Off to the Bush!

The time has arrived for us to head out to the bush! One of the most exciting parts of this internship is our opportunity to go live in two different villages for a few weeks, both to speed-learn the language and to encourage the nationals and missionaries who live there. We've been packing like crazy (we have to bring everything we're going to need, including food and bedding and clothing and toiletries and kerosene lamps and coloring books for the children and laundry detergent and clothespins and batteries and about a million other things), so we're finally ready to hop on the plane and fly out.

All of this packing has given all of the interns plenty of practice interacting in the market and all of the stores around town. I can remember the day back in the States when our intern coach said she was going to send us out to the market alone on the third day, and we all panicked. Now, going out to buy fresh produce is no big deal, and I look forward to visiting our normal stops in the market. The market is an exciting place, with dozens of people sitting next to their produce, spraying it with water and fanning the flies away to attract customers. There's something really special about buying food from the people who grew it - it feels much more personal than buying food from the supermarket, where the food has probably passed through a dozen hands. We usually visit the market once a day, as we're responsible for all of our meals and we like things fresh.

This weekend was very good for me. On Saturday, we took time for Sabbath (a discipline that is particularly difficult for me), spending the day with a missionary family around town and then watching a movie in the evening at our office. On Sunday, I went to my first ever PNG church service, which was a very interesting experience. The seating was divided by gender, and the service was a mixture of Pidgin and English. The preacher spoke about God's call to Abraham, how he had to leave the life he had established in order to follow God into unknown places. It seemed very timely for students on a missions internship! I feel like the church service may have made me more homesick than anything else we've done, simply because the songs and faces were so unfamiliar to me. I think time helps more than anything, as familiarity never comes quickly. Fortunately, on Sunday evening we attended a gathering of all of the PBT missionaries, and it felt much more familiar. We sang familiar English songs, we watched a video about what God has been doing in PNG, we were prayed over, and we took the Lord's Supper together.

The Lord's Supper was particularly impacting to me. I've become guilty of getting so distracted by all of the details of mission work - all of the packing and language learning and sunscreening - that I had lost sight of the purpose of all that we do: Jesus died for our sins, and that is very good news. We are sharing the words of life with people, bringing light into dark places, and it can be easy to forget that when you're trying to remember what the Pidgin word for "egg" is (it's kiau, by the way).

Today was a long day of final preparation. I made two purchases that were particularly exciting for me. The first was a machete, which I'll need for our time in the bush (I believe I'll mostly be using it to hack vines and open coconuts, but I may kill a tiger or two while I'm at it). The second was a bilum, a small bag that just about every single person in the town carries around with them to hold personal items (for those of you who are wondering, yes, I'm describing a purse. But it is culturally appropriate - even expected - that I, as a male, will carry one too. I'm not gonna lie; it's pretty handy).

From what I can tell, our time in the bush will be very challenging and very rewarding. I would greatly appreciate your prayers especially in this time, as it will certainly be the most physically (and, dare I say it, mentally/emotionally/spiritually) demanding portion of the summer. We feel very confident about what's going to happen, but there are also so many variables we have to deal with (until about last week, we didn't know if the airstrip into our first village was going to be too overgrown to land). Fortunately, God is bigger than our circumstances! He has prepared the way for us, and we are excited to join his work in the villages.

God's Big Banana Leaf

Well, let me give a big "Moning, poro!" from Papua New Guinea! We've (finally) just about settled in to our houses here, I know how to say a little more than "I'm trying to learn how to speak Pidgin" in Pidgin, and my body is slowly getting used to the time change (every night, I start getting tired around 6 pm, and most mornings I wake up automatically around 4 am).

Our travel couldn't have gone better. We had no missed layovers and no lost luggage, so we appreciate all of the prayers that went up on our behalf! I still don't really know where June 14 went, but I've heard that we'll pick it up on the way back to the States in August.

In case you're worried about where I'm sleeping or what I'm eating, rest assured that we are well taken care of. I'm living in a one-bedroom flat behind the girls' house, which is a two-bedroom house. Many of the missionaries here have been kind to feed us, but most of our meals are up to us and our ability to buy things from the market and stores. I feel confident enough to be able to shop in Pidgin, though a recent disaster involving my failed attempt to make hot chocolate may have hurt my confidence for cooking (the raw sugar really did look like hot cocoa mix, leading to super-sugary-hot-milk). We've been eating a large variety of foods, but nothing too too scary since we're preparing our own meals. We have been able to taste kulau (a hard coconut-shaped fruit filled with a sweet, electrolyte-filled liquid), rambutan (an angry-looking little sweet fruit), taro, and kaukau (like a sweet potato).

