Safely Here

It seems like it has taken me a bit to post an update but things have been rather busy. I landed safely in Papua New Guinea on Monday. My only issue with the flight here was that my luggage didn't make the trip with me. It apparently was left in Los Angeles. It has made it to Port Moresby (the capital of New Guinea) now, but I am still having some issues with customs. Please pray that we will be able to work it all out. It isn't a huge deal, but it would be nice to get my belonging, especially as I was carrying some things for the other missionaries.

 

Other than that, everything is going great. We landed in Kiari, the village where I live, on Wednesday. The road from Goroka (the nearest town with an actual airport) has been closed for over a year, so we get to our village either by helicopter or on foot. It was wonderful to be back in Kiari. It was good to see some of the people I remembered, and I was pleased to discover that I remembered most of the Pidgin (their language) that I had learned.

 

We have had clinic twice so far. On Friday, we had 36 people. That is the most since the clinic was reopened in November. (A short term nurse has been here since July preparing the clinic for my arrival.) Monday was a smaller group of 10.

 

Also, this week we are having special meetings to celebrate the opening of our new church building. People were invited from 13 sister churches all over the province, so there are a lot of people here. Some of them walked for two days to get here, as the closest Bible-preaching church is about a six hour walk from our village. We have two guest speakers here to preach, and are having two services and two Bible classes each day.

 

In many ways, I feel like I never left, but I am thrilled to be back. Thank you so much for your prayers and support.

 

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