The Friesens in PNG!: Zee or Zed?

Howdy all y'all! No, I'm not becoming American...though we do think Tayah is! :) She sure sounds more like an American than a Canadian! We figure we'll have a lot of retraining to do with her once we land on Canadian soil again. Lapilo center is largely made up of Americans and her teacher is American, so it's only natural she takes on an American accent and says "zee" instead of "zed" right? :)
Besides Americans, we have the following nationalities on our center:
-belgian
-german
-northern irish
-english
-australian
-canadian
I am part of a bible study and as I was looking around the table the other morning, I was encouraged and blessed knowing that I am a part of something so much bigger than myself. There are 2 Americans, 1 Northern Irish, 1 Australian, and myself in this bible study. Our cultures may be different, but we all trust in the same Lord. This same Lord is not "stuck" only in me or my circle of friends/family back home, but He is Lord of ALL!! He is known throughout this great big world and is touching the lives of people in all walks of life. He is not "stuck" in Steinbach! :) I can't stick Him in a box and say this is who He is...instead He is so much more than I even know/understand and He has shown Himself to the world! Ok, enough preaching. :) Just can't help myself sometimes.
So we've been keeping busy... :)
As part of the mission barrel ministry that I do, I sell bags of clothes/shoes to the national workers on our center for 2Kina (about $1). I have to be very careful that I am "fair" in how I sell to them. I can't sell more to one person versus another, or I could end up with a heavy on my hands. A "heavy" is pretty much a situation that arises which causes a disagreement or a feeling of being offended/slighted by someone. There can be small heavies (ie. talking rudely to someone) or big heavies (ie, death, divorce, stealing, etc.). As a center we try very hard to not cause any heavies and to fix them quickly if they do come up.
So I was selling these bags to the workers last thursday and it usually goes fairly smoothly. However, just as I ran out of bags to sell, I got a complaint that I hadn't sold to a group of individuals from one of our departments on center for quite a long time. Now, my first thought was, "well they can wait until I have more bags ready". Instead, I avoided having a "heavy" and decided to quickly whip up some more bags of clothes for these individuals and make things "fair" in their minds once more. And it worked! :) Now all is peaceful in the land of the mission barrel bag sale.
A few weeks ago there was an explosion in the airplane hangar beside our own. The hangar belongs to the Seventh Day Adventists and one of their mechanics was working on their plane when the fuel tank blew up. He was burned very severely and medivaced to an Australia burn center. He did survive, though his recovery will be long and torturous, so please pray for him.
Other than that, things have been fairly quiet at the hangar for Clinton. Due to staffing shortages, there will only be 1 pilot and 1 mechanic for the summer months. That is leaving the field very short for flights, medical evacuations, etc. There are some pilots going through the training to come to PNG, however, that'll still take some time before they make their way to the field. Please continue to pray for personel for our aviation department out here in PNG.
This past monday at the clinic I had a national teenaged patient who was miscarrying. It turns out she was unmarried and got mixed up in the wrong crowd and got pregnant. To spare her family the shame of her pregnancy, she ran away and stayed in the bush with some friends for 6 weeks. During this time, she was introduced to a bush-method of causing a miscarriage. She took this concoction and sure enough, she started to miscarry. She came back home to her parents and they brought her to our clinic. The baby was already dead. She was about 14 weeks pregnant. She will most likely need to have surgery to complete the abortion. She was in a lot of pain, both physically and emotionally. It made me think of the similarities/differences between our cultures. Hers was a culture where the baby would have brought shame on her and her family, which is often the case with teen pregnancies back home. Her culture doesn't allow for her to seek out help or counselling, my culture does, though many pregnant teens do not take this route. Her culture found a way for her to abort her baby while causing her much physical pain and a subsequent surgery to complete the procedure. My culture also has found ways to abort unwanted babies...
The biggest difference to me lay in the fact that my culture has perfected it's method of disposing of unwanted babies. That is not something I'm proud of.
Now that I've opened a whole political-spiritual can of worms...
We're continuing our count-down to our return to Canada. It's 14.5 weeks until we leave! (so that's about 15 weeks until we land in Canada). :) We're getting excited and have started the process of getting our house ready and figuring out what we take with us and what gets left behind.
We want to thank all of you for standing with us in prayer and support as we've been out here. Please continue to pray for us as we look towards home. Pray that we'll finish strong out here and be a blessing to our fellow missionaries and especially to the nationals we come in contact with.