Laik Bilong God: Packing Up

Counting down the days has become counting down the hours!

For our last week-and-a-half, we decided to squeeze in as much variety as we could find on this island. On Sunday, we drove out to a small bush village right outside of the city (squeezing about twelve people into the front and back of a truck on some very bumpy roads) with a missionary to lead a church service for the small community. The missionary, who lives in the bush, makes it a habit to go out to this village whenever she’s in town to lead church because many of the residents speak the same vernacular as the village in which she lives. It was a joy to see her reading a vernacular Bible story book and seeing the people (especially the children) respond to what she was saying.

On Tuesday, I faced what very well may have been my most intimidating challenge all summer – babysitting. We interns had volunteered to watch the four children of one PBT family who was going through a rough time, and when the three kids of another PBT family next door to us saw the fun, they ran over as well. So, I spent a good while chasing after seven kids in the front yard, squirting hand sanitizer everywhere because the frogs that the kids were trying to catch were the kind that secretes poison when it gets too spooked.

Finally, on the next Sunday, we got to join a family on a trip to the local prison to pass out cold water and give an encouraging message to the people there. You can probably imagine the conditions of a third-world country’s prison – the water was well received – but we were impressed by how polite and receptive the men were.

And in between, of course, we had mounds and mounds of literacy work to get through. This week was crunch week as the deadline grew ever nearer, and everyone – interns and nationals both – was putting in plenty of overtime to get as much done as we could. In the end, the language group I was working with finished the EP (kindergarten) curriculum, corrected and re-printed about 15 books for that curriculum that were missing or flawed, and translated about 40 books for the E1 (first grade) curriculum. Yesterday, we had a big dedication service, recognizing the work of the nationals and celebrating all of the materials that were produced. It was a wonderful feeling to celebrate with the guys (and mounds of food) and say our goodbyes as we finished laminating key word cards and binding the edges of books.

Now, “Goodbye” seems to be the word of the day. On the one hand, there have slowly been more and more signs that the intern team is ready to go home – making hamburgers and French fries for dinner, spending a little more time reading letters from family, or starting to pack just a few days early. But on the other hand, it just feels strange to know that, in only a few days, I’ll be waking up in the United States surrounded by English-speaking Americans. My mom recently asked me what I’m most looking forward to about being home (other than people) and what I’m most going to miss, and my answer to the first question was easy: Wal-Mart, being able to drive myself around, and being able to walk around outside alone/exercise.

The second question, however, was more difficult – I never know what exactly is going to hit me the hardest about leaving a place until I’m gone. To be sure, I’ll miss the fresh produce available at the market down the street, the ocean view that greets us every morning on our way to work, and the ability to go a few days without a shower without anyone caring. I’ll miss learning (and speaking) Melanesian Pidgin, navigating conversations with cultural sensitivity, and those brief feelings of victory when I do get something right and hear an “Em nau.”

But most of all – and I don’t imagine this will come as a surprise to anyone – I’m going to miss the relationships. More than I ever imagined I would, I have come to appreciate and admire certain individuals on this island. It’s incredible how much grace I’ve received from people as I’ve accidentally crushed yams while trying to dig them up in the garden, dragged friends down into the mud with me as I fell and they tried to catch me, or stumbled through awful Pidgin phrases and sentences in an effort to communicate. The hard thing about doing missions in a country like this is that I can’t exactly get on Facebook and send a message to the people whom I met in the bush; there are only two ways to communicate with many of my friends, and the first would be to pass a message through about three different missionaries and hope it gets there.

The other option, of course, is much more terrifying: I could come back here long-term. In the past week alone, I have had two conversations with nationals who asked me if I was coming back to translate for them and then told me they would be praying that I would. My default answer has become “Laik bilong God,” which you may remember means something to the effect of, “I’m leaving it up to the will of God.”

Soon after I’ve made it home, I’m planning to write one final post on this blog reflecting on the summer as a whole, and hopefully I’ll be able to provide a more satisfying answer to that question: will I come back? In the meantime, however, my mind is being pulled in a hundred different directions. I petition your prayers for the next seven days, when I’ve got to pack (how does my stuff always expand over the course of any trip?), squeeze through Australia’s tough customs, deal with a 15-hour time change, close off the internship in Dallas, spend about three days at home with my family and home church, and then move into my new house in Abilene to start the fall semester (whew!). I still haven’t entirely wrapped my mind around the fact that we’re going to land in Los Angeles three hours before we depart Brisbane and fly for thirteen hours, but the trip over here taught me that I should just trust the pilot and go to sleep.

I sincerely hope that I will have a chance to spend time with you and hear your stories in the next few weeks!