the photobook.

During all of our training in the States, we learned a LOT about how to learn another language.  It was great training, but now...it's finally REAL to us.  It has been so great to put that training into practice!  And right now is also training in a sense--learning Tok Pisin is not easy, for sure.  But compared to an unwritten tribal language?  Tok Pisin is much easier than that will be.  So this is great preparation for our future, too!

We figured that some of you might like to know some of the ways we are learning language.  I am going to try to explain one tool that we use:  a photobook.

We are firm believers (along with all of NTM) that language and culture MUST be learned together.  Language is really just an expression of culture, right?  So to really understand and know the people whom we minister to, we must know their culture--not just be able to talk their language. 

So...here are some steps we take in learning language and culture (CLA--remember?  Culture and Language Acquisition).

1.  Plan a Culture Event (CE).

A culture event is simply anything that the people do (well, pretty much anything).  So it could be anything from watching them start a fire and cook food, to observing a tribal sing-sing (like a ritual dance).  Really, just anything they do in their culture!  

So most times, we try to plan these culture events ahead.  So for instance, a few weeks ago we saw a bunch of shells in a bag at Gabinus' house.  They told us that they sometimes go look for these shells that have oysters inside, and then they bring back what they find and they eat the oysters.  So Nathan and I told them that we would love to do this with them sometime!  And a couple of weeks later, we set a time to do it.

2.  Participate in the Culture Event (CE).  Take plenty of pictures.

Pretty self-explanatory.  When the time comes for the culture event--we participate!  Either by observing or actually doing it with them.  In the case of the shell-hunting, our whole family did it with them.  And quite a few other people from the village who tagged along :)  Haha, I'm pretty sure we provided them some good entertainment!  Because as it turns out...the place they go to find the shells is in a total swamp!

Gabinus and Bernadette had told us that they go to the ocean to find these shells.  So the morning of our shell hunting CE, I put swimsuits on our kids (under their clothes)--because we were really picturing wading in the ocean (I had visions of a beach going through my head)...well, it wasn't quite like that!

We got to Gabi's house and the group of us took off to the tais, as they call it.  What is this tais?  We didn't know...

We walked about 20 minutes or so until we came up to the tais--a mangrove swamp (google image it!)...and we started making our way through the swamp--in some THICK mud! Bernadette was THE WOMAN--leading the way, reaching her hands down into that mud and pulling out oyster shells (they call them kina).  Pretty amazing.  I spent most of my time standing on the mangrove roots and watching (hey, someone had to take pictures!)--but I did get down in the mud some, too ;)  

See the ocean in the background?  Haha!  Well, I guess technically we were at the ocean, right?  Just not exactly what I had envisioned ;)  

We were SO PROUD of our kiddos!  Especially Layla and Daisy--they got down in that mud without a second thought.  Brave kids!

Layla and her sweet friend, Natalie.  Bernadette found some kina for our girls--she's so nice! 

3.  Get a Text About the Culture Event.
After the CE is over, we ask the language helper to talk about what we did (and we record them saying it).  So usually, they start at the beginning and sort of give us a story about what we did together during that Culture Event--it usually ends up being about a minute or two of recorded text.  Nathan and I use our iPhones for this, but some people bring other kinds of recorders--whatever works!  I don't have any pictures of us getting a text from Gabinus about finding the shell kina, but earlier on (when we had newly arrived here in PNG)--our group did some "group culture events".  Like one time, we all learned to cook a PNG meal with Amelia.  And another time, Joshua taught us how to plant a banana tree, and how to climb a coconut tree.  Those all count as CE's, but we just did them on our campus with the whole group.  These pictures crack me up!  We look like a bunch of paparazzi, taking pictures and recordings of our language helper :)

4.  Make a Photobook of the Culture Event.
After the CE, Nathan will come back and process it.  Part of that processing is making a photobook. He lays out the pictures in chronological order and then prints them out and puts them into a book.  So Nathan and I each have a photobook that we carry with us, and it is filled with pictures of different CE's that we have participated in.  Here is the layout of the shell kina CE:

