A very important workshop is starting on Monday, 30 April 2007. Twelve national translators from around the country will be gathering to review the Pijin New Testament which was first published about 20 years ago.

The Pijin Old Testament is nearly complete and the entire Pijin Bible is to go to print later this year in time to be launched in July of 2008.

During the month of May, three public forums will be held here in the capital city to allow Solomon Islanders to express their opinions on the choice of some key Biblical terms used in the Pijin Bible, standardized spelling of certain words and any parts of the New Testament that might need editing.

This past week I have spent a lot of time trying to organize the venues for these meetings and then promoting the meetings so we get as many people as possible to come and participate. Yesterday my colleagues and I spent time taking flyers around town and asking people to come. One of my stops was the national radio station where I shared about the workshops with some of the news staff. Not only did they agree to put the workshop in the evening news, the reporter also interviewed me for the news and a special in depth news program!

Please pray for the Pijin team as they review the New Testament and make sure that the Pijin is clear and understandable as well as true to God’s Word.

Pray for the 3 public forums that will be held May 2nd, 8th and 15th. Pray that the meetings will be well attended and that they will be productive as well.

We thank God for the addition of “Oakwood Community Church” in Ortonville, Michigan to our prayer/support team! The addition of their partnership in our ministry helps to meet some of the gap in our monthly financial needs. We look forward to getting to know our new friends at Oakwood.

Welcome, Oakwood!

Hooray!!! We are back in town! (Here we are at the wharf with our cargo on Sunday morning.)

We left Kia Village about 5:30 on Saturday morning and traveled almost half the length of the island of Isabel arriving 6 hours later in the provincial capital of Buala.

On our way to Buala, the boat motor used more gas than expected and we had to call into several hamlets to try and find some to purchase. On the third attempt, we were successful, and we found an interesting bonus there – the skeleton of a whale that had died on the coast last year! This amazing skeleton is only the tail section we were told! The kids are holding ribs.

When we asked if we could buy a whale bone we were told we could take one. What an amazing souvenir of our trip! We aren’t sure what we are going to do with it, although it’s been suggested we could make it into a coffee table or footstool! By the way, for its amazing size, it is not very heavy.

We spent the afternoon at a guest house run by the Anglican church and felt blessed to be able to take showers and catch a little sleep while waiting for the ship. The Estrella arrived around 7:00 pm and we boarded with our pile of cargo. The ship was really full as this was the last port of call before heading to Honiara and it had missed the previous scheduled stop at Buala last week due to the tsunami. We had 5 seats in second class and our legs had to rest on all the cargo. It was not very comfortable, but we were thankful to be heading to town at last!

The ship left about 8:30 pm and normally would have arrived in Honiara in the middle of the night, but we didn’t get in until 6:30 am! The ship went very slow because it was so heavily loaded. The ship was so loaded down that even though the sea was not rough, waves were splashing onto the outer walkways of the ship. We never take a safe arrival for granted!

Here are some photos up from our week in Kia so you can ‘see’ where we have been.

Here’s a photo of the participants of the course on the last day. They are standing in the new church building in Kia. All the beautiful decorations on the wall behind them are shell inlay. The angels and dove are carved from wood by a local man with a grade six education. It is beautiful!

This is Kia from outside the church late one afternoon. As you can see, many of the houses are on stilts over the water. The small shacks further out in the water are pig pens.

I had a lot of fun taking photos out in the village. Here’s one of my favorites!

We returned from the workshop today (Wednesday) with word that an email had come in for us from a colleague in Honiara. The ship that we are supposed to take to town was stuck on the reef and now has arrived in Honiara. So, that means the ship is delayed and now isn’t scheduled to leave Buala, the provincial capital, until Saturday evening getting us to Honiara in the early morning of Sunday. Hmmm. Will there be a plan D or E before we get to town? Emily has taken accepted the news with grace.

The workshop continues to go well. The participants are doing really well and excited about what they are learning. When we had our break around noon, the group surprised us with a feast. Planks were laid on top of pews in the church and brightly colored tablecloths with crocheted edging. Pots, plates and bowls were laid out on the table filled with rice, sweet potatoes, slices of juicy pineapple, noodles and fish. (Some of the fish are colorful reef fish that you would find in a US pet store with triple digit price tags!) The participants also brought me orchid plants and other flowers to plant in my garden in town.

A few words of thanks were given by one of the leading women in the church who is also participating in the workshop. After Tim prayed for the food, we began filling our plates while the workshop participants sang songs in beautiful harmony for us. When everyone had mostly finished eating, the man who heads up the translation committee stood up and gave some words of thanks to us for coming. We were given a chance to say a few words as well. It was really a very nice feast and it made us feel us very special. Normally such a feast would be held on the last day, but since everyone thought that we were leaving tomorrow the feast was held today. Of course now we won’t leave until Saturday, but never the less we celebrated today!

If Emily has any regrets about growing up in the Solomon Islands, it is probably that she didn’t get to live in a village for a long enough to learn a local language. She envies her MK (missionary kid) friends who spent many years living in a village because their parents are Bible translators. Emily has enjoyed the opportunity to hang out in a village this week.

