Friday, January 29

Last night, I had just fallen asleep when I heard Olivia’s name repeatedly and urgently called from outside. I did not relish the idea of getting out of bed and go outside to figure out what was going on. Thankfully, Olivia came home just then from delivering “askims” and found the girls outside her window. They were bringing a big bowl of fresh fish as a thank you for the fish hooks we gave them!

The bonito are “running” almost every day. We often here the call (oo-ee, oo-ee, oo-EE) that means the fish are biting. As I sit on the porch and type, I can see seven to twelve canoes madly paddling around a large circle in between Marulaon and Karumalun. Even in the rain and wind that are blowing through this morning, our neighbors are skilled at pulling breakfast into the boat.

Aaron left yesterday afternoon to travel to Hae Village. He will lead a translation committee meeting to kick off 2021 and lay out the program for the year ahead. We anticipate his return this evening and look forward to hearing his report.

Saturday, January 23

“It makes perfect sense to me, grace and perseverance. I have learned that to be all grace is to be lazy but to be all perseverance is to be judgmental. A good balance of grace and perseverance pushes us forward without destroying our spirit when we don’t meet a goal, and it continually brings us back to our goals, dreams, and desires in order to remember why we began, how far we have come to get here, and where we ultimately want to go. It gives us permission to not be perfect but to strive toward excellence….I want my life to be marked by grace and perseverance as partners.”

-Annie Downs, Looking for Lovely

Grace AND perseverance. That’s what I’m praying for these days.

Thankfully, I don’t have to muster it up by myself, because both of these qualities are gifts from the Lord.

Grace and perseverance for myself. Grace and perseverance to extend towards others.

Thursday, January 21

The 2020-2021 school year is finished! These hardworking girls jumped straight from one academic year to the next without a break, knowing that we would need to be ready to leave for America when most of their friends were enjoying Spring Break. Olivia and Katherine diligently tackled school, day after day, with only short breaks for moving back and forth from the village. 

Today’s fetal pig dissection culminated thirty-six weeks of curriculum, and now I’m down to my last student at home. I’m bursting with pride for these two and thankful for their contributions to their own learning.

Wednesday, January 20

My old friend cellulitis came to visit again today. This eruption on my left leg always explodes in the same place, and the infection is a sign that my body is exhausted. I think we caught it early enough this time that I won’t have the massive blisters that have shown up before. My family is amazing, they are picking up the slack and keeping the household moving along smoothly while I recover and stay off my feet as much as possible.

Tuesday, January 19

Aaron led a training workshop today for the Uninitiated Native Speakers (UNS) that will be participating in the Consultant Check in February. Our neighbors haven’t grown up answering comprehension questions in school like we have. Changing languages back and forth from reading a text in Lavukaleve, then telling the meaning back in Pijin, would challenge anyone! 

So they practiced with several different kinds of texts...instructional texts like how to make a local umbrella and scriptures that have already been checked like Ruth and Jonah. My friend Kiko prepared a lovely lunch for the workshop participants.

 

Monday, January 18

“We don’t all need to be making biscuits, but we should all be doing something. We should be getting our hands into stuff to give. We should be blessing others, thinking of others, giving to others. And we should be doing it so freely that we don’t remember it, because we are willing to wait to see what is done with it. We are willing to see, years down the road, what kind of interest accrued on those biscuits.” 

-Rachel Jankovic, Fit to Burst: Abundance, Mayhem, and the Joys of Motherhood

Since the soccer tournament is over, the requests for pain relievers and band-aids have decreased. But more and more people are asking for fishing hooks and birthday cakes! The little girls who want to fish always ask for Katherine when they come to our door, and the youth ask for Olivia.

But my friends ask me for birthday cakes. Tomorrow, we will deliver two birthday cakes, one for each of these twins. And Wednesday, another birthday cake will go next door to our chief’s family as his oldest child celebrates her 20th birthday.

