A couple of weeks ago, one of our translation families was getting ready to go out to their village for a 3-4 month stay. We hosted them for Sunday dinner the day they left. Later we discovered that one of the kids had left his ONLY pair flip-flops at our house.

After the family got to the village we got a radio message asking us to please send the flip-flops out to the village sometime. “No big hurry,” we were told. He only needs them in time for the trip back to town on the ship in August!

For missionary kids in the tropics, shoes are very often optional!

My last blog was written about my neighbor getting a pig for Mother’s Day. It turned out that I got part of one, too! The ladies group at our church had a Mother’s Day retreat on Saturday and we all went to church together Sunday morning. The women planned the entire church service and I’ll have to say it was one of the more lively services we have had in a long time.

After the morning service the men served a beautiful feast. They had even bought a pig, butchered it and cooked it in a traditional ground oven style. There was lots of food and in a very atypical fashion they served the women first! (Normally the women do all the work, serve the men children and men first and sometimes there is almost nothing left for the women.) It was a really encouraging time.

We love our church and are so thankful for the wonderful friends who we enjoy being with.

What are you giving your mom for Mother’s Day? One of our neighbors is apparently giving her mother this pig! Wow. I wonder if she’ll have to butcher it and cook it herself?

I guess I’m thankful for the gift certificate for a new mug that I received…

Some of you who have been reading the blog for a while will remember that fateful day in March when Tim got in a car accident. We asked you to pray for a speedy repair and resolution to that situation. Well… nearly 2 months later, we are still waiting for the repair quotes so we can take them to the insurance company. Sigh. All the parts have to come from overseas so it just takes a while to track them all down. We are talking daily to the mechanic to see if we can’t move things along, but it is excruciatingly slow!

Please pray that we will soon get the quotes so repairs can happen. In the meantime we are driving a vehicle that belongs to our group. We pay by the kilometer to use that vehicle. We are thankful to have that option!

A friend has asked a few questions about my last blog, so I thought I’d answer them in case anyone else out there is wondering. By the way, feel free to send questions and I’ll be glad to try and answer them – well, at least things I know about of course.

1) Who wrote the last blog – Tim or myself? Me – Martha. I write most of the blogs and if Tim writes one we make sure we make that clear. Generally, I’m the ‘idea girl’ and Tim edits.

2) Pijin. Isn’t that spoken other places?

Yes, there are many ‘pijin’ languages spoken around the world. From a linguistic definition, ‘pijin’ is a common language that develops to allow people from different language groups to communicate. As such, for most people it is a second language. When children start speaking a pijin language as their first language, it then becomes a ‘creole’ language.

Around the Pacific, there are various pijin languages and they have an interesting history. Back in the 19th century the sugar cane industry in Australia needed laborers, so ships were sent around the Pacific Islands to ‘recruit’ laborers, a practice called ‘blackbirding’. Some islanders were hired to go to Australia, while others were taken by force.

Because this labor force on the sugar plantations came from many different places and spoke various languages, communication was a challenge. Foreman tried giving orders in simple English. The laborers communicated with each other in a similar way, and what resulted was a pijin language – based largely on an English vocabulary, but with a grammar structure that reflected Melanesian languages.

When the laborers returned to their homelands, they carried pijin with them. Later when more westerners came to these islands, the pijin speakers were the ones who were able to communicate with the outsiders. Speaking pijin opened doors for communication and employment with the colonialists.

Today in Papua New Guinea they speak, ‘Tok Pisin’ and in Vanuatu to our south they speak ‘Bislama’. These pijin languages are similar to Solomon Islands Pijin and there is some overlap in vocabulary, but each is distinctive.

Here in the Solomons where there are more than 60 languages spoken, pijin is an important tool for communication and most people speak it. You hear it spoken by the highly educated as well as illiterates and on the street, in homes and on the radio. Both English and Solomon Islands Pijin are legal languages in courts of law and in Parliament. While it is widely spoken, it has not always been accepted as a written language.

We are beginning to see a change in this attitude toward written Solomon Islands Pijin for which we are grateful. Although our first choice is to see people have God’s Word in their first language, many languages do not yet have Scripture in their language or only have the New Testament. The Solomon Islands Pijin Bible will give Solomon Islanders access to God’s Word in a language which is more familiar than English for most.

Sometimes I find it intimidating to be around a bunch of brainy Bible translators who know so much about linguistics and the Bible. I like the literacy work that we do and know that I can make a real contribution to Bible translation through helping people to learn to read their own language so that they can read the translated word. But I’ve found another area where I like to help – public relations and publicity!

Since coming back to the Solomons I have been working hard to help promote the Pijin Bible translation. This month translators are working on the final revisions of the full Bible in Pijin for publication in the next year. I’ve had fun setting up 3 forums around town for the public to come and discuss issues related to Pijin. I’ve also been working with the local media which has resulted in me being interviewed on the radio, several articles and advertisements appearing in the newspaper, one of the project advisers being interviewed on the television news and this morning a talk back radio program. Pijin translation adviser Gerry Beimers and national translator Aloysious Jack (on the right) interacted with the public via phone calls while broadcaster Bart Basia on the left moderated the program. It’s another step in making the public aware of the translation program and encouraging people to share their ideas about it.

Me? I’m having a ton of fun working with people around town that I already know and building new relationships with others. Many of my Bible translation colleagues would find it hard to do what I’m doing. Isn’t God good? He has just the right place for each of us to use our gifts and talents and have fun while doing it.

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!