Hi guys,

The Lord really worked out a particular situation so well for us this past week that we felt it was worth sharing with you. It takes a little setting up but it’s worth it for you guys to get it - but I do apologize in advance for the length!

Things have been really good in the relationship department for us as a team with the Akolet people in general - David (one of the guys on our island) especially has warmed up to us considerably in the last few months. So anyway…

Last week David came up and asked Ryan to borrow some fuel for some of David’s visitors (Peter Marme’s sisters for those of you who know who that is). Ryan explained that we’d love to help out but we have so many people who have borrowed fuel and haven’t paid it back that it’s a big financial burden on us and we just can’t do it. (We had firmly decided this as a team previously.) So then the same day David sneaks over to Adam and asks the same thing. Adam gave him the same answer, even without knowing that Ryan had already dealt with the situation. He was very courteous but firm with David.

So David pretty much starts telling Adam that they help us out SO much and we’re all one family and we’re not allowed to ever tell David no for any request he may give us. He also said that part of the reason he really needed this fuel is because these ladies were going to Kimbe to get David’s son back who had gone to visit some relatives. (Long story, but when we went to Hoskins in December, David asked if we would go to Kimbe and get his son back and the son could fly back in with us. It was a major inconvenience on our part but we agreed to do it and while we tried, we could never get the relative to come bring the son to us so our attempts were unsuccessful. We apologized to David and he seemed fine with the fact that we’d tried.) So David adds on top of his complaints that we failed him in getting his son back and so we really owed it to him to give him this fuel. He went on to say that he wasn’t going to look out after us any more or stand up for us or anything like that.

Adam was baffled since there hadn’t seemed to be any tension in the relationship previously that we could tell. But he said to David calmly but firmly, “2 things: firstly, yes you help us out a lot but don’t forget the ways that we help you out also! and secondly, we have got to be able to tell you no. if we never told you no, think of the people who would come to you to ask us for something. boundaries in any relationship are a must.” So David backed off a little and left, but we were all thinking “Where did THAT come from?”

So we all talked about it as a team, and we decided a few days later that Adam should go talk to David one on one and just tell him that the way David acted hurt Adam’s feelings because here we thought we were all friends and the things David said sort of made it seem like he was just trying to manipulate us and get stuff out of us. So Adam did just that and tried to ask David if something had instigated those comments that David made or what in the world was going on. David was very quiet and finally said, “There’s a reason I said all those things. I’ll come to your house later this afternoon and we’ll talk about it.”

(drama drama drama)

So he came up later and said that when he’d asked Ryan for the fuel and gotten told no, he went and told the ladies he couldn’t get the fuel. So they laid into him like you wouldn’t believe basically saying, “Here you are all living on one island and you can’t even get the whiteskins to give you any fuel! Shame on you!” So he was horribly ashamed in front of his relatives and thought he’d go try again with Adam this time, but of course he was feeling very angry about the confrontation and it came out all directed at Adam. Then he said “You may notice I haven’t been around much this past week. I knew as soon as I said those things that I was way out of line and so I sort of kept my distance from you guys because I was so ashamed. I had decided that I would come see you and give you some money and some shells (the traditional way of finishing a disagreement) and wasjust about to do that when you came and found me in the garden and talked to me about all of this. I’m really glad you did.”

So how awesome is that? We as a team (through Adam) were able to model a Biblical concept of reconciliation. In Akolet culture the one wronged will go badmouth the person who wronged them and stay mad until the offender comes to them and basically buys their way back into good graces. Instead, Adam went and found David first and didn’t show anger but rather extended grace to him. David may not see it now, but we pray that it made an impact in his heart and made him see that we missionaries are made of different stuff and what we’ll have to say one day is worth listening to.

Please praise God with us for this small way we were able to model Him to the Akolet people. Thanks for your prayers for us as a team, especially in this tricky area of maintaining good relationships with the many Akolet people around us. It can be difficult when their MO in any relationship is to lie, cheat, manipulate, sneak and steal, but we know that one day it will all be worth it.

“We lift our eyes to Heaven; We wrap our lives around Your Life.”
Adam & Julie Martin
Akolet Tribe
Papua New Guinea

Thank you so much for praying for our language and culture study; it’s going well. While we aren’t able to actually say much yet, I will admit that every time my brain is not consciously occupied by something concrete, I have phrases running through my head thanks to the copious amounts of recordings that we listen to everyday as part of our structured learning time. Unfortunately the phrases that get the most stuck are not anything terribly useful. They are random bits like “Is this your water?” and “Wait for me!” and “I got my knife and now I’m just walking around”. Sometimes I mutter things almost unconsciously as it is already playing in my head, which must look funny if you were to see me washing dishes and repeating, “Where is the fire? Where is the firewood? Where is the fire…”

One big answer to prayer: the Lord has given Nicki and I some great ladies here that we really enjoy being with. There are those of course who just want to use us for what they can get out of us, some that want to help us with language but just aren’t very good at it, and some that are just frankly a little obnoxious. (They have this habit of kind of slapping you when you say something they think is funny, which because we’re still relatively new EVERYTHING we say is funny. But you have to consider how bulky most of these ladies are, so quite often it really hurts and you’re trying to laugh and carry on like you’re having a grand time while bracing yourself for the next blow. The other day I had a whole group of ladies slapping me because I greeted them with “Good morning, my name is Julie.” I personally didn’t think that was slap-worthy, but they all sure thought so!) All that to say, there are some great ladies here and I feel like the Lord
has answered our prayers for friends.

