Winter welcome

I got quite the welcome coming back from tropical (hot and steamy) Vanuatu with a blizzard in Montana.  Here's pics.  Great to be back to see friends and family!  And I'm sure I'll adjust to the dry and cold at some point!

A free slideshow design by Smilebox Meanwhile, in Vanuatu, they got the wind force of another cyclone of the season.  Fortunately, sounds like everyone's ok as the cyclone wasn't as devastating as expected.  Here's a news story about it: Vanuatu cyclone Atu  Thanks for your prayers for my safe travels.  Looks like we'll be going to interested churches and groups within a few hours' drive for the next few months, then hit the Boise area in June, Lord-willing!

Housing

I was so fortunate in my months following school to have housing provided by friends from church.  I house-sat for my Lebanese friend, Amira for about a month while she and her daughter family in Lebanon.  She has 3 cats I fed while I was there, 2 of which were around a lot and very friendly.  It was fun to have cats around again.  They were very sweet.  Once she returned, I stayed with a Filipino friend, Joy (also from church).  Houghton & Gretchen were staying there as well and the last few weeks another family of Joy's stayed with us too.  Praise God for His provision of housing for the full time we were in Australia.  I thank God also for the opportunity to learn about several different cultures as a result of the multicultural mix of our church in Melbourne!  What an opportunity to have fellowship with Christians of all different backgrounds.  And they were so generous to us in opening their homes and hearts to us.  Thanks, friends! 

Jan/Feb '10 Newsletter

Please click on the newsletter for it to expand to full size.

Black magic storian

A ni-Van friend shared the following story about black magic and ministry in Vanuatu. This is a free translation from what I recorded in Bislama.

"I had a chance to experience one man where they killed him with black magic. The time I ran a Bible study, this man (a chief) was at the study but it wasn’t really him, it was a different man. When they kill a man with black magic, they cut out the guts and fill him up with leaves. After, they might sing or use a magic so another man can come inside the man and the dead man can walk around. The one that takes his place must know the dead man well and his mannerisms. (In the original telling it was explained that the dead person can be possessed longer like 3-4 days by someone who can copy their typical actions and ways of speaking, otherwise only a day or so of possession is possible.) The chief that came to the Bible study came Thursday and Friday, not Saturday, then back again Sunday. When he came, he sat up close to the front. I didn’t know he was already dead from black magic but I was preaching from John 17 where Jesus prayed for protection for his disciples. I told a story to the kids about one pastor that was in another island. He went to kill flying foxes (fruit bats) at night with stones. Some men made black magic and told the pastor to follow them to kill flying foxes. The pastor didn’t know (about the plot) so followed them. The man that led him went to where all the men were making black magic. They were going to poison him and cut out his guts. The man was scared about what they were doing. He was too far (away from others) to call out for help. However, he knew God alone was his protector and he thought about Psalm 23 and he meditated on it. He put his full trust in God that He would protect him from the men. He prayed and read the Psalm in the middle of them all. The power of God killed the power of the black magic. This pastor had a chance to resist and go back to the house. When he went back to the house he told his wife what happened and that the men couldn’t do anything to him with black magic. During the telling of this story, the chief was sitting down hearing the story. I said suppose you trust God like David trusted God in Psalm 23 and if you put your total trust in Him than no man can kill you because God’s power beats the power of others. It’s possible that men could kill you, but your life isn’t ended because you have eternal life and you will go to be with God one day. I encouraged everyone with the life of David. King Saul and his 3,000 men couldn’t catch David because God’s power beat Saul and his men’s power. 1 John 4:4—God’s power in you beats the power of the world.

