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Prayer Letter - New Guinea
News
October 7, 2001
Friends and Family,
“It’s because you are too fat!”
Translated into English, that is what the tribal men of Kasia
village told me. I (Aaron) had walked about a half hour down the
road to spend some time in a nearby village to get to know the
people better and improve my language skills. When I arrived, three
men were sitting on a bench made out of small tree limbs split in
two. When they saw me, they told me to come over and sit on the
bench with them. I thought, “This is perfect, I’ll be able to join
their conversation in a natural setting and won’t make too much of a
scene as an outsider coming into the village.” I should have known
better…when I got to the bench, I greeted them and then gladly took
a seat on the bench. As soon as I sat down, the bench collapsed,
and I and the three PNG men went crashing to the ground. I was
afraid that I might be in trouble for breaking the bench, until they
could barely stop laughing just long enough to say that, “It’s
because you are too fat!” At that point, I didn’t know what to
think, but decided to laugh with them.
This week has had its share of ‘bumps
and bruises.’ Avalon is now to the stage where she enjoys the
challenge of adding degrees of difficulty to basic walking. For
instance, she occasionally walks around looking straight up in the
air and laughs as if to say, “Look mom, no eyes.” Another trick she
is experimenting with but has not mastered is running. Though we
are impressed with her display of physical feat, since the floor in
our home is concrete, this week it has come at the expense of two
fat lips. Lori has not been free of difficulty this week either,
she is the first one in our family to get malaria. This is a common
New Guinea illness
carried by mosquitoes and can have wide range of symptoms and
severity. Thankfully, it was detected early with Lori and she was
able to get on medicine right away. So with just being worn out and
having bad headaches and neck pain her case was considered mild.
We have been given the opportunity to
help other missionaries in a few areas in the next few months while
we finish up our trade language study. There is an elementary and
junior high school on the base for the missionary kids. This school
term, while we are on the base, Aaron will be teaching a 45 minute
PE class twice a week to 20 kids and Lori will be teaching a 15
minute Bible class three times a week to 5 kindergarteners. Also,
Aaron will be leaving for a couple days this week to help with
helicopter shuttles into three ‘helicopter only’ access missionary
locations in the jungle. A week after that all three of us will go
back into one of those ‘helicopter only’ places for a week to help
finish up one of the missionaries homes.
As things seem to be getting busier
please continue to lift us up in prayer:
-Pray that our study in the trade
language would continue to progress
-Pray for our classes which we are
teaching, though they are small classes we desire to have a good
impact
-Pray for all of the loading of
supplies and work regarding the helicopter shuttles
-Pray for the building of the
missionary house (A group of men will try to build it in two weeks,
so that when we go to help we will just have finishing work to do).
Though there is much to pray about, we
have even more to praise about. God has been so faithful to meet
our every need. He has given us strength when we have felt week.
He has continued to teach us and show His love to us. He truly is
our Heavenly Dad, and He cares for us as His own.
Aaron, Lori, and Avalon
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