… but they think we are all So Smart, and they respect that greatly, almost reverently. (You can see how this would create a barrier for building relationships).
On Sunday we were able to worship with the believers in their church. They sang for us, we sang for them, they sang some more. Then I got up and gave my testimony (translated by the missionary there), as did another guy in our group. 
Then we all sang some more and just spent time together. I whipped out my bilum that I’m attempting to create and that caused some laughter among the women. They showed me some new techniques. Then one lady asked us to come to her house. She showed us her garden (they are very proud of their gardens) and introduced us to her family. She told us about her 3 little children, one of which had died. She’s 25 years old and she has lost a child, and was so open about it with us. (this was all in Pidgin by the way, so I’m getting better at understanding it but I’m still awful at speaking it). When we left on Monday morning the whole village turned up to say goodbye to us again. They were very sad to see us go, but hopefully we will all see each other again in Heaven.
Talking with the other students (that went on other side-trips) it was amazing to see how God has been working. One trip went to a tribe that doesn’t have a missionary anymore… they have an established church there that is growing and going out to spread the Gospel to OTHER tribes. They have no concept of NOT evangelizing. To them, having God’s talk in their language is a treasure. They continually said how thankful they are that their village was chosen to receive the good news, and were just praising Him over and over again. These are not new believers who are just a little fired up right now… they have been believers for 20 years or more and are just Passionate in their love for God. They also repeatedly said “you have white skin and we have brown skin, but we are the same in the inside. We are brothers and sisters!”
In the third tribe, they’d lost a 9 year old boy die of pneumonia the day before the students arrived. We didn’t know how they would react to having a bunch of missionary students around during this time. They are brand new believers there. But the little boys mom and dad said “I know that he is a believer and knew God’s talk, so we don’t have to mourn like we usually do because we know he is in heaven now. He is the first Bagwido man in Heaven!” WOW!
One thing that really struck me about both of these tribes is that they really wanted the students to come back and see them, but felt that it was even MORE important for them to come back to PNG and go out to DIFFERENT tribes so that THEY would have a chance to receive the Gospel. That is how strongly they feel about missions. They were sad to see them go, but said "it's ok, we'll see each other in heaven. Go and give this truth to the people who don't have it yet". How amazing is that?!
I think Bobka (a man in the Dom) summed it up really well for us during our church service. “We were all once in Satan’s hands. But then God sent his workers here to us, to give us the truth. We understand it and we believe it. Now we are in God’s hands, and we are all on the same road to Heaven”.
How Great is our God?!
The nationals eat muna. It's supposedly a tasty little snack. Many of the staff here eat them every year. So I, of course, needed to experience this delightful tradition as well.
Here is the bowl of carnage - heads & legs, and a few wings too.
I had made pork steaks in gravy, so we used the leftover gravy to fry up the muna.
Here is the proof that we actually did eat them. It was not delicious, but the gravy helped a lot.
While I'm glad that I tried it, because I really do want to experience all I can while here in PNG, I don't plan on eating them again. Or any other bugs. But we'll see! :)