After the service we stood up and everyone came to shake hands with me. One old man said I made the Gospel flashy and said that someone might kill me in this place. It was a challenge to me but I wasn’t afraid and I didn’t shake (in fear) because I knew my family and friends were praying for me and God was protecting me and giving me power. I could stand up strong and not be afraid. This is one encouragement to you that if you stay somewhere alone and someone says something like this to you, you don’t have to be afraid. You don’t show you are afraid. You can be confident because you put your trust in God. The chief sat and ate with me and shook my hand. When the chief went back to the house, he said his tooth was sore so he sent off his kids to find medicine. The man inside the chief (possessing him) wanted to find a way to get out of the chief. The chief's kids (ages 10, 4, 3) came back from looking for matches and saw their dad asleep. The mom was on another island so only the kids were there. They saw their dad’s life was gone and they were crying. They didn’t know he was dead, they just thought his life had come out. A nearby woman heard the crying and the kids told her that their dad’s life had come out. The woman ran to see the chief and saw that he looked like his life had been gone a long time, for several days, and he was dead. The men that had killed him came later and asked me “is the chief dead?” Their eyes were really red. (My friend explained in the original telling that their eyes were red from the strain of possessing the chief during this time). All the men came and carried the chief outside so all the men could stand around him and cry. All the men were surprised the chief was dead and they wondered how. They realized it must be black magic. I led the funeral service. Later at the funeral service his body had one side that was black from the drug from the wood they used to kill him. The people went to bury him and all the people were afraid. They were all scared it might happen to them. They all asked me to go to another village. But I said I’d stay because I won’t run away from the people. I must stay with them all. When I face hard times or hard situations it’s good to pray a lot or ask God to direct you for what decision you must make. Some Christians will even say 'life there is too hard, you come stay with us' but it’s good to think first about what decision God wants me to make in the situation. 'Should I stay or go' and think a lot before deciding what to do. I decided to stay with them. I preached one text on Sunday and led worship and encouraged them all to trust God like David that God will protect them and look out for them. All the men were still making black magic but God will protect. The time they had buried the chief, all the dogs barked at night and the men came round the house we were in. All the men wanted to kill one of us. The next day people said "did you hear the dogs crying out/barking?" We didn’t hear them because we were so sound asleep. We always prayed before we slept. After, we knew God protected us so the men couldn’t kill us or do something to us. They all went to see the kleva (medicine man/witch doctor) and ask him. He said the way against us was strong and they tried hard to kill us but they couldn’t because God protected us. The kleva said he saw a light that shined in the house where we were staying. The 1st time the men couldn’t get through to our house. They went back and tried a 2nd time and a 3rd time. Later the kleva said a light shined at our door and they tried to come inside but they couldn’t. We said God protected us and gave us His power. We were safe in his mighty arms like a chick hiding under the wings of a hen. God protects us well and covers us good in His hand so nothing can spoil our life. In the world something might spoil our life but if we die, we will spend eternity with God. This is our living hope. This is the story of black magic of the men who killed a man. Thank you very much."

Hip hop Australia

When we checked out Melbourne one weekend, we happened upon a hip hop gang that was performing on the sidewalk. They were pretty good - check it out:

Fire

Keep praying for rain for Victoria state here in Australia (where I live). There has been a drought here for many years but this year they've only gotten 2 mm of water TOTAL so far. If you've seen any of my pictures of this area, you've seen how brown and dry everything is. Fires continue to blaze all around us and more than 5,000 have lost homes in this area, some towns have burnt, and several hundred have died. We've had numerous fire ban days here and tomorrow is another. All public schools have been closed for tomorrow so that should evacuations need to occur, parents won't have to be in mad panics to get kids out of school. We have evacuation plans and are to have bags packed to leave at any time. Right now the closest fire to us is 30km away but new fires are starting every day. Please pray for the protection of Australia and it's bushland, for protection of the Equip campus, and for rain to wash this land! Here's a website showing all the fires here and updates. We are just NE of Melbourne, near where N Warrendyte if you zoom in one time in the Melbourne area. http://www.google.com.au/landing/victorianbushfires/ You can get other bushfire news at:

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/indepth/0,,5018723,00.html

Beatbox and didgeridoo

Check out Joel putting his phonetics to practice in vitally important, everyday applications! Or really, it's just fun. :) First one is beatboxing and 2nd is human didgeridoo. To compare, the last video is an actual didgeridoo, an Australian Aboriginal instrument, played by John and accompanied by Paul.

So, what about life in Australia?

Yeah, I'm slowly unburying myself after 6 weeks of insanity. Some super fun things have happened during the craziness that I made a video of. Don't get the wrong idea that I've been just playing though! :) Many of my pictures are sadly altered here because quite a few of my new missionary friends work in sensitive countries. They can't have their pictures floating online in connection with Christianity or missions so I had to block their faces out. Just know they are lovely, lovely people and I wish I could share them with you but when you notice their missing faces, pray for them and the ministry the Lord has called them to! The music you'll hear is songs from Australia Bush dances, which I thought fitting considering our location and also the fact that I have ton of pics from a Bush dance we had! Enjoy!

Masta Ki

Language Learning class had lecture components as well as practical classes 3 days a week with an LRP (Language Resource Person). All the Summer School students were split up into groups of 4 students each to learn and immediately apply language learning techniques and skills. All of our team was able to learn from Pastor Peter. Peter is a pastor on Tanna island in Vanuatu in the WhiteSands language area. He is also the head of the VBT (Vanuatu Bible Translators) and we met with him in some SIL meetings before we came to Australia. It was great to be able to get to know him better over these 6 weeks as well as learn some very very basics from his language group. Hopefully learning some things like pronoun systems (where there are pronouns for dual like us 2 and you 2 and they 2 as well as trial like us 3 and you 3 and they 3 before you even get to plural like we, you, and they) will help us when we start learning a tribal language in Vanuatu wherever the Lord leads us. Peter wrote a song called Masta Ki about Jesus being the master key, the only true Christ so we sang it for a song night at Equip.

