“Here’s my phone, charge it.” “Help me build my door.” “When are you going to town? When you go, get me rice, crackers, soap and a shovel.” “I need to cut some lumber. Give me your chainsaw.” “My headlamp is broken. Fix it.” “Here’s a papaya. I need salt.” “I need to borrow your bush knife.” “Cut the airstrip, the grass is getting long and we have a big event this weekend so we need the village to look nice.” “Do you have change for this 50 Kina bill?” “I need nails.” “We’re all out of rice and we’re hungry. Do you have some for us?” “My axe is dull. Give me your grinder.” “Schedule a flight for us so we can get to town.” “I have a headache, give me medicine.” “I need to send a letter to the government to get money. Type up the letter, put it in an envelope and send it to them.” “Is my phone done charging? Go get it and give it to me, I need it now.”

The list above are just some examples of requests or demands we regularly get from the Lembena people. Some days there are more requests than others, and on those days, there are times when Micah can barely get back to his office and sit down before the next inevitable “Micah! Come!” is shouted and he’s once again called back outside to chat with someone who undoubtedly has a request. Every Wednesday there is a market in our village which attracts outsiders from the surrounding villages, and those are by far our busiest days, in which we receive the most requests from the people. We can barely leave the house for the two minute walk to the market before someone needs something and we have to choose either to return home, or tell them that we will help them once we’re done at the market, knowing they’ll end up being our shadow around the market until we head home. So while some aspects of living in the jungle are somewhat slow-paced compared to “town-living,” these regular requests are a part of our life that keep us busy here in Lembena.

Beginning mid-April, there was about a month of time that was very hard in our village, both for the Lembena people and for us. Two deaths rocked our small village within a matter of a week. The first was the death of a sweet lady, Nadiam, who was the wife of our village’s council representative. She had been at the medical clinic that is about a 15 minute flight away for quite some time due to a stomach illness, but the last we had heard she had recovered and would be returning to the village. But instead, we received the unexpected news that she’d died due to the illness. Six days later, someone in the village received a call that Paul, a man from our village who had been flown to the nearby medical facility had died due to kidney failure. He had shown no symptoms a week prior, but after going to the medical facility due to swelling in his arm, he died within a few days. His wife had been at the medical facility with him, although their three school-aged children were in a village about a 12 hour hike away from ours at a huge gathering, and so they were separated from their family as they heard news of the death of their father when it finally arrived to them. A few days later, the children hiked back to our village along with some relatives, and we could hear them wailing as they were still far off from the village. The next few weeks were filled with wailing, mourning and heavy hearts as the relatives of the deceased came from faraway villages to pay their respects. Normal village life came to an abrupt halt during this time, as no work is allowed for at least a week following deaths and people gather at the “house cry,” the designated house or area of mourning for the deceased. The immediate family of the deceased is responsible for feeding and housing all of the out-of-town relatives for however long they decide to stay as they all mourn the death of their loved ones. In addition to these deaths, there were many sicknesses going around the village that our team helped diagnose and treat, as our village health worker was out of town. This made for a very long, tiring month for us. The hardest part of it all was not being at a capable enough level in language to communicate the hope we have in Christ to the people, or be able to comfort them in a meaningful way. All we could do was sit with them, hug them, communicate the cultural “I’m sorry” phrase and contribute food to their families to help with the burden of hosting their many visiting relatives. As we saw their hopelessness as they cried and mourned the death of their loved ones, we knew full well that these two people we’d also grown to know and care for were now spending an eternity apart from their Savior, due to never hearing the true gospel in their language. Thank God for the hope we have in Christ through hard times and trials. We can’t wait for the day where we are able to communicate the truth and hope of the gospel in the Lembena language, offering the people the chance to accept abundant life with Christ, rather than an eternity separated from him, which is their present reality.

These last several weeks have been busy, as our co-workers and family, the Fergusons, left the village this past week to start their journey back to Washington for their one-year home assignment. Leading up to their departure, we tried to squeeze in as much “team” and “family time” as possible before they left, in addition to doing what we could to help them prepare to leave. It was a hard goodbye, but we are very excited for them to be able to see family and friends, as well as experience things in the U.S. that they haven’t been able to for the last four years that they’ve been here.

What’s Next

Our family will be alone in the village until our other co-workers, the Hughes, return from the U.S. in August. We are looking forward to this opportunity to jump deeper into life with the Lembena people, and hope it will be a time where we can progress further in language while not having the distraction (if you can call it that 🙂 ) of having co-workers and friends and the comforts that they bring here. We plan to split up these next two months of time by taking a two-week break in the coastal town of Wewak in July.

Prayer and Praise

• Pray that the Fergusons will make it back to the U.S. without any more issues. Their international travels start June 17, and they are on their third set of tickets purchased, as their previous two sets of tickets were cancelled. Pray they won’t run into anymore cancelled flights, and that they will test negative for covid which would delay their travels.
• Pray for us as we navigate the next two months of life alone in the village. Pray we would have the wisdom and stamina to balance and maintain all of our relationships here in the village without the help of our co-workers.
• Pray for extra grace and patience for us as we seek to train up and love our kids well. It will be hard for Addy not to have the Ferguson kids here for her to play with, and it will require extra intentional time and energy on our part to entertain her and help her through this time.
• Pray for our fellow missionaries serving in other bush places in PNG, specifically ones who don’t have co-workers, and are having to function long-term by themselves in remote, often difficult settings and environments. Pray they will keep their hope in Christ and that He will sustain and encourage them, and Lord-willing bring along the right co-workers for them.
• Praise God that we have such amazing co-workers, and that the Lord has graciously allowed us all to have a unified, close relationship throughout our ministry among the Lembena thus far.

In His Strength and Power Alone,
Micah, Laura, Adalia and Declan