5.  Use the Photobook to learn more language!
After we get the pictures in the book, we take it with us to the village or wherever, and we use it! Basically, we show a person the pictures, and say something like this (in Tok Pisin): "The other day, I went with my friends to find some shell kina.  Would it be all right if I tried to tell you the story about that?"  And of course, they always say yes!  So we go through the pictures and try, to the best of our ability, to tell the story in Tok Pisin.  Then, when we are done, we ask them to go through and tell us the story (while we record them!).  So then we get a recording of them telling the story, and of course their language is perfect--so we can go home and listen to it and study it (and realize all the mistakes we made when we tried telling it!).  Then the next time we go out with the photobook, we should be able to do it a little bit better.  It is such a great tool!

Anytime we get the photobook out, we ALWAYS draw a crowd.  The people love looking at the pictures!

There you have it.  One of the tools we are using to learn Tok Pisin, and we will someday use to learn an unwritten tribal language!  

new experiences: learning to work, PNG style

In addition to cooking and  eating all kinds of new things, something else we are learning a lot about is WORK.  The people here for sure have to work very hard.  We are learning so much from them about the ways they have to work in order to just live life.  It's all interesting and so humbling.  We are really amazed by our friends and the hard workers that they are!

A big part of our language and culture learning is all about us participating with them in "culture events".  (I think I will blog about that in more detail soon).  But basically, a culture event can be anything that they do--it's all a part of their culture.  And many of these culture events involve work, because it's such a huge part of their lives.

Most of it is all very new to us.  We come from such a different culture--one that has conveniences that these people have no idea about.  Again, so humbling.

My language helper, Sophie, has taught me so much.  She is a very patient teacher :)  I have learned how to wash dishes and clothes in the village...

I learned how Sophie gets water for her house.  Basically, she has to walk 10-15 minutes through the jungle to get to this "well"...where she fills up her containers and carries them back ON HER HEAD.  She is amazing.  You are probably starting to see what I mean about this all being very humbling...

Imagine this thing filled to the brim with water.  It's HEAVY!!

Sophie leading the way back to the village--carrying that heavy thing on her head.  Oh, and I should probably mention what Sophie gave me to carry back to the village:  a little teapot.  (I wish I could insert a little ashamed emoji here!)

To cook any food in the village, Sophie has to make a fire and cook it over the fire.  Which means, she needs lots of firewood!  And yep, we walked about 10 minutes to get the firewood, too.  And yep, you guessed it--we carried it on our heads :)

She let me try my hand at cutting firewood with a bush knife.  It's harder than you would think!  Haha, after I cut one piece, she took over from there :)

She puts them on these ropes that she made herself from a banana tree (!!)...

She made lots of little bundles so that me and my girls (and her daughters) could all carry some.  So sweet of her!  That's a lot of banana ropes she had to make!

Gardening is an absolutely huge part of her life.  Sophie took me to her garden and taught me how she plants some different things...on this day, we planted three things:  kau kau (like a sweet potato--a huge staple for them), and tapiok (I'm not too sure what that is yet, but Sophie's going to cook some for me next week!) and a banana tree.  Is this really my life??

Nathan's language helper, Gabinus,  also has been busy teaching Nathan lots of things!  Last week he taught Nathan and Kaine how to weave a wall for their houses...wow.  That's a lot of work!

 Kaine is happy to use his machete any chance he gets ;) 

It is so unreal to look at our lives these past two months and see ALL that we have learned!  Wow.  Just amazing!

new experiences: cooking and eating PNG style

There is no doubt about it--in these past two months, we have experienced SO MANY new things!  We are excited to try and share these with you all, even though pictures and words are so different than the real thing.  I will do my best though :)

The first one I will share with you: what we are learning to cook and eat!