Surprisingly for me, Grammar was my 2nd favorite class. It was nice to have it be something measurable and achievable. The teachers were great about presenting the material in a way that was down-to-earth, practical, and even hands-on with lots of practice. Here are a few things we did in the class. The first is specifically formulas for phrases and the 2nd is a morphology exercise. All of this will be hugely useful for learning a language in Vanuatu and determining the language structure and functions.

Time with friends

Many of our evenings not spent presenting in home groups are spent reconnecting with friends here and meeting with new friends. I need to have a better memory about taking pictures every time, but here are some families and friends I've been able to spend some time with. Many of my friends have generously lent or given us baby supplies and clothing for Gretchen's 3rd, soon to be born! Houghton and Gretchen are making final preparations for the new little one so Lord-willing, they'll have everything they need. Due date is March 23 so we are counting down the days.
I was able to stay with a friend, Jen, for a week, which was really nice to have a quiet house to work in during the day and a great single friend to fellowship with in the evening. She's the one in the pic with the little puppy (Bing).

Boise February small groups

We have had some fantastic small groups here in Boise. God again works through the unexpected, many of the groups I expected we would be meeting in didn't work out, but God has brought along other groups and opportunities that were off my radar. He is continually teaching me to trust His provision and His best for who He would have team with us. Here are pictures of the lovely groups we've been able to meet. Unfortunately, I forgot in numerous groups to get a picture, but here are those I remembered.

February newsletter

Please click on the image to have it enlarge. Just one page this time. :) Check out that support chart on my right-hand sidebar towards the bottom. Look at God bring it in - wow!

Tentative Itinerary

I finally have an update; how exciting is that! Here is what we are looking at now for my team's trip, Lord-willing. Things have changed around a bit from what we were looking at originally (spending most of our time in Luganville on Santo island) to now spending some time all together on Malakula, the island where 1/2 our team is praying about doing bush ministry. (To the right is a picture of a witch doctor who followed a short-term missions group around in Vanuatu last year. Most of the tribes are animistic or demon-worshiping overall.)


One other big change happened as a result of me counting too much on what Air Pacific was saying would happen with our departure dates, so that was stinky. We purchased tickets to LA first only to find out a few weeks later that flights out of LA had changed due to "scheduled maintenance" that was obviously not scheduled very far in advance (since I had called just before purchasing tickets to LA to make sure our departure dates and prices weren't subject to change). Fortunately, because of the maintenance, they had some other departure days other than their traditional "Sunday" only. Therefore, we (the majority of my team) now all have tickets to LA for Sunday, March 18 around noon. We then fly out Tuesday, March 20 at 11:30PM to arrive in Fiji at 5:15AM Thursday, March 22 (10.45 hours flight, 17 hours time difference). We don't fly out to Port Vila in Vanuatu until 9:30 at night to arrive at 10PM (1 1/2 hours flight, one hour time difference). That puts us hanging out in Fiji for a day, which won't be all bad! Gretchen and Houghton have some friends in LA who will be housing us for the 2 days there as well. However, the whole deal loses us three days in Vanuatu that we originally planned on having. Bummer!

Here are the dates and plans we have made so far:

March 22(Thurs) - overnight in Vila on Efate island with accommodations very cheaply rented from SIL (Summer Institute of Linguistics http://www.sil.org/, similar to Wycliffe Bible translators http://www.wycliffe.org/)

March 23 (Fri) - fly to Malakula http://www.vanuatutourism.com/vanuatu/cms/en/islands/malekula.html (meet some tribes and do some team planning); working on accommodations

March 26/27(Mon/Tues) - fly to Santo to Luganville (meet missionary Phil who may be helping us apply for visas at the end of the trip, check out cost of living, possibly visit a church, record some Bislama to practice language while back in the States) with accommodations provided by Phil

April 2 (Mon) - fly back to Vila early AM (apply for visas, meet government officials, check in with SIL about literacy, language, and education contacts for me), stay again with SIL

April 3 (Tues) - finish visa paperwork, fly out to Fiji at 4:05PM to arrive 8:30PM, depart Fiji 10PM and arrive in LA at 1:20PM the same day. We then fly United back home to arrive at 6:55PM that evening. Is that all crazy that it's all the same day or what? My family will drive back to Montana probably the next morning or so, whenever their brains are with it again to drive the 12 non-stop hours back. I go back to work on Thursday. Praise God for my graduate practicum student I'm supervising- Melinda - who, Lord-willing, will feel comfortable to cover for me those days I'll have to take off work! She suggested that perhaps when I return on Thursday that I can be there more in body than anything else and she can take my teaching schedule and my counseling kids for the day. That would be a huge blessing!

There are some other possible changes and updates in the works, but this is what I know so far. Please pray that the Lord grants favor with the visa application process and that we are all able to bring all the necessary paperwork. The Lord is slowly providing for this trip, praise Him! Thanks go to all of you who have expressed interest in helping financially and for the investment in prayer many of you have made already as well. You refresh me!