from Tim…

On Wednesday of last week, the multilingual education team held a stakeholders meeting to report on the project so far, share implementation plans, and present important multilingual education concepts.  People from various non-government organizations attended, as well as educators and representatives from the Ministry of Education.

Ester explains a foundational concept to the group.

I had been working with them all of Monday and Tuesday to finalize the program and help various prepare their presentations and practice them.  And they all did very well.  All of the presentations and conversation was held in Tetun, one of the official languages of East Timor, so I was very much the outsider for the day.  I was able to have some of the discussion translated for me so I could follow some of it and occasionally contribute to the discussion.  But the day very much belonged to the team.

Ana does a teaching demonstration.

Afterward, I heard reports that several of the participants felt they had learned a lot, saying that they had not understood before what the multilingual education program was all about.  But having learned more, they now feel it is a good idea!

Now we just have to get everything ready for classes to start early next year…

It’s hard to believe tomorrow is Thanksgiving.  It’s supposed to reach an unseasonable 80 degrees today and truthfully, I wish it was a bit cooler, but this is Texas.  At 53 years of age, this year will be my first time to prepare a turkey.  The job usually falls to Tim, but he is in East Timor.  As my grandfather would have said, “You won’t learn any younger.”

A couple of months ago Tim was planning his trip to the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea and was ready to tell the travel agent, ‘book it’, when he got an email from his supervisor, “What are you doing the last half of November?  The workshop in Timor is going to happen and there are sufficient funds for you to come help. Can you do that?

As we pondered extending Tim’s three week tour to six, and Tim missing being here for Thanksgiving, we wondered what to do.  In the end, we decided the workshop and experience of working with his supervisor and her husband were worth the sacrifice and added the extra leg to his trip.

Shortly before Tim was to travel to East Timor, his supervisor contracted pneumonia and became seriously ill and was admitted to a hospital in Bangkok.  She wasn’t going anywhere soon and we wondered if Tim should cancel that part of the trip and head home.   We decided the opportunity to see what was happening in East Timor, meet the people involved in multilingual education and help out where he could made the trip still worthwhile.

So this Thanksgiving, while it would be nice to have Tim here, I am thankful for this opportunity for him to be a part of an important initiative in East Timor.  I’m also thankful for God’s healing hand on Tim’s supervisor who continues to surprise her doctor’s with her progress. Tim returns to Dallas on December 2nd which will be another day to give thanks.

I’ve been meeting for the past two days with the national team who is responsible for implementing the multilingual education pilot program here in East Timor.  They are quality people and it has been a pleasure to work with them.

Our focus these past two days has been to prepare for a stakeholders meeting that we are holding on Wednesday.  At that meeting, the team will be presenting an overview of multilingual education and what has been accomplished so far in the project.  They will also present various aspects of the program, including sample lessons on literacy and 2nd language learning.

It was fun to be able to help some of the team members to more fully understand how the lessons were based upon sound learning theories and to see their excitement when they understood the connections and felt like they had a more solid understanding of what they were doing.

from Tim

Well, I’m now on the last phase of my trip, a two week stay in East Timor.  I’m in the capitol city, Dili, which as you can see is right on the coast.

During my stay here, I’ll be working with a team of people from a local organization who are developing a multilingual education pilot program in three of this country’s 19 different languages.  Classes are scheduled to start with the new school year in January and there is still a lot of work to do to get ready.  So it is going to be a busy two weeks.

From Martha: Today I flew from our SIL center in the highlands to the coastal town of Madang. We were picked up at the guesthouse at 6 am for a 7:30 departure. It was cool and foggy. At the hangar we got weighed along with the cargo and we sat down to wait for the pilots to prepare the plane and load the cargo. It was closer to 7:45 when we finally were buckled in and ready to fly.

The highlands have beautiful mountainsides covered with trees and patchworked with gardens. Some of the mountains looked like they were covered with bright green velvet. As we climbed higher to cross over the mountains, we were surrounded by clouds and then we began our descent down to the coast. The scenery gave way to the Pacific Oceans and villages perched along the coastline and on islands.

As a newly married couple we lived in Madang from 1991-95 at the Pacific Orientation Course where we served as school teachers. At the top of a long winding muddy road, the grounds sit on mountain overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It’s a million dollar view, but the trip up is not for the faint of heart.

