sick

I had planned to update again today (Saturday) with plenty to tell. However, I’ve pretty much just been a bump on a log this week, having come down with either a stomach virus or malaria (Loopie thinks it’s malaria, and I’m on malaria medicine, but Leslie doesn’t think that’s what it is) on Tuesday (along with the rest of the household except Bekah) and staying pretty sick through Wednesday night. It’s been up and down since then. I always get to the point of feeling enough better that I think I can do something normal like eat a regular meal or go out on an errand, and end up overdoing it. Friday night we all felt pretty well except Luke, and enjoyed the bi-weekly dinner at Masurina Hotel. They had broccoli! I was so excited. Diane told us that one rare occasion when broccoli was available, she splurged and bought a bush (a head? A bundle?) of it for 21 kina (which comes out to be 7 U.S. dollars). When her second daughter Hadassah was born here in Alotau, the hospital fee was only 20 kina. :o)

I forgot to mention before our interview with the SIL bible translators. They have been here 15 years working on the same language translation. I forget how much of the bible they’ve finished so far. I loved listening to them. They talked about the power of prayer like I haven’t heard anyone do in a while… It was refreshing.

Friday morning we ran errands and then I wasn’t feeling well so I napped in the afternoon. The others went out recruiting for our youth camp coming up very quickly after our time in the Trobriand Islands on a survey/evangelistic one week trip (we leave the 29^th and get back July 6^th). When I look at the calendar for the rest of the time here, I think the time will fly by with all the things we have planned.

Today is Saturday, and therefore another free day. Rachel and I felt pretty bad again this morning, so we stayed home while everyone else went to the beach to snorkel and have a “glass-bottom boat” ride. I’m relatively occupied with the Anne of Green Gables series. Rachel and I are both feeling pretty useless and homesick at this point. The morale of the motley crew is under siege. We appreciate your prayers and love.

This coming up Monday-Wednesday is our village-stay. Please pray that we will all be over our sickness for that.

almost 3 weeks!

Some things I could not express yet in my last update are becoming more clear in my heart and mind. Some of those include: awareness of my great selfishness, need for grace to give grace to others, learning to really respect people I don’t necessarily agree with in every way, etc. God is teaching me a lot.

I wish I could just transcribe my conversation with Diane Reese from 2 days ago. God spoke straight to my spirit through her, to my struggles and worries and hopes. I asked her the same questions I asked Jeri, and she had very different answers because she’s very different and because she’s been here a lot longer. I’m beginning to see through things she said and through being here how true it is that this world is not our home, that our purpose here isn’t to be comfortable, how real God’s truth and strength and power must become in your life when you’re NOT comfortable. There’s struggle and pain and frustration and disillusionment. But transcending all that, there is the Lord in his glory and goodness, giving everything we need, giving joy and blessing and fullness of life in him. My heart is so full today!

So much has happened, I can’t recount it all to you, but I’ll try to give a few highlights. Things are certainly busier now. Saturdays are our “day of rest”. Today was very restful, but last Saturday we had a fun, tiring day snorkeling and hiking through the jungle. A PNG man from the village nearby led us up to some “skullcaves” which is just what it sounds like: caves with dozens of skulls of victims of cannibals. Our guide assured us though that they were not skulls of his people, but skulls of people his people had eaten. (Cannibalism is no longer in practice, so no worries).

Two big things this past week have been the female youth bible study on Monday. I’m not sure how well we’re communicating, but I think it went well. I know that at least one of the girls, Jacinta, is not a Christian. We invited the Sunday school class and their friends. About 12 came, which is more than expected. Rachel and I shared the teaching about equally, which went smoothly (praise God!). We drove some girls home and on the way one asked us “If you sin one day and God forgives you, and then you sin again the next day, will he forgive you again?” It just blew me away to be able to explain God’s grace and forgiveness, and the gospel basically, to someone who wasn’t familiar with the concept already!

