The Photo Album in my Bilum

Several months ago, I was sitting next to a window in a village house when I should have been sleeping and was talking with God. As I poured out my emotions (and scribbled notes, which later became this poem), He merely listened and waited, wrapping my humanity in His love. After all, He whispered back, Jesus knew separation from His Father as well.
 


The Photo Album in my Bilum*

Some take their family with them
Seven cups at the table, bug collections and Barbies
Heaped behind the couch; generations wander together
over road, sky, water, hands intertwined
discussing road signs, whispering good night beneath mosquito nets.
But my family travels trapped
In plastic, flattened smiles between the pages
Rattling against thermos and torch, waiting
For pointing introductions: mother, father, sister, cousins, friends.
Two years, and they haven’t aged a day
Like a tabloid promise fighting wrinkles and gray hair.
But waking as Rip Van Winkle is like starring in a horror film, and I stare
out the window, listening to a chorus of amens drift into silence.
Maybe eternity will be like the album, unchanging togetherness
After a life of Skype calls and 1 am emails, but
sometimes, Lord, a reward of a hundred times over
seems a dime-store replacement for
three.

*a bilum is a traditional string bag in Papua New Guinea

What’s Out Your Window?

Today I thought it would be fun to show some of the views from a few of the windows in my house on a typical Ukarumpa day.

Let’s start with the everything room—the room where we play Christmas carols on the piano, visit with friends on the couch, watch movies on the TV (or computer), host families at the dining table, play card games, pray, laugh cry, cuddle pets…


We are fortunate to have a huge plate glass window opening up to an amazing view! You can see Lone Tree in the distance (once it only had one tree on the peak, but now there are many…but the name hasn’t change), the Training Centre (where we hold classes, conferences, and workshops related to Bible translation), the cow pastures off to the right, and then the gardens of our national coworkers to the left. The little bush-looking thing in the yard to the lower left is actually an avocado tree. It’s a bit of a gray and hazy day today, so the clouds aren’t as spectacular as they often are.

Our lovely view from the "everything" room

Now, off to the kitchen! Just the other day I had a plethora of cucumbers, avocados, and some chicken…so I made cucumber-avocado-chicken soup! Despite its rather florescent green color, it actually was pretty tasty  This shows more gardens (this picture is taken just to the left of the “everything” room window). These are “louvered” windows, meaning the glass is mounted in narrow, horizontal plates that can rotate closed (when it’s chilly out), or fold inward, to let the breezes in.

As I stand at the counter mixing up the day's bread, this is what I see

Let’s go to the office/sewing room/craft room/dehydrating room/library/room with the light bulb that requires climbing on a chair and tapping it in order for it to turn on… here’s where I type many of these blog posts, work on literacy projects, or try to figure out how to repair the strange skirt that I bought in Kainantu. Because we have more valuable/expensive items kept in this room, we have both arc mesh and bars across the windows for security’s sake. But, even with the extra metal, the view of the surrounding mountains is still refreshing!

Often the storms approach over those mountains and I know to run and get my laundry off the line!

And finally, here’s the window from my bedroom, looking out the opposite side of the house from the kitchen. That’s our neighbor’s house, a grapefruit tree, a lemon tree, and our garden off to the left while you can see the edge of our clothesline to the right. The benches off to the left surround a place to build a fire and grill. Yum!

That grapefruit tree is really prolific; too bad they are quite sour, and despite trying, I haven't become a fan yet

What's out your window?

Birds in Church

A story from my experience at a literacy workshop in Saidor, PNG last year (read more here).

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... not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it….So don’t be afraid; you are more valuable to God than a whole flock of sparrows.

Matthew 10:29, 31

Black-backed birds darted above me, hopping between rafters like trapeze artists, chattering with their mouths full, flitting past a mural of a frozen Holy Spirit trying to perch on Jesus’ shoulder.  It was Sunday morning, and they were building their nests in church.

I uncrossed my ankles, twisting my neck toward the window as I tried to peel my muscles from the hardwood backless benches without elbowing the girl nearly pressed into my side. Stretching in a crowded church is like playing Tetris. I glanced across the aisle. At least, it’s that way on the women’s side. The men’s benches were flecked with only few boys and old men.

It was August 2012, and I was on staff at a 5-week literacy course for rural teachers of the Rai Coast of Madang province, which was known for its 20+ vibrant languages (none with translated Scriptures) and low education levels (see blog posts here and here). No pastor here, I peered around the congregation. And no Bibles either—except mine.