I know many of you are probably wondering what kinds of things we are eating over here.  Well, most of the time, we eat much the same as we did in America!  Right now we are in the town of Madang, and this town has a couple of good grocery stores.  We can get many things--spaghetti, bread, canned fruits/veggies, very good meat, and lots of other things.  Now granted, we have way less variety--such as, just one kind of spaghetti sauce as opposed to 20 choices like in America!  But at least we can buy it if we want it :)  So anyway, most of the time at our home, we eat "normal" things--like tacos, spaghetti, pizza, taco soup, etc.

However, it has been fun to try new things at home, too!  Like crocodile meat (we bought it at the store, we didn't get it fresh!)...also fresh PNG fruits and veggies, like mango, papaya, guava, kau kau (kind of like a sweet potato), pit pit (I don't know how to describe that one!)...and many more!

Some people in our family have also started eating fish in new ways--just throwing it on the frying pan and cooking it, then picking off the meat!  Notice I said "some people"--a.k.a, not me! :) 

In the States, Kaine would usually spend his own money on Legos.  Here in PNG, there are no legos :)  So Kaine loves spending his money at the market!  Sugarcane is one thing he likes to buy!

Nathan definitely wins the prize for "The Mueller Most Willing To Try New Things".  Haha!  He bought two grubworms at the market last weekend and ate them like a pro!  He chewed them up and everything.  I'm so proud of my PNG man :)  But I will NOT be joining him in eating grubs anytime soon!  Maybe someday, for the sake of the gospel...

We'll give Kaine second place.  Here he is, getting ready to eat an octopus tentacle (?!)  He obviously takes after his daddy! ;) 

So...even though we are eating fairly "normal" foods at our home (minus the occasional grub or octopus), we are learning many new things as well!  Our PNG friends are so good at teaching us--so gracious and helpful, and very, VERY patient :)


One of our favorite things we have learned to make is what they call "garden food" or "garden "soup".  Basically just a lot of really good veggies/fruits, and boiled over a fire.  It is SO good!  First, we chop the veggies:

After the veggies are chopped and ready, someone cuts open a dry coconut and scrapes out the insides...

Here is Nathan trying his hand at scraping the coconut.  Basically, you sit on a little wooden bench that has a scraper thing on the end of it, and then just scrape it over and over.  The people here rock at doing this!  It isn't easy! 

Once the insides of the coconut are scraped, then you pour water over it and squeeze it with your hands--over and over.  After that, you pour it through a strainer into the pot of garden food. Basically, it is making homemade coconut milk!  Pretty awesome!  Our kids love trying helping with this step :)

After the food is all cooked over a fire, they "scale" it out into everyones bowls and then we eat it!  I told Nathan--it is so crazy.  Back in America, there is NO WAY I could have gotten our kids to enjoy eating looooong green beans, and sweet potatoes, and multiple types of greens...they wouldn't have wanted it!  But here?  They love it.  I chalk it up as another display of God's grace :)

Another kind of "soup" that we have learned to make--one that maybe isn't our favorite ;)   It's called "sak sak soup".  Sak sak is made from a sago palm tree--the people scrape out the insides and have ways of processing it into like a powdery substance.  We haven't been able to see the process yet, though I am positive we will eventually experience this.  But anyway, when they take that powdery "sak sak" and mix it with boiling water--it turns into this jello substance that does NOT taste like jello!  It's kind of like a tasteless jello--but more of a gel than a jello.  It is very hard to describe, but just know that it is VERY difficult for me to get down my throat!  But even though it's not our fave thing to eat?  We still are so thankful that our friends have taken the time to teach us how to make it!  It is a major staple for them, so we want to know all about it!

Sophie mixing up the sak sak--it turning into the gel form 

Me eating it with a smile ;)   

Daisy puts me to shame when it comes to eating new things!  She went back for more bites when she tried the sak sak soup!  So proud of that girlie!

One more thing we learned to make:  rice baskets.  These things are so stinking awesome!  First, they taught us how to weave these small baskets out of leaves from a coconut tree...

Then, they fill the baskets with rice and throw them in a boiling pot of water over a fire.  When the rice is done cooking, we just remove the basket and the rice is in a "ball" that we just hold and eat!  It is so good!  And just pretty amazing the way it is cooked!

