Jul07

22 July 2007

Dear Lygon St friends,

In the last email to you I mentioned that we were having trouble getting passport photos that were acceptable. The last photos we sent were accepted so now we have renewed passports. They are still in Pt Moresby as we need renewed visas. Thank you, God.

The school holidays are just about finished. I go to school for staff meetings on Tuesday and school starts on Wednesday. David will be in grade 5. His main teacher will not be arriving until September so he will be having several parents teach the class for different subjects in the first term. His best friend's mum will be taking Bible and Maths. I trust that the students in the class are able to cope with the various teachers. I think that they should as they are getting near to the age of Secondary school where they have different teachers for different subjects. I will be teaching Grade 12 Maths as usual and then Grade 8. It has been a while since I taught the Grade 8 so that will be a challenge.

This last week I have been translating some Sunday school material and adding questions/ puzzles for the next series of lessons we are intending for the Grade 4-8 students. We start the series on Exodus next Sunday. I believe God has helped me in preparing the material. We finished watching the Matthew video today. The parts around the crucifixion made me cry.

In the last email I told you of various deaths that were happening to family of our friends. This week I can tell you of a birth. That is a much happier note. Last Saturday I had the treat of holding a newborn baby. One of my friend's son and daughter-in-law had a baby son born at a mission health centre about an hour's drive away. We were asked if we could help the family return here as they were not sure the new mother would be strong enough to return by public transport. We went down about 1:30 pm, waited a couple of hours while they sorted things out (Laurie finished reading the Heidi story while we waited), then returned with the baby on my lap. I was sitting in the front. The new Mum wanted to lie down so the family made a bed for her in the back of our Ute/ pick-up. The baby is born 6 weeks early but seems to be doing well. On Thursday morning we made some nappies and bunny rug. Coming so early, the mother was not yet prepared.

In the last two weeks David and I have had some horse riding lessons. I decided to do the lessons with David so I could ride with him. The lessons have been fun and have been a good substitute for going away on a holiday.

With love,

Valmai, Laurie and David.

Jun07

Dear friends,

We are on school holidays now. These are our longest holidays in the year, being 6 weeks, as it is the finish of one school year and the start of the next. David has just finished Grade 4 and will be going into Grade 5 starting 25 July.

We have a young man from America, Tyler Roberts, staying with us until July 30 except for the time he will be in the village with friends who are involved in translation. Tyler is a university student and is interested in becoming a doctor so is particularly interested in seeing what goes on in the clinic. Every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday some of the nurses from the clinic here go to villages and run health clinics where they give baby immunizations, weigh the babies and check minor health problems for the community. Each village they go to is visited once a month. Tyler has been joining them and observing on these village clinics. We are enjoying having him stay with us. He is very easy to get along with and is adjusting well to being in our family. David is enjoying having a 'big brother' around. Yesterday they played with Legos together for a while, made pancakes then worked at preparing to put a border around the long jump pit at the High School. Tyler wants to learn from us too and has given us opportunity to share with him some of the treasures that God has taught us.

'My' Grade 12 maths students did their external exam in May. They will receive their results next month. They thought that a couple of questions were hard as they were different from questions from past papers. (That is something that one can expect in that exam). On the whole, I think that they did as well as I expected them to. Those students graduated from High School on June 12 and most have left PNG and are returning to their parents' home country. Most are planning to go on to Tertiary Education next school year. It is a time of saying 'Good-bye' to close friends and that is emotionally hard.

We are showing the Matthew video in Sunday School to the young people from Grade 4 to Grade 8. We have seen the first third. The video is in English so I am translating parts of it into Pidgin as we watch it. For those of you who pray, please pray that the young people will accept Jesus' gift of Eternal Life and desire more to love and follow Him. Pray for the boys in particular. We have had to deal with some sin issues of stealing, lying and throwing stones at the girls. We don't want them to follow the road to destruction.