One of the elderly men, barefoot and long-sleeved, creaked to his feet and shuffled to the front of the church. “Christianity is like banking,” he announced, using Tok Pisin, PNG’s vague and unwieldy trade language. “Doing good deeds puts money in the bank. Doing bad deeds is withdrawing from your account.” My leg was numb, asleep, and I ground my heel into the floor—wake up! “Christianity is good news!” His voice grew louder, as if desperate for volume to communicate Truth when the Scriptures were incomprehensible—“When the end comes, you better have a positive balance if you want to go to heaven!” His fist smashed into the pulpit like a door slamming shut.

What?! Fire shot up my leg as feeling returned in explosive fireworks, and I gasped, sucked air between gritted teeth. The echo shattered through the rafters, scattering the birds, but the woman in front of me just nodded and a mange-bitten dog beneath the bench slapped his tail.

“Stand up and let us pray.” I couldn’t move. Together, he and the women around me, eyes downcast, whispered petitions of help and protection, but I only looked up—above his murmuring head was hung a wooden crucifix, a dying man’s arms spread in a payment that we could never make. He is weeping.

So am I.

Suddenly, with one voice, the flock of church birds begin to chirp, sing, cry in a growing crescendo until  they are screeching, screaming, shouting with the enthusiasm of a revival tent meeting, and I can no longer hear the man at the pulpit. Amidst the din, the women whisper amen and I watch them, one by one, rise, turn, and walk toward the door and lift yet another burden to their shoulders. Just try harder today. Do better. That’s what God wants.

But above me and the crucifix, the birds rejoice in their own language, wings dark against the stained glass, pink, blue, green, gold louvers now cracked and broken, giving forbidden entrance to a flock of sparrows. They don’t worry about falling here.

I watch, one by one, the slumped backs of the women leaving the sanctuary, holding children, touching holy water to forehead, shoulders, the faithful trying to heed His call, deaf to His unintelligible words: how much more valuable are you...

Step-by-Step Storytelling

For me, storytelling can be a lot like yawning. It’s really easy to start—but woe to the one who tries to stop! Sure, I can capture just about anyone’s attention with a thrilling start (who could forget those epic stories about a dragon started bouncing like a jackrabbit across the hills with a sack on his back or a British ghost who was a pyromaniac or the mysterious water monster living beneath my college’s island…), but ending them? Well, that’s something else.

Sometimes when we talk about Oral Bible Storytelling, I think the image in our heads is similar to my haphazard version, but in fact, the storytelling process taught in the Oral Bible Storytelling course held this past April in Wewak, Papua New Guinea (PNG) was as different from the above scenario as an Easi-Bake oven is from a Master Chef’s kitchen. (See more stories about the OBS course here and here)

For the first half of the course, each morning the 30 participants from 7 languages gathered in the haus win (open shelter), clutching their recorders and leaning forward with eager grins, excited to begin. Several of the participants had been chosen to begin training as future instructors of the course, and so, paired with an experienced staff member, they would lead the day’s activities, beginning by dramatically telling one of the stories of Moses and the Exodus. Because there were seven languages present, all the instruction and initial storytelling was done in Tok Pisin, PNG’s main trade language.



At the conclusion of the story, the participants would toss up their hands, chattering animatedly about what surprised them, pleased them, or even made them angry. Slowly they would tease out the themes of the text and potential application for their audience. Throughout the morning, the facilitator would retell the story multiple times, guiding the class in analyzing characters and setting, determining the story’s outline and climax, and (in contrast to my method), figuring out appropriate ways to start and end the story (including what background might be necessary for their audience). Occasionally, when perplexed by a historical or theological issue, the whole class would rotate in their seats to stare at us, the expat mentors sitting in the back, and pepper us with questions—what size was the burning bush? Was the Red Sea really red? Is there any deeper significance in removing shoes on holy ground? How many Pharoah’s were there? How far away was Mt. Sinai from Midian?

After the morning break of tea, coffee, and banana cake, the participants dove into the next challenge—committing the story to memory, first in Tok Pisin and later in tokples (local language). They used a variety of aids and games, from acting out the story to trading sentences with each table, to drawing out a picture/symbolic outline, to working in teams and echoing each other back and forth.

After lunch, each language group split off to begin crafting the story in their own tokples. Earlier, they had recorded the story in Tok Pisin, so now, they would play the recording and while listening to it, one person would simultaneously translate the phrases into tokples, which was captured on a second recorder. Once this first draft was completed, the rest of the team would listen and relisten to the story’s recording, discussing changes and slowly modifying it until all were satisfied. Then they practiced telling this story until it was firmly committed to memory.