Friday, January 15

“Until we learn contentment in God alone, we’ll run far with our earthly desires and worship either their presence or their absence.” -Glenna Marshall, Everyday Faithfulness

Email is another little piece of sandpaper that quickly reveals where I have been looking for life. In the Strengths Finder evaluation, “Connection” tops the list for me. With no internet or phone, our satellite email is the only connection I have with the outside world. For some reason that my very tech challenged brain doesn’t understand, our email situation is different this time. We’re using much more data every time we ping the satellite, and since we pay by how much data we use, we’re paying a lot more during this village stay. The team at JAARS has been absolutely amazing, answering questions, making suggestions, and giving us updated information about our data. But WOW I like my connectivity. I like making a cup of coffee and finally resting in my rocking chair on the porch while our email unit beeps away and brings me words from people I love around the world. On our other village trips, I might do this three or four times a day. Now we are limiting ourselves to hooking up that precious connection to the outside world only once a day, at most, to cut down on costs. I’m a slow learner, thankfully God is patient with me as He reveals places in my life where I have tried to find comfort instead of learning “contentment in God alone.”

Wednesday, January 13

About half an hour after Aaron left to paddle to work with Ezekiel, two of my friends showed up unannounced to weed in my yard. We had already talked about me hiring them to take care of the area around the house during 2021, but I didn’t know when to expect them. Thankfully, I had planned to make a big pot of milked potatoes and pumpkin greens for lunch, so there was plenty to share.

“Celebration is the spiritual discipline associated with gratitude. Thus, we look for every opportunity to celebrate God’s presence with us and his activity among us.” -Ruth Haley Barton, Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership

Twenty-four years ago today, with a ring in one hand and a tub of rocky road ice cream in the other, Aaron asked me to marry him. So today we celebrated with homemade rocky road when Aaron paddled back home. He called it “Rocky Road Resurfaced” because we substituted cream cheese instead of marshmallows. The results delighted us! We look back at the ups and downs of our relationship, and we are so grateful to be able to “celebrate God’s presence with us and his activity among us.”

Tuesday, January 12

One of the young moms asked Olivia to teach her how to make a chocolate (aka birthday) cake to bake in a drum oven. The mom had been wanting to learn for a long time, but she was afraid to ask me because I am a “big woman.” Yesterday afternoon, Olivia took down ingredients and a recipe for an eggless chocolate cake, and a wide range of ladies practiced stirring and measuring and mixing. After evening prayer, Olivia returned to show them how to make chocolate icing, too. And then they gobbled it all up.

When we come to live in Marulaon, we have to bring everything we need with us: food, toiletries, school supplies, etc. We are constantly monitoring levels of everything from toilet paper to beans to how much propane is left in the cylinder. When Aaron started the kettle boiling for coffee this morning, the burner lit just fine. But after a few minutes, the flame sputtered out. So he tiptoed down the stairs and underneath the house to switch gas cylinders, then quietly relit the refrigerator (which also runs on propane) and got the kettle boiling again on the stove top when he came back up to the house. We are so grateful that the gas ran out when we were awake and could quickly catch the need to switch to a full cylinder. Our little freezer holds some precious ground beef that we will continue to use during the rest of our village stay.

Monday, January 11

Last night, our community gathered to celebrate the 1st and 3rd place finishes by our village’s soccer teams in last week’s tournament. The festivities also included a dance party to close out the sing roll and New Year’s exuberance. When our friends told us that the party would last until daylight, we didn’t believe them. But after we got home from the feast and speeches, the DJ kicked up the volume and the bass literally shook our house. Until six o’clock this morning.

We watched Ezekiel paddle across the glassy ocean to our village, and he and Aaron sat down to work. Evidently, Karumalun Village could hear the music all night long, too! I wanted to make sure the guys had good fuel for their sleepy brains and bodies, so I took two big pumpkins and stuffed them with a mixture of coconut cream, fish, onions, garlic, salt, and curry. Usually, I cook this recipe on hot stones, but since we still don’t have an outdoor kitchen, I just wrapped the pumpkins in foil, set each one in a 9x13 dish, and baked them in the oven. The hot stones must cook faster, because instead of one hour, my oven took closer to three (and I kept turning up the temperature), but the results were worth it!

Sunday, January 10

“Human beings in community are like rocks in a riverbed; we are shaped by the flow of life in the communities we are a part of.” -Ruth Haley Barton, Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership

Our kids are forever shaped by the flow of our Marulaon community, and each one of them has embraced his or her personality and giftings to pour into and shape our community. Olivia makes opportunities. She does everything full throttle. In fact, I joke sometimes with our neighbors that Olivia is like a 60 horsepower engine (the biggest we have in our area). She plays at 60 horsepower, she works at 60 horsepower, she does school at 60 horsepower, she feels at 60 horsepower.