Laurie just read out a gem: "The Christian finds safety not in the absence of danger but in the presence of God". I find that precious. This saying was said by a person who was kidnapped and then released.

Several weeks ago, David had a pupil free day and went with our friends out to two villages about 12 km away. Some of you are involved in filling shoeboxes of gifts through the Samaritan's Purse. These gifts are to be given to children who don't normally receive gifts at Christmas time. I know it is not Christmas time on the calendar, but it was Christmas in May for several hundred children as David and others gave out the Samaritan Purse shoeboxes. It was a highlight for David too. The PNG children gave David and the others gifts of string bags and bows and arrows. I wish we could give some of these gifts to the people who worked so hard to fill the boxes.

Thank you for continuing to be interested in us. Thank you to those who faithfully pray for us and/ or support us financially.

With love, Valmai, Laurie and David.

Apr07-2

26 April 2007,

Dear friends,

I trust you are well.

Several months ago, I mentioned that I was having struggles relating to a family that is virtually fully dependent on the generosity of the missionaries here for their daily needs. God has answered prayer and one of their neighbours has given them more ground to garden. The neighbour was sorry for them having so many children and not much garden. This gives them about three times the garden space they had before and hopefully enables them to support themselves. On Tuesday 10 April, David and I went to the new ground to help them dig and to look after the baby while her mother worked. We enjoyed it so much. It was like a different world from the small town of Ukarumpa even though it was only about 100m from the outside fence. I am not saying that here is not fun but they say that 'a change is as good as a holiday' so that Tuesday was our 'holiday'.

School recommenced the next day. My Grade 12 students are working hard practising past exam papers in preparation for their external exam on 9 May. They are a great group of students to teach. The grade 9 class has been working on circle geometry if that means anything to you. I think that it is more important to encourage each student in their faith in Jesus than to teach them Maths. We usually start the lesson in prayer and sometimes in a short devotion. I want to share with them some of the treasures that God has taught me and is teaching me.

In our last email to you, I mentioned that we watched the Matthew video over Easter. Laurie is now reading to us a book authored by Bruce Marchiano, the person who acted 'Jesus' in that film. The book, 'In the Footsteps of Jesus', is inspiring and helps us to think of Jesus character. He must have been so loving and joyful. He said He came to give life abundantly. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace etc. Jesus would have been full of love and joy. I am contemplating using the Matthew video in Sunday school even though it is in English which is a second or third language for most of the children. We will show about half an hour of it each Sunday and then spend time discussing it and praying.

On Saturday night we had three of the Sunday School girls from the local village stay with us. It was a treat for them.

Life is not quite so busy now. I am not feeling that I am running from one thing to another. There is still plenty to do but not as pressing.

With love,

Valmai and Laurie.

Apr07

April 9, 2007

Dear Lygon St friends,

I hope that you have had a refreshing Easter - Jesus is risen! This is confirmation that He is the Son of God. Mum told me on the telephone that she and Dad both went into the worship service with you on Good Friday. Mum usually worships at a church near our home in Reservoir. Thank you for your faithfulness in praying for us and in supporting us financially. May God bless you.

On Thursday evening we had a Passover meal. I enjoyed that. On Sunday morning we went to a Sunrise service in the park just above one of the boarding hostels. The service was subdued, I think because of the misty rain. We did not see the sun rise. Later, we watched the Jesus film as part of Sunday School- the section from the 'Palm Sunday' onwards. After that we had 22 extra children here to lunch. I organized the cooking for that differently from what I usually do. I had made about 50 very thin pancakes without rising. That was our unleavened bread this year. There were enough for 2 each. We had them with grated carrots, fried greens, egg and lamb flaps- the only sort of lamb that was available in our store. In the afternoon we went to the river for a short while before going to our neighbours' house to watch the last part of the video, 'Matthew'. This is part of 'The Visual Bible' series. We thought that the portrayal of Jesus was very good. Jesus is a lot more emotional than we have seen Him presented in other films. He is a lot more loving and joyful. Even loving as He shouts to the Pharisees "Woe to you..." He longs for them to repent. We finished the evening with a light meal together- toasted cheese sandwiches and raspberry jam on bread. The raspberry jam reminded me of my childhood with my grandparents in Tasmania .