Whew!  There you have it, probably more than you wanted to know about the foods we are cooking and eating :)  These new cultural experiences are pretty fun to learn!  We wish you all could experience them with us!  

our language evaluation

Well, we've been at this Tok Pisin study for about 6 or so weeks!  And it is so encouraging to think back to the beginning, when we could understand next to nothing when we listened to others speaking in Tok Pisin.  We have learned so much!  And of course, we still have a lot to learn...

But anyway, this past week we had our first language evaluation!  When we eventually move into a tribe and learn the tribal language, these evals will be so important.  They are such a great tool to measure where we are at, where we need to grow, what we need to focus on, etc.  And we will need to be at a certain level in order to begin teaching through the Bible.  So yes, these evals are important!  And this first Tok Pisin evaluation was a good taste of what to expect in our future.  Here is what was involved...

We have a CLA consultant and his family here on base right now.  (Remember what CLA is?  If you forget, here's the blogpost I wrote on it).  The consultants name is Aaron, and he and his wife Lori have been SUCH a help and encouragement to us newbies!  We are so thankful they are here to help us get started on this CLA journey. 

Aaron is the one who did our evaluation.  We started out at our house, and Aaron and Lori came over just to see how we are doing with CLA, how our family is adjusting, etc.  Nathan showed Aaron the ways he is filing culture info on his computer, etc.  Lots of technical stuff.  

After that, Aaron went with Nathan and I to Susu Banis (the village we usually go to).  We had already lined it up with Gabinus and Bernadette (two of our language helpers) that we would come to their house for the evaluation.  Nathan and I were feeling just a little bit nervous...

When we first got to Gabi's house, Aaron explained to them that this wasn't like a test, where we pass or fail.  Rather, this is like a way to mark where we are at on the "ladder", and then we will have help and direction as to how to keep climbing that "ladder".  The evaluation was done in 100% Tok Pisin, no English.  Pretty stretching for Nathan and me!

First, Aaron started with some easy stuff--like having us introduce ourselves and our family, etc.  Then he started having us do harder topics--very stretching topics!  For example, I had to explain how to make rice krispie treats (which is harder than you think!  These guys don't have cereal or marshmallows, so I had to try to think of ways to describe all of this in my limited language abilities).  Nathan had to explain what an oasis is...and then what a mirage is.  Then Aaron told me to read the passage in the Bible in which the Israelites come up to the water and it was bitter...so I was to explain that passage and why the Israelites would have been unhappy about that.  And then...Aaron told Nathan to explain this to Gabinus:  "The joy of the Lord is like an oasis to the soul."  Haha!  It was not easy for him to explain such an abstract concept!

After all of that, Aaron did some kind of "games" with us, in which Gabinus gave us commands (put the big knife on the right side of the mat, put the bench on top of the mat, put the little knife inside the cup, etc...) and then we had to give commands to Gabinus.  This was all much easier than the first speaking tasks :)

We spent about 2 hours at Gabi's house.  That was pretty much it!  Whew, we were glad when it was done!  But really, it was actually pretty fun.  For one thing, we have gotten to know Aaron so that helped a lot.  And also, we love being with Gabinus and Bernadette!  So it was really fun :)  And then later that day, Aaron came over to talk to us about what level we are at...

Gabinus, Nathan and Aaron during the eval.  Not the greatest picture quality, but I didn't want to distract Nathan too much from explaining an oasis in Tok Pisin ;) 

 This was right after the eval.  We have lots of fun with this family!  There is always lots of laughter (mostly laughing at our mistakes, haha!)