Kids here have a lot of freedom in the village. They can run and play outside all day, jump in the sea for a swim or take a ride in a canoe. If someone is cooking, it’s not unusual for someone to offer the kids a bit to eat – villagers are so pleased when the MK’s like the local food!

The other day someone came to the house with a few sticks of sugar cane for the kids. The Emily and Grant quickly grabbed a machete and headed outside to cut the cane in pieces and share them around. After the outer skin is cut off, big bites of the cane are broken off and chewed to release the sugary sweet juice inside. When the juice is all gone, the tasteless bits of cane are spit out on the ground.

Last night Emily and Tim went to the evening prayer service and afterward Emily and Grant (one of the other MK’s) hung out with the village kids. They strolled around the village and the kids were telling Emily the names for different things in the Zabana Language. Later they sat around and the kids told Emily some of their traditional stories. She had a wonderful time hanging out with the kids.

Village life is not perfect, but there are some really nice advantages. We always know that when the kids are wandering around the village, they will be watched and cared for by the whole community. It’s a nice feeling.

Tuesday afternoon

The workshop went well today. The students have now learned the first half of the coursework which involves teaching students to read and write stories. We finished the workshop by 2:30. Tomorrow we start training them to teach the phonics part of the program.

After the workshop, I walked through the village. It was quiet and I didn’t see many people, although I did see a few escaping the hot afternoon sun by taking a nap. Others were probably out tending their gardens or harvesting food for their dinners. The trail through the village curves and follows the coastline. It’s a pretty village with flowers growing along the path and around people’s houses.

At 4:30 we gathered around the two-way radio to talk to our office in Honiara. A friend in Honiara was able to buy us tickets on a ship that is making a trip to the other end of the island. We will have to meet the ship at the provincial capital of Buala. In order to get there, we will hire someone to take us in his fiberglass boat with a 40 horsepower outboard motor. We will leave here Friday morning, expecting the journey to Buala to take 5 – 6 hours. The ship is due to leave Buala Friday night and travel through the night with an expected arrival in Honiara early morning on Saturday. The air conditioned cabin is already booked, so we will have seats in the second class cabin where Tim sat on the way out. If it all works out, we should get into town in time for Emily to attend the youth group retreat.

Here it’s always a relief when you can get to your destination although often it is often not by ‘Plan A’.

Tuesday evening

Dark clouds on the horizon threatened rain most of the afternoon. It finally came around dusk with a very heavy downfall making quite a racket on the corrugated iron roof. It will be nice to be able to take showers again rather than bathing with dipperfuls of water from a basin.

With the rain came flying insects that descended on the house. It is a bit of a mystery how they get in the house, but soon there were hundreds of them swarming around the lights and on the walls. After a while they die and fall to the floor. It’s quite annoying when they come in as it makes it difficult to do much of anything. This morning (Wednesday) there were piles of them to sweep up off the floor. These insects do not come everytime it rains, but every once in a while the conditions must be right and they descend in droves!

Seventeen men and women arrived this morning for the teacher training workshop. Amazingly, we started just before the scheduled 9:00 opening time with Tim leading in a short devotional. Except for a short break at noon we continued until 3:30 pm. The participants are excited to be in the workshop.

Lee and the literacy committee are working on a beginning reading book in Zabana which we are training them to use. Tim and I taught most of the workshop today using Solomon Islands Pijin. The students then do their practice teaching in the Zabana language in small groups. Lee, Tim and I observed the groups to make sure that they include all the steps of the lesson we have taught them and are doing them properly. We will teach the workshop tomorrow through Thursday.

When we got back to the house, we found out that an email had come in for us from Honiara. We were planning on taking a canoe on Thursday afternoon to a port about an hour or so away in order to catch the ship back to Honiara. Because of a tsunami disaster relief charter, the planned trip out here is delayed until Sunday. We will be explore other options for getting back to town.

We’d appreciate your prayers for some kind of transportation to open up so that we can get back in a timely way. Emily will be very disappointed to miss her youth group retreat scheduled for this weekend and the girls are due to go back to school on Monday.

Travel in the Solomon Islands is always interesting and unpredictable.

We woke to a drizzling rain. The rain is welcome as yesterday one of the water tanks ran dry. At 6:30 am the church drum pounded out a rhythm that sounded like it would never end. We ate a little breakfast and got ready to walk down the hill to the church service.

The church building is a long building made of bush materials. The floor is loose pieces of coral. It is a typical Anglican style church. A wide aisle separates the women’s side from the men’s. As worshipers enter the church they drop monetary gifts or lay produce from their gardens at a cement stand.

Heavy wooden benches provide seating with the added luxury of a back to lean upon. Scattered among the pews were kneeling pads woven from pandanas leaf. The two priests assigned to this church were not in the village so the service was lead by the local catechist. Prayers and liturgy were said in the English language with some people reading along in their prayer books, but much of it would be said by memory.The Scripture readings were read in English. Some day they will be able to read them from the Zabana New Testament.