Saturday, January 9

“Trials reveal your true thoughts and desires where you have been looking for life, where you have sought meaning and where you have looked to give you hope.” -P.D. Tripp, Suffering

Sometimes the grade of the “sandpaper” is rougher than other times. This week, we’ve experienced some of those sandpaper moments, just small trials that reveal where I have sought meaning and where I have looked to give me hope.

Things like late night “sing roll” challenge me. When Olivia participates, she reminds her friends that she still has school, even though they don’t, and she comes home before midnight. Since we arrived in the village more than two weeks ago, we haven’t had an uninterrupted night of sleep. When I don’t get enough sleep, headaches plague me. And I’m crabby.

Our family’s habit is to leave the battery powered twinkly white lights on, and when Olivia comes home, she turns them off. With no ceilings in the house, we can easily see if the lights are reflecting on the inside of our roof and know if everyone is safely tucked in bed. One night Aaron forgot that Olivia was gone, and he turned off the lights and locked the door. When Olivia got home, she called to Katherine to unlock the door because her bedroom window is right next to the stairs leading to our porch.  Yay for unselfish sisters who are willing to climb out of a comfortable bed!

Friday, January 8

I’m so grateful for our state’s digital library system, its wide variety of books helps me toward my goal of life long learning. Even here in the village, I try to take at least a few minutes each day to rest my body and sharpen my mind. Before we left Honiara, I checked out three books to read on the Kindle:

- Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dimitri Shostakovich & the Siege of Leningrad by M.T. Anderson

- Dirt: Adventures in Lyon as a Chef in Training, Father, & Sleuth Looking for the Secret of French Cooking by Bill Buford

- Glory in the Ordinary by Courtney Reissig

Thursday, January 7

Marulaon hosted a soccer tournament this week for village from the Central and Western Russells. The girls alternated between tackling school and cheering for the home teams (our village had five teams and two of them made it to the last day).

Aaron and Ezekiel worked all day long at the church, with only a short lunch break. When Aaron brought home the dishes at the end of the day, I learned that Ezekiel liked the curried chunks of pumpkin that I served. Many people around here don’t like the fruit of the pumpkin and will eat only the leaves. We like both! I happily put the leftovers in a big jar and sent them home with Ezekiel.

Wednesday, January 6

Today we hosted our “First Annual Epiphany Morning Tea” underneath our house for the catechists and their wives, along with Chief Hensi and his wife. Sharing our family’s tradition of hiding “baby Jesus” in the cake was a small way to say thank you to these couples who serve the community so faithfully. And it was fun to be able to hand out the frisbees whenever anyone found a whole almond in his or her piece of cake. The best part? Hearing Matthew 2:1-12 read in Lavukaleve!

Tuesday, January 5

We thought we had it figured out. A few boards, a few nails, and the new rain tank stand would be in place lickety-split. That was a year ago. Obviously, our cross cultural communication and understanding still has a lot of room for improvement. Daily, we earnestly pray for the Holy Spirit to whisper in our ears as we navigate every nuance of living immersed in another culture.

This time, Aaron delivered a handwritten note with some reimbursement for time and energy and supplies tucked inside. And by the end of the day, we had a new stand for our 1200 gallon rain tank. I’ve struggled watching the water shoot out the end of the gutter with nowhere to go except the ground. Now I feel like we are being better stewards of the precious resource of water.

Before the tank could be placed on the new stand, it needed to be cleaned out. After sitting underneath our house for more than a year, it was full of stones tossed in by children and cobwebs built by spiders who thought this cavernous dry rain tank provided the perfect place for a home. Aaron and Katherine crawled inside to insure that the tank was ready to receive rain.

Aaron also needed to prepare the stand so it will last as long as possible in our tropical climate. He spent some time today painting a waterproof coating on the wood so our neighbors will have fresh, clean drinking water from this tank for a very long time.