Okay, so later on that day...Aaron and Lori, and Bill and Kelley all came over to our house to talk to us about what level we are at in CLA, and they had advice for us as to what to focus on next.  Here is the scale that New Tribes uses in measuring CLA levels:

There are four levels:  Basic, Progressing, Capable, and Proficient.  But within those four levels, there are three sub-levels--low, mid and high.  It looks like this:

basic low

basic mid

basic high

progressing low

progressing mid

progressing high

capable low

capable mid

capable high

To test out of Tok Pisin, we need to be at Capable High.  And Nathan and I were so pleased to hear that we are both at Progressing Mid!  We are at level 5 out of 9!  We were actually pretty shocked to hear that, because the evaluation was so hard and we felt like we didn't do too well on it...but actually, Aaron was just pushing us to our limits to see how far we could go :)  Haha!  

Thank you all for praying!  We are encouraged by our progress and we know it is ALL because of God's grace!

the fun...and the not-so-fun (part 2)

In some ways, I feel pretty silly writing this post about the "not-so-fun" things in our new life overseas...because really, things are going SO WELL!  God has done so much for us, provided so much for us...and we really don't have anything to complain about!  We are naturally pretty optimistic people and we are so very thankful for all that we have.  However, just for those of you who are interested in reading about the things that aren't so fun...here ya go!

1. THE. HEAT.

Most of you are probably not surprised that this isn't a fun thing!  The heat really wouldn't be so bad, either...but the humidity is what makes it so very blahful (this is a made-up word that fits here, I think!)  Lol.  T'he good thing is, I really think our bodies are acclimating!  Or at least, we are just getting used to being sweaty all the time.  Praise God for ceiling fans!

2. The bugs.

There are two parts to this one.  First...ants.  We have ants pretty much everywhere in our house.  They don't really bother us too much, but we do have to be VERY careful about how we store our food!  Every time I open the peanut butter jar, I have to bang the jar on the sink first, because there are always a ton of ants inside the rim of the lid, trying to get into the jar.  I do NOT let them succeed!  Grr.  They are just an annoyance.

I brought a package of light-up balloons from America, for Halle's birthday.  Who would've guessed...ants like balloons!  When I opened the package, there were a bunch of ants inside (HOW did they get in??)...and they had eaten holes in almost all of the balloons (we were able to blow up four, though, so that's good!).  Go figure.  Why would an ant eat a balloon???   

The second part to the not-so-fun bug issue...my kids' legs.  Oh. my. goodness.  First of all, there are lots of mosquitoes...second of all, there are lots of flies.  This is a bad combination, because our kids get bit up by mosquitoes (mostly on their legs)...and then they scratch the mosquito bites.  And then...flies swarm the bites.  It is SO gross!  Sigh.  So we have to keep our kids' scratched bites covered by a bandaid if we don't flies to be all over them.  Needless to say, we are going through a TON of bandaids!  And peroxide, and neosporin...

I took Halle with me one day to work in the garden with my language helper.  I forgot to put bug spray on her.  Oops!  There were so many bugs on her that day--I felt SO bad!! 

This is an everyday, multiple times a day, occurrence...putting bandaids on the kiddos. They have great attitudes about it!  But their legs look pretty nasty.

3.  Trying to balance lots of stuff.
Homeschooling the kids.  Learning a new language.  Having classes for our orientation program.  Going to the villages.  Spending time as a family.  Cooking.  Laundry.  There is so much to balance!

Of course, in America it was the same.  A family always has to find balance!  It's just been a bit different here, where we don't have quite so many conveniences, and we have so much going on with learning Tok Pisin.  Don't get me wrong, it's really going well!  It's just something that is kind of hard sometimes.

Practicing Tok Pisin.  Makes us feel like this sometimes :)

4.  Missing all of you!

This should be number one!  Although we are really happy here, and we totally feel that we are where God has called us--of course we miss our family and friends :(  We haven't really felt too much homesickness, but I know in the future it will probably go up and down.  We are so thankful for Face Time!  And so thankful that God has provided us with new "family" here in PNG.  He is so good!

Well, there ya have it!  Some not-so-fun things about our new life in a tropical third world country.  Overall though?  We are so blessed.  Anytime I am feeling down or annoyed at bugs or stressed out...I just need to read Ephesians or some other passages in the Bible to remind myself ALL that God has given me!  It really puts things into perspective.  Thanks you guys, for all your prayers!