What we're doing for Thanksgiving

Sorry that we haven’t updated you in a while.  It has been a very busy time!  I (Susan) was busy in the week after STEP ended with a community theater production of Fiddler on the Roof.  I was in the chorus and also played the butcher’s dead wife, Fruma Sarah (The scary lady in the dream scene).  It was a lot of fun, but a lot of work as well.  I promise to post some photos once I get my hands on them.  It was amazing to me what  a high-quality production this little community was able to put on – I can’t wait until they do another play in a year or two.

Brian is busy getting filmed today.  A man from Wycliffe Canada is here to make recruitment videos, and Brian is one of the people being filmed.  The videos should eventually be posted on YouTube, though it might be quite a while before they are finished. 

So tomorrow is Thanksgiving.  It isn’t a holiday here in PNG, although there are so many Americans in Ukarumpa that it is definitely observed here!  Most people just have chicken.  You could get turkey this year, but it cost about $8.60 per pound, and you had to drive three hours to the city of Lae to buy it!  But we will be celebrating Thanksgiving in a very different way.  Tomorrow morning we are flying out to the village of Walagu with our friend Joy.  She does literacy work with the Onobasulu people there and Brian and I are her support team.  We are going to spend a week in Walagu, and Brian’s main goal is to fix the lawn mower that is used to keep the grass down on the air strip.  Pray that he’s able to fix it, because he’s never seen the machine to diagnose the problem, and has only been told stories about what is wrong with it, so he’ll be bringing a very select amount of tools and parts that he think might help.  If he has time, he might find a few other fix-it projects.  I’ll be helping Joy with some of her ongoing literacy work.  We also are taking out video equipment, so hopefully we’ll be able to show the JESUS film and a few HIV/AIDS awareness movies in the area while we’re there.

Usually when you go to the village your food isn’t very fancy, especially when you are flying and are concerned with weight limitations.  But we’re going to splurge for Thanksgiving and have some chicken, instant mashed potatoes, stovetop stuffing, and maybe even a pumpkin pie (we’re not sure if the last one will work, but we’re going to try!).

We’ll share some stories when we return in a week.