Monday, January 4

One of my friends told me a funny story today. On New Year’s Eve, when our neighbors were gathering to ring the bell and beat the drum and make a lot of noise to welcome the new year, her daughter was standing with a group of young people at the corner of our house. They were counting down to midnight and getting ready to make a ruckus, but at just a few minutes before the stroke of twelve, Aaron walked out on our porch, and the group scattered in fear that he was coming to get them. What they couldn’t see was that he had a rat trap in his hand. The trap had just sprung, and Aaron was only walking down to drown the critter in the ocean before coming back to bed!

Sunday, January 3

“It is not wrong to make resolutions, but it is useless to do so unless we season them well with believing cries to God. Davide intended to keep the law of the Lord but first he needed the Lord of the law to keep him.” 

-C.H. Spurgeon, The Golden Alphabet

I’ve set myself a goal of typing in the hand written translation first drafts for thirty minutes each morning and thirty minutes each afternoon. That’s about all my eyes can handle as I ponder over the cursive written in dull pencil, often over erased portions. I’m still working on Luke, but as soon as I finish it (which will be a while at my very slow pace!), I have Philippians to begin.

The translation team continues to balance drafting scripture with editing, refining, and checking it. Slowly and carefully, the pieces are coming together for the Lavukal to have God’s Word in their own language.

Saturday, January 2

One of the customs to celebrate the New Year here is to get people wet. Whether it’s throwing a bowl of water over a friend or dragging somebody into the ocean, being drenched from head to toe is the popular thing to do (especially if you are under twenty five). Olivia especially enjoys joining her friends, both in dousing them with water and in being pulled toward the beach. She came home dripping wet and grinning from ear to ear yesterday afternoon.

Olivia also made a chocolate birthday cake for a birthday party last night. Katherine spelled out the birthday girl’s name in sprinkles. They covered it with a tea towel and delivered it, as promised, “after evening prayer”. Two and a half hours later, the party finally started. “Solomon Time” still challenges me!

When the party finished, all of the young girls began to “sing roll” around the village, singing and banging pots and pans to continue with the celebration of the New Year. We could hear three different groups marching around the village, all at the same time. We anticipate the festivities to last for a least another week! The girls made it home to fall into their beds just after midnight.

Friday, January 1

Yesterday, when I was walking around the village, a young mom called me over to see if I had any medicine for her little one with a cough. We try to keep children’s liquids available for simple things like colds and fevers, so saying yes was easy!

I noticed that her little one had a “necklace” made of a leaf or grass that had been softened over the fire, so I asked her about the necklace. She said the leaf was boas, and it was to help with the cough. I’m interested in learning more.

Thursday, December 31

Ezekiel stopped by this morning. He and Aaron had a “pre-meeting” underneath the house while the girls and I did school. I took them bowls of slippery cabbage and cooking bananas cooked in coconut milk and curry to fuel their business meeting. They agreed that Aaron would paddle over to Ezekiel’s house on Monday morning to convene the real meeting.

Wednesday, December 30

Monday night, caroling got rained out, but last night, the youth from our village went to sing on what they thought would be a quick trip. Only two villages instead of three, and those two were close. We have some battery operated Christmas lights on our little tree. When Olivia leaves the house to go carol, the lights stay on even after we go to bed. Since we have no ceilings in our little house, we can easily see if she has returned. Aaron and I woke up frequently and pried open an eyelid to check and see if the lights were still on, and each time we checked, they were still shining. Even when we got up and made coffee while a huge rain poured outside, Olivia still hadn’t returned. At 5:30 she came busting through the door like a drowned rat. They had just returned after a night full of being flexible! She took a quick nap, then told us stories over breakfast and morning chores.

Last week, Ezekiel came by and met with Aaron for several hours on our veranda. Today, Aaron paddled over to work with Ezekiel, but discovered that family business had pulled him away to another village. So Aaron left some materials, and they will try again on another day. With an intermittent to nonexistent phone signal, even if somebody does have a phone, it’s almost impossible to find out if they are at home unless you just go over there and find out!

Monday, December 28

Olivia went caroling last night with the Marulaon Youth and got home around 1:15 this morning. She popped up with her normal alarm at 5:30, since today was the first day back to school and work after our Christmas break.

Our rain tanks are full again after a glorious rain yesterday afternoon. Thanks for the continued prayers for a good balance of sun for the solar panels that provide our power and rain for the rain tanks which provide all of our water.