Hume International Ministries

This morning we leave for camp. It will be good to engage students en masse. We have spent the few days seeking them out, engaging them in conversation, eating lunch with them in their dorms and homes… Sometimes it feels a bit like a hunting expedition: where are those elusive students? School, practice, off doing homework… We went to the high school girls’ basketball game. They played the 8th grade boys’ team. It was fun to watch.
We wrote earlier that life here is much like life at Hume. And in many ways it is. But there are several key ways in which it is distinctly different. In the social structure of this country men are the pinnacle of society. Next in line are pigs, then dogs, then women, then children. If you were involved in a car accident, it would be better for your personal safety to hit a women or child rather than risk injury to a man’s pig.
Here in Garoka (the Highlands region) more so than other parts of PNG, the daughters of missionaries suffer most. When a young girl begins to show signs of puberty, she is considered of marriageable age. She is expected to be traded as a sign of goodwill. It is a badge of honor to grope, molest or have intercourse with a white girl. For their own safety mission daughters rarely leave the compound. This place becomes a virtual prison for them. Furloughs and Spiritual Emphasis Weeks (that’s us) are just about the only time they travel outside the gate. Add to that the knowledge that tribal work: translation of the Scriptures, establishment of local churches, is suspended because fathers must protect them. This can lead to tremendous amounts of guilt for unfinished work in the light of eternity…
Pray for these young ladies. Pray for Jen and Amy and Karey and Christina as they seek to meet needs they cannot comprehend.
Another key difference between Hume and PNG lies in life after high school. For Hume kids there may be college, there may not. They may be hired to work in the ministry, they may not. New Tribes kids don’t have that option. If they want to work for the ministry, they must return to the States for education. If parents want to help their children adjust to college life there are significant financial challenges. It is expensive to fly. We spoke with one family who knows that over the course of the next six years, they will have three children entering college. They know they will have to save at least $1000.00 dollars a month for the next six years to pay for airline tickets in order to help their children enroll in college. That does not include flying their children home during semester breaks. What faith! What pressure! Students know and understand the burdens their parents carry for them.
It also occurred to me that everything on this compound has been paid for by faith. Buildings, books, machinery, utilities, airplanes… everything has been paid for by donated monies. There are no stores that sell to the public, no exporting businesses to offset expenses. Everything here is about giving things away – either to the indigenous people or the next generation of workers. Everything is by faith. For more than 35 years God has supported this work through the faithful offerings of his church. Truly incredible!
We will try to post a slide show before we leave today. I don’t think we will have Internet while at camp. Know that we’ll post again Sun PM for certain.

PK

Steve is friends with the guy who runs or owns this coffee warehouse and he graciously took us all on a tour when we got back from visiting the tribe which was awesome… this is the name of the coffee plant…

1. The team before take off with our sweet planes.

2. Once we landed we had fun visiting with the tribe, I fell in love with this little one.

3. The missionaries, tribe and Hume team

4. Dave and a little one.. when he went to give her back she didn’t want him to let her go, super cute.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13. 2 of our new friends running around the village

14. The literacy hut where the teaching goes on for the tribe

15. We were invited into one of the huts for a meal of cowcow (sweet potatoes), roasted corn, cucumbers and roasted bananas. We weren’t sure if we would like it but it was all really tasty. It was quite a feast, the people are gracious hosts.

16. Our gracious host. He assists the missionaries translating the scriptures to the tribal language.

17.

18. Once we finished our feast they showed us how they build fires… and it was quick. Pretty amazing.

19. We thought the fires were for cooking.

20.

21. From the air

22. Safe landing in Goroka

Sweet trip.

~Karey

from Nathan:

I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but we have a Current Travel Map link over in the side bar to the right. It’s something new that we are experimenting with. And, it is feeling very much like an experiment right now.

Here’s the idea. We carry with us a GPS locator. Then, as we load photos onto our computer, we synchronize them with the GPS location for that same time of day. Then with our “Geotagged” photos, we post some map files to Google Maps, and have a current map with photos on a few select points across the globe. This means that you can follow our trip with a photo tour across the map.

It sounds great, and is actually pretty cool when it all works. Unfortunately there is plenty of room for things to go wrong. We tested some stuff out while we were still at Hume Lake, but once we got here I ran into all kinds of problems. Most of the trouble that I had yesterday had to do with time zones and synchronizing cameras to the computer and the GPS satellite time. Now that I’ve figured that out and uploaded some photos it seems to work, but I can’t tell because our Internet connection is so slow and limited that I can’t check to see that the mapping works with the photos.

Help me out by clicking on the link to our Current Trip Map and then post a comment to let us know what you see. It should be a map of PNG with a few photos “pinned” onto it.

Tomorrow we’ll be flying to another tribe in a small plane. I’m going to try to keep the GPS on the whole time and see what kind of line we can draw across the map. It should be fun; we’ll keep you posted.

Hi, this is Jen Browning and after what seemed like endless hours in the sky, we have arrived in PNG. It was easy to pass through customs, collect our luggage and get ready for our next short flight without thinking about how much God had his hand over our travels and all the details. All of our flights were on time, all our luggage made it over with us, we were moved through customs without any questions, with the only hold up being the wait in line to get our visas. We are so thankful for God’s provision.

We arrived at the New Tribes Highlands Support Center on Sunday around noon and were welcomed here by several families who set us up in a great house with food and a free afternoon which allowed for a much needed nap and shower. We are here for about 4 days before we head to Interface, our camp location. For meals we are divided up between different houses and are able to get to know several families. This has been a highlight for me so far. Last night a couple of us had the opportunity to have dinner with a family from Simi Valley, who are doing tribal work and church planting here in PNG. Hearing their stories got me excited about our upcoming trip to a village. New Tribes has offered to fly us to a village and see the tribal work that is going on. This particular village heard the gospel for the first time this past spring and have some new believers. What a privilege it will be to meet them.

Camp starts at the end of the week and it’s fun to see the excitement on the students faces. As we have talked with students the sentiments are all the same, they are looking forward to camp and are excited to have us here. It’s been great to have a few days here to gain a better understanding of the world these students have grown up in. It’s easy to look at how different their life experiences have been compared to students in the states, but we have been reminded that they are still high school students who have a lot of the challenges and struggles and we have the incredible opportunity to come along side them and encourage them. Continue to pray for camp this weekend and that both the students and us would be open to what God wants to teach us.

Hi World,
PK here. We just got internet connection so I thought I would give you a little update.We have already experienced a major working of God as we arrived. 22 of our 22 bags arrived with us. None were lost and we had no flight delays. According to everyone here, that just doesn’t happen.

Life at the New Tribes center is much like life @ Hume Lake: 5000 feet in elevation, warm days and cool nights, small isolated population, lots of small children. One of the things they struggle with is their turnover ratio. Between furloughs, sickness, and relocation, the school here faces a 50% turnover in staff. Pray for them. They also have a tremendous need for house parents. These are couples who serve as dorm parents for 6th – 12th grade students whose parents are working in the jungles. Without dorm parents, these students will not be able to remain at the school. They will have to return to the field and be homeschooled. Please pray that God will raise up several couples to serve in this capacity.

Tomorrow we fly out to a small jungle village to visit the front lines of evangelism and church planting. We’ll try to post soon after our return.