Ebel's Blogmail

Greetings from Papua New Guinea

I hope this email finds you all very well! Here it is the end of January and the last day of our Tok Pisin language course. The course has gone very well and we are learning to understand and speak Tok Pisin. The challenge comes Friday when we go out to a village and spend a week there trying to speak Pisin only. (This village is only accessible by mission airplane unless you want to walk days to get in/out) Learning the language will help us build relationships with Papua New Guineans who don’t speak English. And if you must learn a language Tok Pisin is a whole lot easier then English.

I would love to say we have been all well since our last update, but true to living in a place like PNG, catching something not very pleasant is likely. So I, Richard spent a couple days “experiencing” giardia, a little fellow that causes painful stomach aches. Once it was diagnosed by one of the other missionary wives the medicine went straight to work and a day later I was mostly back to normal. Josh has also spent a day under the weather, we think it was giardia as well but were quick to get him on meds to avoid the worse. Needless to say we make a greater effort to ensure cleaner hands!

One bonus to living in the Highlands of PNG and especially in MT Hagen is the farmers market. It truly is an experience the freshness and variety is huge, avocadoes to zucchini. We can get all sorts of common and not so common fruits and veggies all very cheap (to us). A big change for us when in Arnhem Land before we never had fresh fruit and veggies.

For example

Cauliflower 1 kina or 40 cents CND

Large bunch of Bananas 1 kina or 40 cents CND

Pineapple 1 kina

In the picture attached you can see pineapple, cucumbers, oranges, papaya, sugar fruit, carrots and bananas. (The other picture is out the back of our house over looking a gully)

Everyone is crunched into a small area trying to sell you their cucumbers while there are at least 20 other cucumber sellers trying to do the same. For those familiar with the Market in Hagen you will notice from the picture that it has moved. This is just temporary while a new very improved market is built in its place. Josh and Richard do most of the market shopping and Josh never leaves the market without buying some sugar cane. The sellers are very friendly and generous it is unusual not to come away with more then we paid for.

As I mentioned before this next week is bush orientation and following that week Richard will start operational orientation (flying). That will take us into March when we will move to Kawito.

Thanks again for your prayers! We could not be here without them.