Things have been so busy lately I have felt like I have been running from one thing to the next. We have just finished two weeks of Branch Conference where the members of SIL-PNG, those of us in SIL working in PNG, met together. David went to Vacation Bible Club. He enjoyed that. Laurie and I were in a small group who had responsibility to gather information and present to the larger group the different ways that SIL-PNG is working well with the churches and ways we need to improve. The preparation took a lot of time. I found it helpful for myself, especially as a person who is not directly involved in translation of the Bible or teaching people to read. I hope that it was helpful to others too. If any of you are interested in what we presented to Conference then I can send you a copy. I found the Conference mostly interesting. The main part I enjoyed was the lectures we had about multi-cultural teamwork.

My maths students doing Grade 12 have their major American external exam in a month. May is near the end of the school year in the Northern hemisphere school calendar. Some are just about ready for the exam; others still have work to do. I hope they are working over the holidays. School resumes again on Wednesday. I foresee that I will continue to be busy for a while yet as, besides the normal classes, I need to do some work on curriculum. This is expected periodically in order for our school to keep their accreditation internationally. I am conscious that we can get too busy and crowd out our time for God. I hope that I don't do that.

Recently we read an interesting article in a magazine. They showed a picture of twins, one of whom we would say is black or dark skinned while the other is white! Both parents are 'mixed race' with their mothers being white and their fathers black. I think that the article confirms my thinking that Adam and Eve and Noah were darkish skin with genes for both the black colour and the white colour. Every variety of coloured skin people could descend from them.

God bless you,

With love,

Valmai and Laurie.

Jan 07, 30

Dear friends,

Our Grandson was born Saturday night. Robert (Robbie) Jack Morden was born to Joy and Bryce at 8:15 pm in Sale hospital. We are told that both Joy and the baby are doing well. Robbie measured 52cm long, 35.5cm head circ., and 3.7kg (8lb2oz). Thank you, God.

Sunday School started last Sunday. Two of the grade 12 boys that I, Valmai, teach Maths to in school have said they will teach the Grade 4-8 boys Sunday school class. I am so thankful. One of the boys can only come every second week so we are looking for another to come the other weeks. I taught the class today and the others will take over when they are ready. We thought today of Jesus saying to Peter and Andrew 'follow me'. He did not tell them to go and do work straight away. They had 3 years of learning through watching, listening and being with Jesus first. After Sunday School we witnessed one of the Sunday school children being baptized in the river.

Last week I heard of two accounts where God saved life miraculously. One was when a 3-year-old ran in front of a car. His mother ran after him to try to save him. She said she felt like she was pushed by someone to be able to get out of the way of the car. The car was able to brake in time to just touch them without doing any damage. Thank you, God. The other was when a young Christian man was saved from being shot. Those trying to shoot him made several attempts but whenever they fired the shot gun at him, the gun jammed. When they fired in a different direction, the gun went off. After a week they released him. We trust that those who witnessed this and those who heard about it recognize God's power and trust Him to save them. 'The Kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power.' (1 Cor 4:20).

From Laurie and Valmai.

Jan 07b

20 January 2007,

Dear friends,

Our holiday time at Rempi was both refreshing and sobering. David was so excited to see all the fish and coral. He enjoyed the fish in particular. It was worth all the time it took to prepare in order to see him enjoy it so much. We took a PNG boy, Kay, with us. It was the first time that he had seen the sea or travelled further than an hour's drive from here. He enjoyed it very much, too, and was soon snorkelling better than I. I fixed up one of the smaller snorkels that one of the twins had. The strap and blue part was broken but God gave me the idea how to fix it. It worked well.

