What A Life

Woke up to a rooster outside of my window..definitely not in Pa anymore. It was about 6 a.m my first morning in PNG and I'm feeling all sorts of emotions. Excited to see what the day will bring, I get a nice warm shower(luckily it has been raining a TON here the past few days so we have water to shower with!) and prepare for the day. The boys are up watching an old disney movie Gus, which they watched just last night..a little weird. 9 a.m rolls around and we head out the door to go to church. A few ladies are just arriving at our house to come to church with us, two of which I recognize from the day before..the older woman and the little girl we picked up on our way from the airport. Then I meet Ruthy who I have heard lots about! It's actually her birthday today and she's 22. She also is a pastors daughter and is trying to figure out what path to take in life right now. I later learn that women here get married at the ages of 16-19 and she's considered old and has a lot of pressure to get married soon. They also still practice the tradition of paying a "bride price" before marriage..which is when the men's family sends the women's family money or animals or crops before the family will agree to give the girl away. So girls here are pretty much traded for pigs.
We then load up into the van and head to the first church, which is located in the middle of the mountain, and the second church we attend is at the top.The roads are so terrible to begin with because theyre all dirt and have no structure, so the added 4 feet of mud did not help the situation. Imagine for a moment, that stupid rollar coaster crazy mouse(the one that jerks you every which way and throws you around like a rag doll) mixed with driving up blue knob in the middle of a blizzard...that is exactly what is feels like the entire way up the mountain. And i mean an actual mountain, nothing like the hills we like to call mountains in Pa. So we arrive at the first church and their are a couple dozen children waiting for us and some older women. I get out of the car and the ladies are all smiles and come over to me with their arms outstretched giving me huge hugs like i was their own daughter they haven't seen for years. It was so strange to me that absolute strangers would embrace me in such a way and be so loving when they don't know me. Bill begins to explain to them who I am...the only thing I can understand of what he is saying is "Liz", thankfully Ruthy helped to explain some of what was going on since she can speak english very well. We then climb over a fence and down to the church which is built on a ledge that the men literally dug out of the mountainside. The church is a hut with some straw on both sides that we sit on. The pastor speaks in Pidgin the entire time and the first thing we do is get out our song books to sing. Again it's all Pidgin, so it takes a while for me to get the words right but i'm eventually able to at least look like I know what I'm singing. During the entire service the children are gawking at me..most give me huge smiles anytime I look at them. A few however, don't want anything to do with me and Ruthy explains that alot of children are afraid of white people. The men and women are all like the ones that embraced me earlier..they all want to meet me and I'm finally learning that handshakes are not the normal thing to do when meeting someone, at least with most of the people I interact with, they all want hugs from me. The church splits up into men, women, and children groups and Ruthy and I observe during this time since we will be teaching the kids the following week. When the service is over Lori then distributes medicine to those at the service who are sick or having pains or sores. We then pack up and head to the top of the mountain for our next service which is pretty similiar to the first. Once we are finished there we head back down the moutain which is even more enjoyable than our trip up.
It's 2 p.m when we get back to the house and we then have a little birthday celebration for Ruthy which includes lunch and cake. The meal today was not as enjoyable as last night. We had chicken(which Ruthy had killed earlier that day) and rice, both of which I'm happy with, and we also had cabbage(not at all what I thought cabbage was? i didn't even touch that nastyness), cooked bananas(gross but i ate a couple bites) and sweet potato which again not normal at all. Afterwards Ruthy takes me to the village to meet her family. Now Bill and Lori live at one end of the bible college campus(you can see from one end to the other so its not very big) and at the opposing end there is a gate in the fence that leads into the village. The whole village is a bunch of huts(yes I do mean huts..the ones with just walls and a roof made from straw and bamboo) strung together with dogs and chikcens and random animals running around eating whatever they can find. So we get to Ruthys home and I walk through the door to see her parents, 4 siblings, and her best friend sitting on the ground inside. The ground is covered by some dirty paper and there are blankets hung around the sides giving a little privacy for sleeping. Wow, its hard to believe people actually live like this. There are flys are insects flying around everywhere in there and I just keep thinking this is no place to raise a family(they are actually the family that will be adopting Isaac, and they will make that official on Tuesday). So her family welcomes me warmly and invites me to sit down and talk to them. They ask me of my home and of my family and it occurs to me that these are probably the friendliest and happiest people I have ever met and they're living in a way so unimaginable.