Turkeys, Trees, and Trinkets

How different was our Thanksgiving holiday than normal?

Thanksgiving Day: Someone told me, “Happy Thanksgiving!” at school. I said, “Oh yeah.” It’s easy to forget that it’s Thanksgiving in the “land of eternal spring,” especially when you are still at work that day. We get PNG holidays off here, not American ones. For dinner, we could have had turkey...but we would have had to pay about $100 to buy one! So instead, we took advantage of a “special” offered by our grocery store here and ordered a rotisserie chicken. We did have access to stuffing, so we had chicken, salad, stuffing, and dried cranberries.

Hanging of the Greens: My family has a tradition of decorating for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving (the hanging of the greens) and watching White Christmas in front of a fire afterward. Eric and I continued the tradition after we got married, but we had to make some modifications this year. Since we had to work during the day and Eric had a game night in the evening, we watched White Christmas while we decorated (and made!) the Christmas tree. No fire, because the type of wood we have here bothers my asthma when it’s burned.

Black Friday: We only have one store in Ukarumpa, and it is only open on week days from 8:30 (sometimes later) until 4. So, no Black Friday deals and no Black Friday shopping in the wee hours of the morning. However...the store DID hold a Christmas sale on Saturday morning! The sale didn’t start until 9, but people lined up outside the store around 8 a.m., and some of the high school students entertained those waiting by playing Christmas music. We live so close to the store that I opened my windows and listened to the music while I did dishes! We went to the store right at 9 and joined the slow procession of people entering the store.

The back warehouse of the store was converted into the Christmas sale area, and it was packed! It was even more crowded than any Black Friday sale I have ever been to because the space was so limited. The sale included everything from practical items (we got a laundry basket, which we have been looking for for months!) to fun Christmas items (later in the day, several of Eric’s students showed up at our house in festive Christmas fedoras). I have only done Black Friday shopping a few times, but the Saturday Christmas sale in Ukarumpa was definitely the most fun post-Thanksgiving sale I have ever been to—it’s amazing how excited you get over things like flavored hot chocolate mixes, candy canes, and laundry baskets when you don’t have access to them all the time!

Learning to Say Good Bye

As Eric and I prepared to move overseas for a significant period of time, we received A LOT of training on transitions and good byes. Since coming to PNG in January, I have found that saying good bye well is a natural part of Papua New Guinean culture. When we left the village on the coast where we lived for four short weeks, we had a farewell dinner with our church and another one with the family we stayed with, complete with speeches and gifts.

For the past six weeks, I have spent every weekday morning with 22 students from all over PNG in a class to give them “initial skills” in various components of English. The course ended with a graduation ceremony on Tuesday afternoon, but I was unable to attend because I teach at the primary campus in the afternoons. I wanted to say good bye to all the students, though, so I joined them as they practiced the song they sang for graduation before I left for lunch. They sang a beautiful song about unity and love in Christ.

Photo by Anita McCarthy

As soon as they finished singing—before I could even clap—one of the students said they wanted me to stand in the middle so they could all pray over me. First I was asked to share something with the students (it is culturally appropriate for both parties to give a small speech when sending a person off), and then one of the students said a good bye message on their behalf. All of the students then gathered around me while one of the pastors who attended the course prayed. It was such a moving way to say good bye to people who have established themselves in my heart after only six weeks.

After the prayer, I shook hands with everyone and prepared to leave, but another one of the pastors wanted to walk me to the edge of the Training Center. He was one of the first people I connected with in the course and one of my favorite students. He said, “One thing the pastor prayed for you was about children, and I wanted to tell you that I am going to add that to my prayer list. You have been married for a long time and don’t have any children yet, so I am going to keep praying for that.”

In the US, such a statement (and prayer!) would seem presumptuous in most cases. I had never talked to any of the participants about wanting children. However, this is a subject that has been on my heart for many months. Eric and I have always known we want to adopt. We have been waiting for the right time, and we have also been wrestling with questions such as, “Do we adopt internationally or domestically?” and “Should we live overseas when we adopt, or should we settle somewhere in the US?” When we came to PNG, these questions were still spinning in our minds without answers.

I don’t remember when I started to feel that domestic adoption from foster care was what Eric and I are called to do, but I do remember praying that God would give Eric the same passion because I knew it wouldn’t work unless we both were serious about it. About four or five months after arriving in PNG, Eric told me that he was ready for adoption and thought we should adopt from foster care. We were both very excited to get involved with foster care, but it was kind of a let down that we finally felt ready for the process of growing our family when we had just started our overseas ministry and will have to wait until we return to the US to take our first steps in this direction.

For the past few months, every time I see small children running around the playground near our house, sleeping on their mom or dad’s shoulder, or yes, even crying at the top of their lungs, my heart aches to have the same thing in my life. Eric and I both feel that being in PNG is a growth period that is necessary for us to be ready to adopt, and we are enjoying the time we have here, but it is still hard to have to wait so long to start a process that will probably still take several years once it’s been started.

So, when Pastor Tonny prayed that God would bless us like he blessed Abraham and Sarah as they cried out for children, and when Pastor Peter told me he is going to keep praying for us to have children, my heart was so full of blessing. They don’t know that we want to adopt, and they don’t know that it could be a several-year process before we have children, but I know that they are praying for our foster children that we will one day adopt. What an incredible blessing that in the midst of the stagnation we feel in the process of having children, we would find Papua New Guinean friends who are praying for the children we hope to have some day.

Pastor Tonny (photo by Anita McCarthy)

I left the Training Center feeling full of joy and a peace that is indescribable. I am sad to see these friends leave Ukarumpa to return to their homes, but Papua New Guineans definitely know how to say meaningful and precious good byes.

Selling Water

In Ukarumpa, we have a training center that offers courses throughout the year to nationals who want to gain skills in areas such as computers, English, grammar, translation software, linguistics, and so on. Each year, they hold a 6-week course called Initial Skills, which I have been helping with since early October. The object is for students to gain “initial skills” in English, research methods, critical thinking, and computers. Most of these students are involved in translation projects as national translators, and they need to improve their skills in each of these areas.

Critical thinking is a fairly uncommon concept in Papua New Guinea. They love to ask questions like “where are you going?” and “what are you doing?” When we lived in a village, we had to answer the question, “Where are you going?” about a dozen times every time we walked somewhere. But, the question “why” is hardly ever asked. In fact, in our pre-village training, our teacher told us it is better to make observations that might lead people to give more information about something rather than asking “why” outright, e.g. “I saw you went into town today” instead of “why did you go to town today?” Thinking critically is important to Bible translators, though, as they think about the meaning of what they are translating and how to most accurately convey it in their language.

One morning in critical thinking class, the teacher asked me to role play a saleswoman trying to sell “Sikaut” (sick out), a “new, good medicine” from China that looks like water but is “special water that gets rid of sickness.” After I gave my sales pitch, students came up with questions to ask me to decide whether it was a wise decision to buy my medicine. I didn’t know I was going to be put on the spot and have to answer questions! One student asked why the name was in Tok Pisin if it is from China. I told her it was a translation of the Chinese word. Then they wanted to know the Chinese word! So, I pretended to lose my voice. (Then, of course, I took a sip from the Sikaut in my water bottle to heal my throat.)

Another student wanted to know if I had records of the kinds of sicknesses that had been healed with Sikaut. In the sales pitch I had read, it mentioned a man who had drunk the medicine and been healed of a fever, so I told him that. Then I added that it had just healed my throat. The students thought that was hilarious! They had a lot of fun asking questions, and I had fun answering. No one decided to buy my “medicine,” so they are putting their critical thinking skills to work!