It's amazing how quickly you get used to doing stuff the PNG way. Already, I've learned not to make eye contact with a woman for more than a few seconds, I know that riding "shotgun" means sitting in the front-left seat, and it's weird to see a woman wearing pants instead of a skirt. Every morning, I know that the large flocks flying overhead are not birds but big bats (see picture below). Obviously, I'm years away from blending in as a Papua New Guinean speaking fluent Pidgin, but until then I can just throw up my hands and explain, "Mi no PNG man!"

This week, our major goals have been getting oriented to PNG, beginning to learn Pidgin, and preparing for our time in the bush over the next three and a half weeks (planning menus, buying food, packing supplies, etc.). We spend most of our day at the Pioneer Bible Translators main office, and it's been really cool to see all of the traffic of missionaries, national workers, and other visitors coming in and out.

And speaking of translation, one of our other main goals for this week has been checking a back translation of I Corinthians for one of the people groups with whom we'll be living. Obviously, Bible translators want the text to be as accurate as possible, so there is a long series of checks and re-checks before the scriptures are published. One of these checks is a "back translation," where they take the scriptures in the new language and translate them back into English so that workers (who probably don't speak the new language) can give an unbiased look at whether the new text reflects the original content of the Bible. As I read through this back translation of I Corinthians, I'm checking to see if anything has been added, poorly interpreted, or omitted.

Because the text has passed through so many different languages (Greek and English into the new language into English), the back translation can often give you quite a few odd sentence constructions or phrasings. I'm constantly coming across verses like this snippet of I Corinthians 6:12: "Half some men are habitually speaking like that. You habitually say, 'Saying, "I will do whatever whatever," I will do good.' Given that, half some whatever whatever will not help me." Fortunately, they give us lots of help to let us know what those phrases mean ("Whatever whatever" = "All kinds of things"). When we finally meet with the missionary in her village, we'll get to go through our corrections with her to discuss problems we found. The experience will be good since we'll get a look at the difficulties of cross-cultural translation and the ways missionaries have found to solve such problems.

The title of this post comes from a back translation, as the way "God's word" was translated to a paperless tribe who writes on banana leaves was "God's big banana leaf."

Today, we got to sit in on a translation check, which is another important step in the translation process involving native speakers and a missionary who is simultaneously comparing the new translation, the trade language (Pidgin), the English, and the original language (Greek or Hebrew). The process is rather slow, as the team may spend anywhere between two minutes and an hour on any particular verse, making sure that the translation is as accurate and nuanced as possible. I still just feel so blessed to be here, because so much of what we're experiencing (like this session, involving missionaries and nationals) would only be possible by traveling here. I feel so privileged to have this opportunity.

Language learning is going really well. We did some practice before we left the States, so we came in with a little head start. Today, our team successfully navigated the market and a few stores in order to buy lunch and dinner (without any help), so that was a real confidence booster. After lunch, I managed to tell a (very choppy, very poor grammatically) story in Pidgin, including a joke, which was also a good inspiration to keep working hard. One word at a time!

If you are praying, continue to lift up my team as we deal with changing cultures and time zones. We really enjoy cooking and eating our meals together like a little family, praying and singing together in the mornings, and encouraging each other in our work, and I'm still amazed at how well we function together and get along. Pray that we will be able to continue extending grace and love for each other, especially as we prepare to rough it for the next three weeks in the bush.

Also, pray that God will reveal his will for me specifically regarding the summer. From the beginning, I've seen this internship as a learning experience, a chance to try translation out. Unfortunately, I'm already seeing the limits of doing short-term missions...after all, I've been told that eight weeks is just enough time to really understand how much you don't know about a culture. Pray that God will show me what he wants to do in or with me and that I will be content with his work.

Hopefully, I'll get a chance to write again before we head out into the bush, where we'll be without internet at least for a few weeks. Thanks for reading! Now, for the pictures:

Our first view of PNG from the plane

The hand-carved "storyboard" for the PBT office. You see these everywhere, and the skill and attention to detail is incredible.

A flock of bats, which greets us every morning (and afternoon and night, depending on the day)

Pioneer Mission Institute

Well, my suitcase is packed, my room is clean, and all that's left is to hop on the plane and fly to PNG! It's hard to believe that our two weeks in Dallas are over, and in about 40 hours I'll be settling down in PNG, trying to remember the Melanesian Pidgin I learned and forget what time I think it is.

