Waving 2011 Goodbye

Our village grandma – OK half of Pal calls her grandma – laughing at the antics of the New Year’s Celebration

Just Cooking a Few Shirts

I suppose most of the readers of this update will have spent their New Year’s Celebration in a cozy living room surrounded by family, food, entertainment, food, games, and maybe some food. While for us, the main event may be a sleepy ‘Happy New Year’ at the 12^th stroke of midnight (am I getting old or what?), here in Pal the celebration is only beginning. In our village:

·        Houses are vacated – everybody stays out in the open all night (yes it rained)

·        New clothes are worn, old (alright – really old) are pitched into a blazing inferno.

·        Old firewood and a few symbolic yams are chucked into the bush.

·        New yams are blessed by the village big man

·        The music (think Country Style Reggae) is blasted from boom boxes (up to four different tunes at a time) for more than 24 hours straight

·        All of the ash from old fireplaces is thrown out.

·        A special meeting is held between 12 am and 1 am on January 1^st to usher in good blessings in the New Year.

·        After the meeting, everybody waits around for sunrise so they can go back into their houses and go to sleep… (I only lasted until 2:30 am).

Nate’s personal trainers showing him how to warm-up for a language workout.

A wave of liquid poo

We to try to stay on somewhat civilized topics in these posts, but we really feel the need to raise awareness and prayerness (is that a word?) for the babies here in Pal. Lately nearly every baby (aged 2 and under) in our village is experiencing, to put it nicely, a major case of *the runs*. For any child this is not a joking matter, for children here, it is life threatening. We have been doing lots of educating and handing out packets of rehydration solution to moms and dads, but that is not always enough. Turns out, the belief here is that putting water in when it comes out so quick is a poor choice. Instead, they tend to withhold liquids and give yams to the children instead, compounding the problem. Now, we know that cleaning up liquid poo is not fun for anybody, so we are asking you to pray for us as we encourage our friends to continue to give their children the fluids that their little bodies so desperately need.

Tim and Elias on their ‘sled’ – a Christmas gift/project with dad.

We Build Excitement

Alright, Pontiac, you can have your slogan back, just let us use it for this title first….

With the positive evaluation that we and our partners received came a long list of next steps that we’ll be working on these next months. Looking at the list, we can understand in a small way what those men have felt who have embarked on the building of some great structure or journeyed into unknown territory. It is that feeling of mixed excitement (Wow! Things are actually happening!) with circumspection (You mean we have to have 5000 carefully checked words in our dictionary by April?). Frankly excitement is growing here in Pal for us to turn the corner and to begin to do those next things. At the same time, there are so many things that can derail the work. With a major land dispute, business scams, inter-family squabbles, and many other things to distract coming to the fore, we covet your prayers for the Pal people that their hearts would yearn for the truth that we want so much to give them. There is not a day that goes by that we do not feel the heat of battle.  Please remember to stand with us.

Your brothers and sister,

The Claasens.

Posted via email from PNG Time