Hear the bell—it’s afternoon tea, now! After the break, the whole group would once again gather together to discuss both challenging concepts that they encountered in their translation, such as rhetorical questions or sarcasm, and difficult words that don’t have easy equivalents in their languages and cultures—such as tar, basket, Israel, Hebrew, Levi, calendar, yeast, sheep, trough, holy, offering, chariot, sea or even expressing 14 days (when they only have a numbering system that counts up to 10). Often the teams would be working on their drafts late into the night, polishing and refining the language until it was just right.

The last stage of storytelling course was the check and recording—after one team member recorded their final version of the story in tokples, another team member would listen to the recording and translate (either orally or written) it back into Tok Pisin. Then, our linguistic consultant, Elois, would examine the Tok Pisin version and ask many probing questions to make sure that concepts were being communicated correctly and none of the important elements of Scripture were being left out or altered. After the team made the necessary changes, they made a final recording for archiving purposes… and then started the process over again for the next story!

And that, my friends, is nothing to yawn at!

Shhh! Listen Up!

When Paul first wrote his epistle to the Ephesians, he was not expecting that it would be printed and passed out to the audience to be read in their leisure before they went to bed. Nor was it meant to be fed piecemeal verse, by verse. He didn't even have verses. It was meant to be read aloud and in large quantities. When Moses first taught the Israelites, when young King Josiah read the Law to the people, when the prophets gave their admonitions, it was always done orally.

When I was in college, my friends and I continually puzzled over this concept—if the Word of God historically acted powerfully in the lives of people during oral presentations, then why not in our churches today? Of course the intrusion of literacy into our Western culture makes a difference, but still we wondered...what would happened if we tried an oral presentation of Scripture?

One of the Word of Witness teams presenting at a local church

Out of the curiosity of some college students,  a Scripture-use ministry was born. Striving to bring the Bible orally to local colleges and churches, we used a variety of methods, from a short weekly chapel of reading the Bible to the Tent of Meeting a week-long push of reading aloud that took a listener from Genesis to Revelation in 98 hours. But, our focus was on a presentation we called Word of Witness, where we created dramatized, memorized 30-minute Scripture presentations without any external commentary, involving up to twenty-five people. Topics spanned anywhere from the story of Hosea to that of David in the Psalms to the life of Paul to the birth of Christ. (you can learn more here about the ongoing ministry, now called Josiah‘s Gift, here and see videos of the presentations here)

After hearing us, one student exclaimed, absolutely incredulous, “Wow! Was all that actually Scripture?“ We started handing out the multitude of Scripture references to prove it. Many of these people had heard these stories since two-year-old nursery, but their responses were almost always the same. This Word—it is ...living?

Could Jeremiah be...sarcastic?

Could David be...crying?

Could Jesus actually...exaggerate?

Little did I know that my involvement in leading and orchestrating the various oral Scripture presentations in college would be an echo of my involvement in Bible translation here in Papua New Guinea (PNG).

While telling stories in our English-speaking world is often reserved for children‘s bedtime, in many other places around the globe (like here in PNG), stories and proverbs are the primary means of preserving history, teaching lessons, and communicating eloquently with the audience. These are no mere once upon a times that are discarded with a laugh, but are serious tools of communication within the culture.

When translators come in and begin communicating through the written word, the oral culture makes a leap into the literate world that is more akin to a headlong dive than a gentle wading pool. The transition Western culture made through nearly two-thousand years is done in decades and the reaction is rough. Why read?  they say. We haven‘t needed to yet.

For us English-speakers, those questions seem incomprehensible—it‘s hard to imagine life without the printed page, which has been a part of our lives long before Gutenberg first pulled that sheet off the printing press. But this is not the case for much of the world. Wycliffe and other organizations are working to utilize traditional oral methods and what is called Bible storying to teach people how to memorize and share Bible stories accurately, reaching people in a way that is often more meaningful in their culture. Rather than replace the written word, it‘s meant to complement it and provide context, as well as provide access to Scriptures for people who may never have a chance to read.

This month, I've been involved in doing just that in the Oral Bible Storytelling workshop here in Wewak, Papua New Guinea, where 30 participants from seven languages have been learning the stories of Moses (read more about it here). As the third module in a series of four, one of the aims of this course is to train these participants as future trainers such that this workshop will be able to multiply throughout the country and God‘s Word will continue to impact more people who have not yet heard the story of His love in their own languages.

This week, the workshop is wrapping up and the participants are heading back to their villages to share about God‘s faithfulness and redemption of the Israelites through the sacrifice of a lamb. Pray that through these stories, more people will hear of the sacrifice of another Lamb that reaches straight into their hearts.