At a crossroads in the dusty ground, the music reaches our ears. Just past the cozy gathering of houses and huts, yet near enough to be noticed, stands the small cement church in the village, much like a new child at school waiting for an invitation to play with the...
It’s hard being a toddler. You stumble and fall regularly, you are often misunderstood, and things out of your control can incite you to throw little “demonstrations” in order to get your point across.…
An old man stormed in, and his angry words tumbled out. My husband and I were still new in this community and only…
The Faucet Problem I felt utterly defeated. I just lay there as water kept pouring out of the new kitchen faucet I was certain I had installed properly. I grew up with a handy dad. We fixed things ourselves whenever we could. I also worked construction and...
Baby Steps A Bible translator in Papua New Guinea spends his or her early years becoming a child again. Or so it seems. Most of us arrive here having spent the better part of our lives getting an education. When we move to a rural village, though, we essentially...
Back in 2021, I was hiking up a mountain with a group of English students and friends. It was a steep and seemingly endless climb of hand-placed stone steps leading ever upwards. The sun hung low in the sky as my friends made plans to race to the top before sunset,...
My phone rang. It was Sepa, my village father. It was late and I was tired. In addition, I was still working to bring my Tok Pisin language skills back up to where they’d been before a year in the U.S. took its toll on them. I answered the phone anyway. Sepa was...
Being an alien and stranger is no fun. Ask me about it. Everywhere we go, people stare at us. They grab at us to touch our skin and hair. They unashamedly point and stare at us in public. They sometimes treat us like royalty, bestowing on us white privilege...