This week, we participated in the Pioneer Mission Institute, an annual week-long convention sponsored by Pioneer Bible Translators. The week is designed for past, present, and future missionaries, and it offers many classes and meetings to educate us on the work of translation and the lifestyle of a missionary. Because this is my first time to work with PBT, I went through the student track, which introduced me to quite a few new fields of study that I had never encountered (but will encounter a lot more if I decide to become a translator!). We've dabbled in phonetics, phonology, linguistics, anthropology, and many other -ics and -ologies, and I really, really enjoyed discovering these new fields. Exploring the ways that people communicate is extremely interesting to me, and the work of translation is all about being able to communicate effectively across cultural lines. In phonetics, we discussed all of the sounds that the human mouth can produce (it's around 110, and the English language uses about 40). In phonology, we looked at the ways that humans combine those sounds to create words and meaning. Linguistics is all about how we communicate meaning to each other through the language we use, whether through our words or phrases or sentences or paragraphs. Finally, anthropology deals with the study of culture and how to interact with other cultures successfully.

It's incredible just how little you can assume is shared by all humans. There are some languages in which two different sounds that would be almost imperceptible to an English speaker represent entirely different letters—think, for example, of the way that some cultures have trouble using Rs and Ls when they speak English (to them, they sound the same). There are some languages in which sentence order is subject-verb-object (like English), but there are others in which that order is completely different. There are some languages that have no word that means "to be," and there are other languages with 23 different words that all mean "to carry." What I'm getting at is that the work of translation is much more complicated than simply plugging in one word for another—it involves committing to learn and fully know the ways a certain people group communicates in order to be able to give them the most accurate and understandable version of the word of God possible.

One of my favorite things about this week has been spending time with missionaries, getting to hear their stories and jotting down their advice (I can't tell you how many times I've heard, "If you only remember one thing, remember this..."). When you hear story after story of entire villages being saved and scriptures being translated and lives being transformed, you really gain an appreciation for how big God is and how much he really does care about every single person on the planet. When we worshiped this week, I sang certain lyrics like, "Savior, he can move the mountains! Our God is mighty to save," in a new light.

More than anything, I feel like this week has sown in me a greater appreciation for the word of God and a stronger belief in the power of prayer—and those are important lessons to learn whether or not I end up translating. I've been thinking a lot about how we have the very word of God at our fingertips—his love letter, as it's been called, written to humanity and full of truth. Through studying the word, we can come to know our holy and mighty God better, and that is such a blessing. Prayer, on the other hand, gives us the opportunity to communicate directly with that God; to cry out to him and to listen for his voice. There is power in prayer, and God does amazing things with people when they take the time to stop and genuinely pray.

As I think about arriving in PNG, I can tell that God has answered countless prayers to give me peace and assurance of his presence. I'm not nearly as nervous as I probably should be, and I'm looking forward to everything that is going to happen this summer. Regardless of what happens—whether our luggage gets lost, or I get laughed at (which, from what I've heard, is a certainty), or I get frustrated with language learning, or I get a tropical ulcer or malaria, or we have conflict on the team (haven't so far), or I start feeling homesick, or anything else—I know without a doubt that God will be with me, and he will be glorified. If things go well, that is his grace towards our mission; if things don't go well, that is his mercy towards my life, growing me more into the image of Jesus.

I know that the reason I have such a peace is because countless people have told me they will be in prayer over my summer, and I am so grateful for their service. Please pray for safety and patience in travel (it's about 30 hours total, including flights and layovers, and we've got four separate flights), as well as quick recovery from jetlag and changing time zones. Pray that our initial language and culture learning will go well. Pray for my willingness to put myself out there, to initiate people in conversation, and to develop relationships as well as I can. Finally, pray that God will give me the willingness to seize every opportunity I have this summer—to notice every chance I have to be Jesus and take it. Short-term missions like these give people an incredible opportunity to wholly dedicate themselves to God's work without being tied up in school, work, relationships, etc., so I want to make the most of this opportunity.

If all goes according to plan, my next post will be from PNG! To close, here are a few pictures I snapped today:

The teams of interns headed to Tanzania, Papua New Guinea, and Guinea, as well as our coordinators

From this angle on the map, the United States sure looks far away!