After the service we wandered back to the house to wait for the drum for Sunday School. The appointed hour came and went and it appeared that Sunday School might be cancelled for the day. Eventually the drum was sounded and Lee, Robin and I went down. Lee and Robin are both Sunday School teachers. I went down to take some video and photos.

The Sunday School was filled with preschoolers through teenagers. The teacher led them in singing – some in English, some another local language and then in their own language of Zabana. Their strong voices belted out the songs in rich harmony. The kids were broken up into their various classes for a time of Bible teaching and then came together again for the closing time.

At my special request, the teachers helped arrange the kids in the new church building, that is almost complete, so we could video tape them singing in the Zabana language. Over 150 kids patiently stood in the church and joyously sang out – many with animated faces. What a privilege to be in this place and hear them sing and pray in their own language. I couldn’t help think about when we are all in heaven and standing at the throne singing praises to God. Maybe some of it will be in the Zabana language.

After lunch we played a board game that the Lees taught us and then we went down to the church. We were going to videotape the village kids playing a game with coconut shells, but when we got there we found a feast about to start to honor a woman who had died a year ago. People were standing in lines facing each other. Between the rows of people, banana leaves were laid end-to-end and covered with food. Sweet potatoes, fish, clams, rice and even sea turtle meat was ready to be enjoyed. After a word of prayer, the feasting began. Not one piece of silverware could be seen, but clamshells were being used as individual scoops by a few. Each person helped themselves to the food in front of them. People continued to eat as the family and friends of the deceased said a few words of kindness.

After a short time the food was finished, the bowls, pots and banana leaves were cleared away and the churchyard was returned to its normal state.

The kids soon gathered to play the coconut game for us. They had fun playing it and it was good to get it on video.

Tonight we are going on a crocodile hunt! We asked the boat driver who took us to the island yesterday if we could see a crocodile. Tonight the adventuresome among us will go out in the fiberglass boat and paddle along the coastline with a strong flashlight and see if we can spot a crocodile. We’ll keep you posted as to whether you can call us ‘Crocodile Matzke’ or not!

Sunday Night – ‘Crocodile Hunt’

Just after dark we made our way through the village to the house of our boat driver. The narrow muddy trail meandered between houses that were illuminated by kerosene lanterns. Our flashlights lit the trail in front of us and as we passed by the dark silhouette of a person we would greet them with ‘redu vehana’ (good evening) in Zabana.

Ian, our boat driver and host for the evening, lives in a house built on posts over the edge of the lagoon. We visited for a while and then we headed out in the fiberglass boat to look for crocodiles. Ian sat on the bow of the boat with a long paddle while his nephew steered from the stern. Vowing the kids to silence, the boat glided into the dark lagoon. The sky above was full of ominous gray clouds. The waveless water was black except for the phosphorescence stirred up by the paddles. Each time the paddle dipped into the water and was drawn back, the plankton were disturbed and emitted a trail of small glowing lights that faded behind us.

The shoreline around the lagoon was silhouetted against the gray sky. As we neared the far side, our hosts shone large flashlights along the shore looking for crocodile eyes peeking above the water or any other sign of a crocodile. Now and then we heard a noise in the mangrove trees at the edge, but no sign of any crocs. Occasionally our flashlights illuminated fish jumping out of the water and we wondered if something was under the water chasing them. The men said it was too early in the night for crocodiles and when it started to rain, we gave up the hunt. Our driver started up the engine and we motored back into the village and home to a shower and bed. Seeing a crocodile would have been fun, but we won’t soon forget the trip around the lagoon, listening to the sounds of nature and seeing the shore dotted with the lights of houses along the shoreline.

Tomorrow – Monday morning, we begin our teacher training workshop.

This morning a couple of the men in the village took us all out to an island where we spent part of the day. We glided through dark blue waters in a fiberglass boat powered by an outboard motor on the back. The village lay behind us as we motored through the passageway out toward the open ocean. Except for a few swirling eddies made by flow of the currents coming in and out of the passage, the waters were deep and calm.

Here and there a house or two sat nestled along the shoreline and on the hillsides felled trees marked the site of a future garden. Overhead, whispy white clouds floated across the blue sky. As we neared the island, the dark blue waters gave way to aqua and peering over the edge of the boat, we began to see coral and fish.

The motor slowed down and inched toward the beach, but the kids couldn’t wait and jumped into the crystal clear waters and ran toward the white sand beach. We unloaded the boat and the guys got back in the boat so they could head out fishing. A couple of hours later they triumphantly returned with over a dozen fish. The kids are outside laughing together as they scale the fish.

In the meantime the rest of us stayed on the island and enjoyed swimming and walking along the beach looking for seashells. An occasional fisherman paddled past in a wooden canoe a fair distance from the island, but otherwise our island paradise was ours to enjoy alone. When we looked out at the scenery that surrounded, we had to remind ourselves that this wasn’t merely a picture postcard we were looking at but a glorious part of the Solomon Islands that we are privileged to be able to visit.

Most of the time our day to day lives here are far from idyllic scenes of waving palm trees and the sea lapping up at our toes. However we thank God for his creation and the wonderful opportunity to experience this small slice of it today.