Later this week we head to our mission base in Hoskins for a week long conference with all the missionaries in our region of PNG. We are grateful for this time out of the bush - it has been 3 months since we were last out in civilization and a short break will be wonderful. We appreciate your prayers for our spiritual encouragement during this time. (As a side note, this will be the first time that we and Colemans are both gone from our homes at the same time, so we’d also appreciate prayer that nothing major would get stolen in our absence. We know it’s just “stuff”, but stealing certainly creates bigger issues for us and the people than merely replacing the items that were taken.)

“We lift our eyes to Heaven; We wrap our lives around Your Life.”
Adam & Julie Martin
Akolet Tribe
Papua New Guinea

What did we decide to do in each situation we wrote about last week? Read on…

1. “To Dance or Not To Dance”

We decided to show our gratitude for their including us by having photos taken of us with the dancers, but to explain that we didn’t want to dance “since we didn’t know how and would probably mess something up and be embarassed”. They seemed to understand and accept that.

2. “The Non-Emergency Radio Message”

Because our reputation as people of our word was on the line, we agreed to go ahead and pass on the radio message like we’d said we would, but made it clear that in the future we’d have to know messages ahead of time before agreeing whether or not to use mission radio time to pass them on.

3. “The Lemongrass Dilemna”

I decided that pulling it out really wouldn’t accomplish anything, so I left it in the garden and explained to the ladies that people back home cook with it and that’s what I want to do too. (Eventually they’ll understand that we don’t involve ourselves in magic, but we’ll leave that for another time.)

4. “Shoes for Stanis”

Again it was the word of the missionary on the line - he said he would give the shoes to this guy so we didn’t feel we could refuse. But we’ve decided that we will for now hold onto the shoes and wait for an opportunity to talk with this guy further about how he’s been behaving towards us. (In typical cultural fashion, Stanis conveniently hasn’t been around since we became aware that he’d stolen things.)

Language/Culture Update:

Drum Roll Please…we are now in Akolet language and culture study! We have had meetings the 26th and 27th with our missionary language consultant, Aaron, who flew out just to get our language study kicked off in the right direction. Please pray for us as we find out what kind of a daily learning schedule will best work for us and wisdom in the massive amount of information we will be seeking to break into manageable pieces as we learn from the Akolet people. This will consume the next 2-3 years of our lives, so it goes without saying that we would greatly appreciate your prayers!

Tech update:

We’re happy to tell you that the photo section of our website has been updated! The result is a fun new way to look at all our shots. To see for yourself, visit martinpng.com and click on “Photos.” Then click on a gallery and get lost in the beauty of our building projects we thought would never end! You can even use your arrow keys to browse the pictures, so it’s faster and more efficient.

One last thing… Our web guy has moved our Bush Notes and Praises and Prayer Requests to a more stable service, which means there’s a new “feed” address if you’ve been using those to keep up-to-date. They are:

Bush Notes: http://www.martinpng.com/bushnotes/wp-atom.php
Praises & Prayer Requests: http://www.martinpng.com/pp/wp-atom.php

“We lift our eyes to Heaven; We wrap our lives around Your Life.”

Adam & Julie Martin
Akolet Tribe
Papua New Guinea

4 long years of excellent missionary training and 1 1/2 years in the country have prepared you well, but you can never plan for every specific scenario you’ll face as a missionary! What would you do in the following 4 situations we’ve faced recently? Answers explaining what we chose to do in each of these situations and why will appear in a later email.

1. In honor of beginning language study, you plan a feast and the people are preparing traditional costumes and spirit masks to do dancing and singing to show you more about their culture. Then you find out that the ladies are making costumes for you and your co-worker to wear and dance with them. The dance has spiritual significance you haven’t even begun to delve into, but participating is a risky move because of how you may be putting your stamp of approval on their involvement with the spirit world. By not participating, you risk offending them and their generosity in making the costumes for you, thus hampering relationships you’re desperately trying to cultivate. What would you do?

2. A man comes to you and asks if you will use your mission radio to pass on a message for him to some people out in town. You explain that you could only use the radio in a situation like that if it was an emergency, like life or death (or you’d have a steady stream of people wanting radio
messages passed along for any reason). The man says, “Oh, it is an emergency, but I have to tell you later closer to radio time what the emergency is.” You’re distracted at the time and agree to pass on the message, but later find out it’s not a situation even close to an emergency. What would you do?

3. You ask about getting some lemongrass planted in the small garden you have in your backyard, and soon a man comes and plants it for you. In a conversation with some ladies a few weeks later, you find that the only thing they use lemongrass for here is garden magic to make things grow well - it’s not a food to them. They all see the lemongrass in your garden. What do you do?

