Flight

Tired! That is the feeling of the moment. It is a tiredness that might take more than one good night's sleep to remedy and is certainly beyond the power of the local coffee. I’ve made it to PNG, settled into my accommodation and in the quiet of this moment, the 4am start and the poor sleep before it have caught up with me. In bed last night, the enormity of this move finally hit me. There was no sense of wanting to back out, but rather anxiety about what it all means and just how much is unknown. Thus the bad sleep. Once under way this morning, early though it was, I was back to being excited. Flights, connections, customs etc all went well. I ended up on the morning flight from Pt Moresby to Ukarumpa, which is a blessing as I can right now hear the afternoon flight coming in to land. It would have been a very long day if I were on that flight.

Soon after taking off from Pt Moresby we were cruising at 10 000ft between two layers of cloud. To my right I could see mountains poking out of one cloud layer and disappearing into the next. To my left the cloud thinned out and the ocean was visible. Beneath us was an icing of clouds, in the windows between the white I could see the dense green of jungle, rising up towards us. With such rugged terrain it is no wonder that so many distinct languages and cultures have developed here. 

Coming in to land at Aiyura we circled Ukarumpa. Today it was an unidentifiable web of houses and streets. No doubt it will soon be familiar. Today there were many new faces. Some were faces to go with names I’ve been emailing for months. One familiar face met me soon after landing, that of Beverly who I did my ‘work experience’ with nine years ago. It has taken me awhile to get back here, but I am now ready to be here and ready for the long haul. If I had of stayed nine years ago, I doubt I would have lasted. 

It is good to be here at last.

Commissioning

Being in a room full of family and friends who have gathered to wish you God’s blessings on your work, travels and life is a most humbling experience. It is also wonderful, memorable and generally overwhelming. My commissioning on Sunday Mar 22 was all of this and more.

Looking around the church as I stood up to say ‘I will, with God’s help’ to my commissioning questions, I saw people from such a cross section of life. Family, school friends, Naracoorte friends, LSF friends, community friends, housemates, sailors, fellow students and lecturers from different colleges, translation colleagues, my Ferryden Park family, friends of the family since before I was born and enough Shine choir friends that the last song had full harmonies being sung. All people I love and who love me. All people who had gathered to bless me and bid me fare well. 

Over lunch as I looked around the gathering in the hall, the building itself reminded me of God’s blessings and provision as I head out on this adventure of Bible translation. It was a building project which a congregation our size and with our shaky budget should never have taken on. When the old hall started falling down numbers on the page made it look like closure was the only option. The people were not ready for that though. We dreamt, thought, prayed and schemed. We contacted friends, interested people and wrote grant applications. We put in many many hours of physical labour. All ages, abilities and backgrounds were involved. We pulled down our old hall and built a new one out of straw bales.  The small debt we had was soon paid for from our annual mango fundraiser and by collecting 10c recycling. The hall in which we lunched on my commissioning day stands as a testament to the provision of God. A great encouragement to me at this point. 

My commissioning was a joyful day but there was sadness too. After so many years of thinking, talking and preparing for Bible translation it is exciting to finally be sent and on the way. Yet leaving means saying fare-ye-well to so many precious people. Although glad to be going where I am going, it means not being among these people I love. It means not meeting the babies due in the next few weeks and months until they are two years old. My other sadness was the contrast of my celebration at being sent to fulfil my calling with the patient and endless waiting of precious friends. The same church which to me says ‘Go! May God bless you!’ says to others who have a sense of calling so have trained and prepared ‘No! and stop being troublemakers.’ I long for the day the LCA ordains women and these gifted, gracious and faithful women can also be sent into their calling with a blessing.

Overwhelmed is the best description of how I’ve been feeling of late, as so many emotions swirl about. I handle them in my usual duck like manner, all calm on the surface, paddling hard underneath. The other week I stood in the rain with a friend and watched a bird in a swollen creek. She was clearly paddling hard, as the water raged about her, but on the surface all we could see was a smooth body with a head strained forward. Underneath I am paddling in a swirl of excitement, worry, joy, tiredness, uncertainty, certainty, farewells, sense of calling…on the surface all seems smooth as my head strains towards PNG. The peace of God which passes all understanding, that is what sustains me.

Leaving

Getting ready to leave Australia and move to another country long term takes a lot of energy. Most of that energy is taken up with saying goodbye. Goodbye to friends and family are the hardest, but I'm also saying goodbye to place, culture and way of life.

Here I have the freedom to ride to the beach, go for a walk on my own, sit and have a coffee then ride home. All of this is done without ever thinking about my safety, except for as a cyclist, when one's fragility is always clear. I expect that this will soon not be practical. Being a single white woman is a developing nation, I will have to be aware of my personal safety in a very different way. Going out alone, going out at night... some of these things will have to change. I am yet to learn just how much they will have to change and how I will deal with those changes.

Even though most of my family live hundreds of kilometres from me, it is currently easy and affordable for me to pick up the phone and call them. Skype is also a good tool. How much will these things cost? How reliable will they be? Although my family will still be distant, I wonder how much more I will feel this distance. It is the little people, my nieces and nephew, who I will miss the most. Adults can maintain a relationship over distance and time. With kids, it is harder. Finding creative ways for Auntie Hanna to be a real person in their lives, is a challenge, especially to the unborn niece/nephew who will be walking and talking by the time I meet them. That relationship shall be founded upon distance from the beginning.

'Home' has long been a concept I have pondered. It can be so many things to so many people. Although I struggle to define home, I know when I feel at home and when I do not. In this new adventure I will often be moving between places and not have a regular location to call home. This can be quite destabilising for me. To encourage me to make each place a little bit of home, I have completed a quilt. It is a honeycomb of fabric scraps that tell my story over many years. Numerous friends are stitched into the rug as I've used their fabric scraps or my fabric shares stories with them. I am taking this quilt with as a way to take my friends and family with and remind myself that I do not go alone, but carry the thoughts and love of precious people with me.

In light of these things, the rest of my preparations to leave are easy. I have a visa, I have plane tickets, I've been immunised. Sewing a culturally appropriate wardrobe is fun and an excuse to haunt fabric stores. Paperwork is slowly being put in order and signed. My commissioning is this Sunday (Mar 18) and on Mar 30 I'll be in PNG. So soon...yet it has been a long journey to this point and I look forward to the next chapter.