Last week we scheduled some “vacation time” away from work at the airstrip to spend time together as a family and make a trip to our WasFamili’s village. We rented a Toyota Land Cruiser from the Auto-shop and left early in the morning on PNG Independence Day to spend the day with them. The plan was to celebrate Independence Day, build relationships in the village, and show the Jesus Film along with some other village videos we had made. After spending the night with them in the village we would continue on to Lae to stay at our mission’s guesthouse.
We arrived somewhat whiplashed from the 3 hour off-road/on-road trip to the village. We were thankful to have a 4×4 with good ground clearance! Especially as we got closer to the village. The sun was hot and the day was exhausting, especially while attempting to wash the kids, feed the kids, make bedding for the kids… You get the point, we were tired.
After spending some time catching up, we decided to go to Mutzing station which is a 20+ minute PMV ride to an area with several stores and a market. Because we had the Land Cruiser, we told them we could drive and take an extra 6 passengers with us!…….Somewhere around 50 people climbed into the land cruiser and off we went (okay, slight exaggeration). After seeing some of the cultural celebrations and dances we headed back to the village for the rest of the day. We built some bamboo blinds together, laughed together, ate together, and showed some videos of them from our village living stay in February.
After some technical difficulties and praying, we had the Jesus Film up and running in their tok ples of Adzera; their local language. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 50+ people stayed up late into the night to hear and watch the story of Jesus in a language they understood. What an amazing opportunity for us to be a part of.
Papua New Guinea 