This stop was not on my itinerary, but my flight from the highlands to the capital city of Port Moresby was cancelled for Wednesday morning since I was the only passenger. The pilots were bringing others to Madang this morning and from here I can catch a commercial flight to Port Moresby tomorrow.

It is amazing to be back in this place and see our Papua New Guinean friends who have served the course for years. There were big hugs and smiles as we greeted each other. And there was sad news. The office manager who served with us was in a tragic accident in July and was killed. The man’s father has served as a Tok Pisin teacher for years and lives in a nearby village.

After consulting with a PNG friend as the appropriate thing to do to express our family’s sorrow at the news, I purchased tea, sugar, milk, biscuits and coffee and headed down to see the father and widow of David. When I arrived at the house, a family member went and told Amat, David’s father, that a ‘white woman’ was there to see him.

At first Amat did not recognize me and truth be told, I wouldn’t have recognized this thin man with a graying beard and glasses. When he heard my voice, a smile broke on his face and we stood holding hands and he soon told me that David had left them. I told him how sorry we were and we just stood there sharing in moment of sorrow together. I told him that I had brought tea and biscuits so we could sit and ‘story’.

A granddaugther was sent to boil water and we began talking about the family as I updated him with photos on my iPad. He was delighted to see each family member. Later Amat recorded a message to Tim on the iPad – I think he thought Tim would be able to view it immediately.

Later David’s widow, Elizabeth came to the house. We hugged and talked of David and then moved on to catching up on each other’s families. A tropical downpour pounded the tin roof and rivlets of water streamed on the ground outside the covered area where we sat enjoying our coffee and stories. Darkness fell on the village and the rain stopped.

My friend Hetty and her daugther walked me up the mountain back to the camp. What a treat to have a few hours with friends I haven’t been with in years. It was an unexpected detour on my trip and a gift to be sure.Tomorrow I travel on to Port Moresby where I will overnight in a mission guesthouse before boarding a plane to Brisbane, Australia on Thursday. After a flight to Sydney, I will board the non-stop 16 hour flight to DFW arriving before the time that I left Sydney. I’m ready to be home.

from Tim

For the past few days I’ve been staying at Kangaroo Ground, where Wycliffe Bible Translators Australia is located.  You can see here how the area got its name.

The kangaroos are regular visitors to the meadow at the edge of the property and to the locals, they are just part of the background.  But this American found them quite interesting.

While I’ve been here, I’ve had the chance to connect with various people who relate in some way to our work in the Pacific region; providing training at the graduate school here, or working in recruitment and resource development, or in managing finance systems and funding for projects, and even in helping to develop literacy materials in the Solomon Islands.

It’s been a good visit and I’ve enjoyed the chance to reconnect with some people I’ve known for years and get to know others whose names I’d only seen on emails.

Tomorrow I head off to Darwin, Australia, to visit a field office there, reconnect with colleagues there and hopefully have the chance to talk a bit about linguistic issues in East Timorese languages.

The pacific tour continues…

from Tim

While Martha has been hanging out in Papua New Guinea, I’ve been spending a few days near Melbourne, Australia. I’m here getting acquainted with colleagues in partner organizations here. And I’ve also had opportunity to catch up with some friends I haven’t seen in a while.

This past weekend I spent some time with Gerry and Melinda Beimers. Gerry was the director of our work in the Solomon Islands when we first went there back in 1998. And Martha and I had taught their three oldest daughters when we were all in Papua New Guinea back in the early 90s. So it was fun to see them again and catch up.

We had a nice time together, not only reconnecting, but getting a chance to see of the the beautiful countryside outside of Melbourne.

Thanks Gerry and Melinda for a nice weekend.

from Martha

This morning I visited the high school on our center here in Papua New Guinea to find out what we need to know about Sarah attending next year. It was great! Everyone was so helpful and welcoming. When I was introduced to the 10th grade class and they were told another girl was coming to be with them, the girls spontaneously said, “Oh, niiiiiiice!!!!”. Sarah is going to enjoy this amazing place and the great school.

After lunch I logged on to my email to find out that my flight on the mission plane from here to the capital city on Wednesday had been cancelled. There were not enough passengers. They suggested I catch a flight to the coastal town of Madang and overnight there before catching a commercial flight to the capital city.

So, now I am scheduled to leave in the morning on the flight to Madang. It’s actually kind of fun because I will be staying overnight in the place where Tim and I served from 1991-1995 at the Pacific Orientation Course. It’s been about 15 years since we last visited and it will be fun to be back again and see some of our old friends.