The second major event of the week would be giving a presentation to the town high school on American culture and as much of our Christian viewpoint as we wanted. They don’t have the trouble with Church and State being mixed like the U.S. does. About 400 students were there, and 3 of us sat on stage and answered some prepared questions Marcus asked, and then students came up and asked questions. Afterwords they flocked around us for almost an hour asking more questions and getting our address to be “pen-friends”. Our main purpose for doing that was to invite them to the youth camp we’re doing later this summer, and also to make contacts and hopefully correct misconceptions about America. The people here generally have the attitude that white people are better, because we’re seen as richer and better educated. I don’t like it, and I try to take every opportunity to praise them and their culture and to ask questions and learn from them.

prayer requests: intern relationships (they're ok, but that they will be filled with grace and wisdom and stay healthy and have good communication), that when we go to the Trobriand Islands the elections will be done, the youth camp coming up, health of missionaries and interns (several people have been sick lately), our girls bibly study. Thank you so so much!

What is a missions internship?

We hadn’t really realized that different missionaries might have very different answers to this question. We expected to be told what to do, and that most of what we would be doing would be observing, shadowing, and learning from what the missionaries are already doing. However, the missionaries have expected us to have goals and take a lot more initiative and come up with our own things to do. Since everyone speaks English here that’s a lot more possible that in most countries. We do have scheduled things to take part in, but not enough to fill up our days. We have had a hard time between that and the slower pace of life in general, some of us more than others. Communication is starting to be better though and we’re starting to get a better feel for what’s expected of us. This is what Marcus outlined as goals for the internship in a “session” with him last week:

-to be a case study of this mission team’s work (to learn what mission work is on a practical level)

-to try some work ourselves-grow in skills

-talk to missionaries on field, get advice, learn from their wisdom, experiences, etc.

-doing-productive time

-adapting to culture

Since my last blog: One day of learning with Marcus: sessions on goals, how to treat yourself and others on this internship, schedule, history of all churches in area, and animism/witchcraft in this culture. Most people are “churched” but churches are very territorial, controlling, political institutions. Missionaries came in years ago and literally divided up the land geographically for where each one would evangelize. So each area or village is “owned” by a certain denomination. Also, the old traditions of magic and witchcraft and are very embedded in life still and mixed with their christian religions. That night Logan got home and us girls made Pizza.

The next day was the “Amazing Race” where we were divided into teams and ran all over town with clues finding places, completing tasks, etc. That was fun and helped us learn our way around. Sunday Luke went to the Gama village church, and the rest went to town church. The female interns are taking turns teaching the female youth (12-20) class, so I sat in on that even though it wasn’t my week. I’ll do it this Sunday coming up. Sunday afternoon we sat in on a study with a new Christian, named Minnie, which me and Bekah will take over starting this Sunday coming up. That night we went with Leslie to an evanglistic study with a teacher at the International school named Josephine. So far this week we’ve had meeting for the youth camp, and one for the survey trip we’re taking to the Trobriand Islands, went to two mid-week bible studies with the church, met individually with Marcus to talk about anything we need to talk about and short and long term goals, sat in on a church history class Leslie taught (which was really really interesting. I’m coming to respect Leslie a LOT as a scholar and theologian), met with Jeri one-on-one, and met with Diane to talk about a study with the youth girls Rachel and I want to start.

Talking with Jeri was very helpful. She encouraged me not to feel the pressure that I need to know for sure whether I’m going to end up doing long term missions or not. She shared struggles and doubts she’s had along the way and before coming especially. Even before talking to her I’d say that the main thing I’ve learned so far is that I can’t know what’s going to happen in my future and so I don’t have to commit to anything for sure. Lots of missionaries that I talk to never thought they would do end up doing this. I’m also learning that God has power over my shyness, and that that doesn’t mean I won’t FEEL shy still, but that He can work anyways. There’s so much more that I’m learning but can’t express yet. Thank you all sooo much for your prayers.

I’d love to hear from any of you. My email address is: bethany.cannon@gmail.com