David got sick on the Wednesday we were there, with a temperature of 39.70C (103.50F) being the peak that we measured. We took him to the doctor on Thursday but that was not conclusive. David had more protein in his urine than he should have had. The Doctor put David on malaria medicine. David was feeling much better on Friday so Laurie rigged up a raft using the 3 inner tubes that we took with us and we took David out on the water on the raft. At least he could enjoy it without exerting too much energy. On Saturday David was almost fine as we drove back to Ukarumpa. He was tired when we got here and just wanted to rest. He woke on Sunday with a temperature again (39.40C). We are thankful to God that he is well now and that he was well enough to travel. While at Rempi, Laurie read aloud the book Jungle Doctor on the Hop by Paul White. It is about a medical team going to a village in Africa where they had the Black Death plague from rats (as they had in England in the 18th Century). I thoroughly recommend it.

We started school again Wednesday 17th January. I have the same classes as I had last semester as our school year goes from July to June. Even though we had all the holidays, it was a push on Tuesday to be ready for Wednesday. I did not do much school work over the holidays. David didn't want to start school again. He continues not to like school even though he likes his teacher.

Laurie and several of his colleagues had some extra work just before our holidays. Our main inverter died which "took out" the power to all the server computers which provide network services for the entire town. Since all data is on the servers, the failure brought almost all computer work to a halt. Even the store (groceries and other supplies) had to close as their point-of-sale registers could not access pricing information. (The inverter is supposed to provide reliable continuous power to run the computers for the network system regardless of all the disturbances and interruptions to power we get from being on the end of a long feeder on the national power grid.) We are currently running the most essential services on smaller emergency inverters and have ordered a new one from Australia . It looks like there will be a lot of extra work to get the new one set up and running properly because it is entirely different physically and electrically.

From Valmai, Laurie and David.

Jan 07

January 1, 2007

Dear friends,

Happy New Year. I trust this year is one where we love God more with all our heart, soul and mind. We want to 'take delight in the Lord' (Psalm 37:4), to trust in the Lord with all our heart and not depend on our own understanding. (Proverbs 3:5) To those who wrote, I have enjoyed reading your Christmas letters. Thank you for keeping in touch. I like our custom of keeping in touch around Christmas time even though it takes me a while to read all the letters. We had a happy Christmas with several special times of worship (including singing parts of the Messiah) and some meals with special friends.

It is two months since I last wrote and so much has happened that I don't know where to start sharing with you. One of my concerns is for the boys in David's Sunday School class (10-14 year olds). They mainly come from a local village. Last year there was a revival there and many people changed. Now some have slipped away. We feel the boys are on the crossroads. We want them to choose God's way and not Satan's. In December their teacher returned to Australia for 7 months so we are looking for a replacement for him. I could take the class but think it best for it to be taught by a man. As Sunday School Superintendent I am in the process of organising the lessons to be taught for the next term. The younger classes (Pre-school to Grade 3) use material originally written for the Australian Aborigines in English and then translated into Papua New Guinean Tok Pisin. (I was taught from the English version when I was a child). This term the focus is on Jesus' life and ministry. For the older two classes, I wish to prepare a series on one of the gospels.

Laurie's knee is about completely recovered. He can now walk up and down stairs two at a time. Thank you, God. He still senses that his knees are 'not like they used to be' -part of aging.

The Grade 10 Papua New Guinean Students from our school all did well in their external exams. They achieved either a distinction or credit in every subject. Thank you to those who prayed for them.

Over the Christmas holidays we have done several different activities like floating down the river on car /tractor tubes, sewing and watching a neighbour put an extension on his house. For three days we went to a camp where David and I were two of the three 'whiteskins' amongst about one thousand PNG people. I didn't have any leadership role but assisted two of my friends in their roles. I trust we were an encouragement. David really enjoyed swimming in the lake about 400m away. Next Saturday we plan to drive to Madang for a week's holiday by the ocean.

With love,

Valmai, Laurie and David.