On Wednesday, I will fly to Port Moresby, the capital city and overnight in a guesthouse. On Thursday I fly to Brisbane, Australia where I will board a direct flight to Dallas.

Papua New Guinea, Land of the Unexpected, is living up to its reputation!

‘m sitting in the MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship) hangar in the capital city. My boss and I left the hotel where we were staying about 4 am. Tim is still there for another day of meetings before he travels to Melbourne for meetings on Thursday.

When we arrived in Port Moresby after an hour and half flight from Cairns. A vehicle and driver from the office here picked us up. We were expecting to be taken to the hangar right away for the flight to the highlands where Ukarumpa, the home of SIL in Papua New Guinea is located. But we were told our flight was delayed until this afternoon so we traveled to the SIL office here in Port Moresby.

When we arrived at the office, Jim and MIchelle, the office manager and his wife were preparing to go to the US Embassy to attend an election function. Apparently it was an opportunity to meet with other Americans and watch the results come in. Before they left I had an opportunity to chat with Michelle who handles public relations. It was great to meet her and to learn more about what was happening in the country and offer the help of our Pacific Area office.

I also had the opportunity to meet the office staff. These employees provide services such as finances and PNG visa and work permit applications. I was able to get information on how we will obtain a student visa for Sarah so that she can live and attend school at Ukarumpa next year when we return to the South Pacific.

BTA Director David Gela with his wife Senina

We were planning on meeting with the head of the PNG Bible Translation Association next week, but now that we had time this morning, we took the opportunity to meet with David Gela, director of BTA and Steven Thomas who is responsible for church relations.
Tim and I know David and Steven from the years we lived in PNG and it was delightful to have this opportunity to chat together over mugs of PNG coffee.

Martha and her supervisor Mark with Simon and David from BTA

The topic of our discussion was upcoming meetings in February of 2013 in the Solomon Islands. The Pacific Council of Churches meeting that is held every four years will be hosted in Honiara. This will be an outstanding time for our Bible translation partners in the Pacific to talk to church leaders about the translation work that is being done around the Pacific and the 462 languages in the Pacific that are still without translations.

Solomon Islands Bible Translation and Literacy Programme have requested the opportunity to host these leaders for an evening meal and program designed to educate these church leaders about the remaining needs in the Pacific. We discussed ideas for the venue, program and things that could be given to the church leaders to better equip them to share about the need for Bible translation as they return to their homes scattered across the Pacific.

As we drove around town it was fun to see signs of the recent visit of Prince Charles and Camilla. Apparently Prince Charles included some Tok Pisin in his speech – much to the delight of Papua New Guineans. He announced in Pijin that he is, ‘namba wan pikinini blong Mrs. Kwin’ (number one child of Mrs. Queen). Wish I could have been here to hear the crowd’s response to that!

Now we are at the hangar waiting for the last passenger to arrive so we can board the JAARS flight on a Kodiak which will take us to Ukarumpa. Oh, and our pilot today took me back a few years too.  When we first adopted Emily he was working in the Philippines and we stayed with him and his wife the first 3 nights after picking up Emily. Now he lives and works here in Papua New Guinea. That was a fun re-connect.

Ukarumpa Center from the air.

Saturday Tim and I spent the day exploring Cairns.  It’s a touristy town on the northeast coast of Australia. We walked down to a bus stop and caught a bus into town. We walked along the esplanade.  It was a beautiful sunny day and it was enjoyable to walk the streets and explore a market.  We went to a shopping center so we could buy a few groceries for the weekend.

It’s interesting being in Australia, because you see quite a few Pacific Islanders in stores and on the streets.  I get excited when I see one and start mentally trying to guess where they are from.  We saw a number of families from Papua New Guinea as we walked around and were tempted to interact with them in Pijin as we heard them speaking Tok Pisin of PNG.

On Sunday, we took a special excursion on the Kuranda Scenic Railway.  The rail line runs up the mountain through a rainforest into Kuranda.    We were advised to take the old fashioned slow-moving train up the mountain in the morning when we were fresh, and enjoy the scenic cable car ride back down. Great advice.  It was lovely. We had a wonderful day which I will let you experience through the photos.

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Sunday night we had a meal with our colleagues who have come in for the same meetings and this morning, we begin the meetings.