Pre-Field Orientation

Our first week in Dallas went so well! After meeting on Facebook, our Papua New Guinea team has been praying for each other this semester, and we've felt God at work as we have quickly clicked in with each other. I feel so blessed to be working with my PNG team, even if I am the only male on the trip :-). I have been inspired by how much Lindy, Megan, Delaina, and Lindsey want to serve God and see his word touch lives, and I'm looking forward to seeing how God uses each of us this summer.

There are fifteen interns here this week, headed to Papua New Guinea, Guinea (West Africa), and Tanzania (East Africa). I must confess that I've grown used to a certain reaction when I tell people I want to translate the Bible: "Better you than me!" Well, it has been such a blessing—and a little surreal—to be surrounded by so many people who are seriously considering the work as a career. We're a strange breed, but we've had a blast together.

This week, we've been led by our internship coordinators through a series of training exercises and orientations. One of our first activities was called "Oomah Boomah," and it was a fun simulation of just how overwhelming it can be to try and tell the Bible story to a group of people with different customs and an entirely different worldview. As my team tried to tell the story of Moses parting the Red Sea, we could tell the missionaries were having fun pretending to be a foreign tribe: playing with our hair, clapping at us whenever we said taboo words ("God" and "water"), and asking us questions that don't usually come up during an American telling of the story ("So, if we raise our hands like Moses, will that bring the wind to us as well?").

Amidst a few other fun games, we've also had quite a few important sessions to educate us about the work of translation and how to be safe and smart this summer. Among other topics, we covered worldview differences, culture stress, the translation process, healthy teamwork, methods of language learning, conflict management, spiritual warfare, personality types, international security, missionary health, and child safety. In addition, we had a few sessions devoted to learning PNG language and culture.

We also took a lot of time to develop goals for ourselves and to build strong relationships among our team. We developed a team covenant (covering everything from "We will not date each other or nationals" to "We will place the needs of others before ourselves") and had a special time of sharing our life stories with each other (which, in our team of five people, stretched easily into five hours). It's amazing how quickly we've bonded together and learned to trust each other. Even this weekend, when I drove to Austin for my niece's birth, I found myself missing my teammates.

I feel like this week did a lot to grow me for the summer and beyond. I suffered an outbreak of chiggers (numbering, at its worst, no less than 32 itchy welts all over my ankles and thighs), which hopefully prepared me for any interesting insect bites this summer. I've been keeping a journal for myself (which was given to me by a friend), and it has been amazing to see the ways that God has already been answering specific prayers of mine during this week. I've been reading through Acts in the evenings and Psalms in the mornings, and the dedicated time in the word has been a source of nourishment and rest. One of my goals for the summer is to keep "buckets of grace" for myself and for others: to realize that we are all trying our hardest but that language learning is difficult and slow. I need to be especially forgiving this summer, understanding that it is stressful to live in a new culture and speak a new language.

Let me close with a few pictures from Wednesday. We spent the day outdoors on teambuilding exercises, so I broke out the camera to capture all of the fun:


I thought I felt pretty safe during our team trust falls, but my face may have betrayed some nerves.


Assembling a large puzzle blindfolded? Yeah, we can do that. Now, bring on the translation!


This particular exercise will come in handy should we encounter any gigantic spiders and their webs on our hikes.

Bilong Yu Oltaim Oltaim

I can't believe I'm already a week into the internship!

My name is Brent Bailey, and this summer I'll be working as an intern with Pioneer Bible Translators in Papua New Guinea. I remember feeling shocked a little over a year ago to find out about the huge need for Bible translators in the world: 200 million people still don't have a single verse in their language, and 30% of the world still doesn't have a complete Bible they can read. I cannot imagine trying to live a Christian life—starting a church, raising kids, working my job—without ever having read any of the Bible, and I am becoming more and more convinced of the power that the word of God itself has to transform lives.

There are many reasons that I feel like God may be leading me to become a Bible translator after I graduate. First and foremost, I want to use my life to invest in the spiritual lives of other people—to help others form relationships with God and discover their own potentials for ministering in his kingdom. I have known for awhile that I want to use my life for ministry, but I do not know for sure what that will look like. What I do know is that I have a passion for languages, especially the ancient languages of scripture. I also love detailed work; I tend to be task-oriented, and the work of translation seems to me like a big puzzle that I want to solve.

