Mother's Day Service and Telefomin Kids

MAF is on the roster to take a turn in leading the Sunday morning service every few months. This time it fell on Mother's Day so it was a good opportunity for our whole family to get involved. With one of the MAF families away, that meant it was up to Irwin and Gay and our family! We all felt a little out of our comfort zone, but God worked through our inadequacies and we were blessed.

Irwin was willing to preach the message (which is usually a mixture of Pidgin and English, the ratio of English to Pidgin depends a lot on who is preaching!) Dale was the worship leader and Gay and I led the singing along with Jen H. who was out from the MAF base in Mt. Hagen for the week.  We laughed when the three of us ladies all showed up at church wearing blue meri blouses!

(photo: Gay H., Jen H., and Lori)

Most of the songs were in Pidgin with a few English ones.  We had a lot of fun with "Hallelu, Hallelu, Hallelu, Hallelujah" (that's the one where you split into two groups and stand when it's your turn to sing and sit when it's not.) They really enjoyed that one.

Scott did a great job of reading Acts 6 for the Scripture reading (in English).  We are going through the book of Acts in our Sunday morning messages.

(photo: Scott doing Scripture reading)

Amy and Arianna did a beautiful creative movement routine they had made up to the song "Blessed be the Name of the Lord".

(photo: Arianna and Amy doing creative movement to a song,

Dale is sitting on the bench in the background.)

In his message Irwin reminded us that the men chosen to minister to the widows in Acts 6 were not particularly gifted in food services, but they were filled with the Spirit. He shared his personal testimony of how he, as as a young man, didn't believe in God or the truth of the Bible but decided to read the Bible so he could make an intelligent decision to reject it. Well, in time he began to realize that the Bible was true but struggled in accepting it in faith. Only after fasting and praying over a weekend was he able to completely surrender to God and the truth of His Word.

It was a reminder to all of us of the power of God's Word and how we can't expect to be filled with the Spirit if we are not regularly getting fed by the Bread of Life.

THE TELEFOMIN KIDS!

The lady who is slightly taller than Scott and Amy is Jen H. Here she is with all the MAF Telefomin kids (except Lauren, age 2, who was still napping). Jen and her husband, who is an aircraft mechanic, come from New Zealand and are based at the main MAF base in Mt. Hagen. Jen is our home school support teacher (along with Jill C. from Nova Scotia). We always look forward to their visit every few months to offer their support and encouragement. They usually spend a day or two with each family, often bringing some fun crafts or games with them to add some variety to our school routine.

SUMMER BREAK

We are into our second week of "summer holidays" and plan to start up with our regular school routine in mid-June.

A Traditional "Singsing", Crunchy Caterpillars and Dazzling Dahlias!

Dressed in their traditional finery these men performed a traditional "singsing" (song and dance) to welcome some of the passengers Dale had on board the plane that day, some local politician. It was quite a welcome!

One afternoon Amy & Arianna joined their national friends collecting these little black caterpillars which they later roasted and ate. (Amy & Arianna generously donated their collection to their friends instead of eating them!)

Here they are, hunting for caterpillars. Apparently the field behind our house (that's the back of our house you see in the photo) is crawling with caterpillars -- or, at least, was!

If you look closely you can see two little guinea pigs in this photo.  Callum and Albina (our Haus Meri) are holding "Juliet", and Jenny, the MAF gardener, is holding "Romeo". (Unfortunately, Romeo died after we had only had them for a week.) We are hoping to find some more little piggy companions for Juliet.

In Science class we were fascinated with how crystals are formed and their many uses -- especially sugar crystals!

Early one foggy morning the tall grasses around our yard was laced with sparkling spider webs like this one that Scott captured on camera.

Jenny is very proud of the beautiful flowers she has been nurturing on our yard. She does all the gardening with just a machete and a spade, but for a region that is known for having poor soil, the results are amazing!