What a trip I had at Papua New Guinea. I learned so much at their campus in Goroka about the way New Tribes Mission does ministry. We got to learn the trade language of tok pisin which is melanasion pidgin English. Each day we went up to the village to practice and to develop relationships and learn the culture of the Bena tribe.
One time we all had a meal together ( a mumu) that the people cooked in a hole in the ground on hot rocks. We did this on the island of Solong too where the men caught a wild pig as we watched. Both times we sat and chatted with the ladies and children while we helped cut veggies and waited for the meal to cook. I loved this great time of language and cultural learning.
Sometimes when we visited, the women and children would sit on the ground with us and sew hand bags and other knit type stuff. One lady gave me a purse she knitted that I still love to use.
My favorite part of our trip was a visit the Solong people on an island in New Britain. It was one of NTM's church plant. The people greeted us with flower leis and singing. We were able to walk on this mile long island by ourselves and visit with the people using tok pisin.
My favorite event was the mumu, which is a feast specially prepared. We spent all day preparing the food--peeling kaukau (sweet potato), grating tapioc, scraping coconut, drinking coconut milk, etc. We watched the boys catch and kill the pig.
The best part was spending time with the people. This was a village wide feast and boy it was good. We also had a time of worship afterwards and sang English while the Solong people sang some songs in Solong. Afterwards we danced outside and sang father Abraham with everyone! What a time we had! Well it was lovely.
The experience I had at Papua New Guinea was awesome. It was different from other mission trips I'd taken in that it was more of a cultural and language experience since New Tribes Mission had leaders who did the evangelism, and that was not the focus of our group. Even though that part was a surprise for me, I was glad for a different kind of trip where I could really put to practice language acquisition skills I had learned at Fuller Seminary.
Be on the lookout for more blogs on previous and current trips and experiences!