But the main reason may be hearing stories of just how much impact the translated Bible has on people. How I wish you could hear the stories of how desperately people are yearning for the Bible to be translated—how they celebrate when every book is completed, how they spend days reading and re-reading the same passages because it's all they have, and how their lives and cultures are completely transformed by an understanding of God's word. Translating the Bible sends a message to people that God sees them and cares about them where they are—that he knows their language and is yearning to tell them that he loves them in words they understand.

Therefore, I jumped at the opportunity to experience translation first-hand this summer. I am praying that this will be a summer of clarity and discernment for me so that I will be able to know whether to direct my life toward translation (in my graduate work, etc.).

It seems like this summer has been approaching forever. After initially talking with Pioneer Bible Translators in March of 2008, applying formally for the internship in November, getting accepted in December, sending out support requests, getting a few too many shots, reading all of the required readings, convincing the parents, packing either too much or not enough, and lots and lots of prayer...I'm here!

Until Saturday, "here" means good old Dallas, Texas, where I and the other PBT summer interns are spending two weeks for training and orientation at the International Linguistics Center, home to the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics, Pioneer Bible Translators, and a Wycliffe office. Last week, we had a week of pre-field orientation with the internship coordinators, learning about everything from personality types to why it's important to carry toilet paper at all times (short answer: so that you don't have to use love letters from your girlfriend, like one missionary did). This week, our campus has gotten a lot fuller for the Pioneer Mission Institute, a week-long series of seminars and worship designed for past, present, and future missionaries. Our plane leaves this Saturday, June 13th, and we arrive back on American soil August 13.

I cannot make any promises about how regularly I will update this blog while overseas. The internet will not always be reliable, and it may be entirely unavailable in certain villages. In addition, I'll have to be somewhat vague on some of the specifics of our location, dates, etc. in order to protect the long-term missionaries in PNG. So, if you try and get in touch with me but receive no reply, never fear; I'm likely unreachable.

While in PNG, we'll have a variety of activities designed to immerse us in the culture and introduce us to missionary life. Our initial goal will be language learning; we've begun some preliminary study here, but the main way we will learn language is by walking up to people and engaging them in conversation, starting with a "Mi laik kisim save long Tok Pisin," or "I'm trying to learn Melanesian Pidgin." Learning language is a ministry in itself, as it further demonstrates that God—and Christians—are interested in these people where they are, and they don't have to change or become like white men in order for God to love them. We'll spend a few weeks in different villages to help speed up the language learning process; while in the villages, we'll participate in daily life of Guineans to understand them better. One day, I may work in a garden; the next, I could be spearfishing. After we've gotten a pretty good handle on the language, we'll be heavily assisting with a three-week literacy course, helping people learn to read so that they can understand the translated Bible. Along the way, we'll get to experience the work of translation and all of the other facets of life on the mission field.

I feel so excited, and I honestly cannot wait to get onto the plane. The language learning process has already been so much fun, and the culture seems fascinating. Most of all, I'm excited to see the ways that the word of God really is changing the lives of people in darkness.

I suppose I should explain the title of the blog. Since my first semester of college, I've kept a blog called "Forever Yours" at http://brentbailey.blogspot.com. Here's my original explanation for why I chose that title:

"I wanted a name that would somehow summarize where I stand in my faith; a short phrase that would capture my priorities and reveal my goals. I chose "Forever" because I am (and have been for the past few months) trying to live my life in a way that is eternal; after all, we were originally created to be eternal beings before Satan entered the picture. I want to live with my earthly life in perspective; that is, in the scope of eternity, 80 years doesn't seem so long, and nothing on earth is really worth an eternity. I want my faith to be perpetual, not simply relying on the moment and emotions but stretching both forwards and backwards forever. The "Yours" represents a search for self-denial in an attempt to allow Jesus to sweep in and replace me. I want to remove everything about myself that is sinful and human - my selfishness, my pride, my weakness - and give Jesus full authority to take over my life and captivate me. I fully expect the name of the blog to change as the likeness of my faith changes."

"Bilong Yu Oltaim Oltaim" is the Pidgin translation of "Forever Yours"—it seemed fitting, consdering that I'll hopefully be speaking more Pidgin than English this summer.

If you plan to follow this blog, please feel free to ask questions, and I'll do my best to answer them. I eagerly request your prayers, specifically that (1) we will have safety in our travel, (2) we will have patience and endurance in the process of language learning, and (3) God will reveal to me whether this should be my lifelong ministry. As always, pray for the Bibleless people in the world and those who are serving to translate.

I would love, love, love comments! Thank you so much for joining me this summer!