4. On a recent visit to your tribe, a fellow missionary (unbeknownst to you until much later) agrees to send a pair of shoes out on an unspecified future flight for one of the young men in the area because the young man asked. Unbeknownst to the missionary, this young man is the worst thief around and he has several items of yours and your co-workers (including shoes) that he denies stealing but it’s pretty obvious he did. The shoes come in on a flight with his name on the box, but the young man doesn’t know they’ve come. What do you do?

Remember that everything you do affects your testimony, whether good or bad, and the people you hope are the future church are watching closely….

For God’s Glory among the Akolet People of Papua New Guinea,
Adam & Julie Martin

Dear Friends,

What kind of missionary would I be if I passed up a chance to tell a “there was a snake in my house” story?

Just today (an anniversary we will never forget) I was baking raisin bread. I was going to check the bread in the oven when I spied what looked like a rotten banana peel poking out from underneath the stove. I thought to myself, “That’s funny….we haven’t had bananas in….” and then it moved. Yep, our first snake in the house. I immediately shouted over to Colemans where Adam was helping Ryan with a job, because in all honesty my worst jungle nightmare is a snake in my house and here that nightmare is, reality.

They came, toting a quickly fashioned stick with two nails in the end. By this time the chocolate brown snake had lazily unwound itself from its warm hiding spot, and we identified it as a 4 foot python. Not venomous, but somehow that didn’t set my mind at ease too much, thinking it could have just as easily been under our bed as under our stove!

Anyway, they chased it to the other side of the kitchen where it was trapped underneath our refrigerator. Smelling that my bread was almost done, I gingerly stepped over to the oven to try to get it out while the snake was cornered elsewhere. Unfortunately, the guys only thought it was trapped. Even more unfortunately, I was the one to discover this when I very nearly stepped on it on my way to check the bread!

A lot of screaming, hopping around and general confusion ensued, but let’s just say we caught the snake and he’s no longer a threat! Once my heart stops beating so hard, I may actually enjoy a piece of raisin bread, but for now I just keep repeating to myself “For the sake of the gospel…”

For the Sake of His Precious Gospel going to the Akolet of Papua New Guinea,
adam & julie martin

Dear Friends,

We got such a tremendous response from our last email explaining that we had email set up in the bush that we thought we should clarify something.

I wrote that email when we thought we were seconds away from having email successfully set up. Such was not the case, unfortunately, but once I click “send” on a message, there is no way to retrieve it.

We mentioned that Adam and I would be coming to Hoskins for a short break - that is where we are now and that is how the email got sent out. We apologize for the miscommunication. We hope to have our email up and running in the bush by Christmas. In the meantime, we will email from Hoskins for the next few days and work to get lots of photos put onto our website.

Thanks for staying in touch with us and what God’s doing among the Akolet of Papua New Guinea!

julie

p.s. Still no rain in Gasmata - please continue to pray!

Well family and friends,
If this email makes it to you, you know that we have successfully set up email in the bush!

We arrived here one month ago to the day, and so much has happened that it is impossible to detail in any sort of succinct manner. So we will settle for a good summarization.

We flew in November 8th with our first building team which included Julie’s dad. It was amazing having him and the others from our home church here. They worked so hard and by the time they left, both houses had floors, four walls, and Coleman’s house had siding and a roof.

By the time the second building team (also an incredible blessing to us) left on December 6th, we both had the outer structures of our houses nearly complete, plus interior walls (for the most part) and electricity and plumbing. (Praise the Lord for saying goodbye to the outhouse!) We still have a long haul ahead of us - probably a few months of full time working on the house which is longer than we anticipated at the start of everything. But we know it will get done, and we daily see more progress made.

Dear Friends,

Thanks for your continued prayers for us as we move closer to making our permanent home in Akolet land!

Just so that all of you know, as of November 8th, Adam and I will be out of email contact for several weeks. We will be setting up our email again once we’re more settled in the bush, but it will take time to get it up and running. We just wanted to explain in advance why we will be “off the radar screen” for a time.

Also as a reminder, at that time our email connection will slow down even more (if that’s even possible!). Please do not send forwards, photos, or attachments of any kind, and when replying to an email, please delete the body of the email and just send your reply. We want to avoid bogging down our fragile email system in any way. Personal emails are always acceptable!

Please continue to keep us and the Colemans in your prayers, as well as all the other help we have coming from our work teams from our home church and other missionaries who will be assisting us in building our house and Coleman’s house.

For God’s Glory among the Akolet of Papua New Guinea,

Adam & Julie Martin

P.S. We’re also updating our “mass email” list. If your email has changed or if you’d prefer to not continue receiving our email updates, just let us know and we’ll be happy to make the changes. Thanks!

We are happy to report that good progress has been made on this last building trip. In fact, the guys were able to complete Ryan’s office and set all the house posts for Adam’s and my house as well as all the posts except 8 for Ryan and Nicki Coleman’s house. This is wonderful news!

Now the next step is that Colemans will officially move to Akolet land on November 1st, and with more help from our builder Stephen and a few other fellow missionaries from here at Hoskins, will seek to put up the bearers for our houses and possibly the joists (as time allows) before Adam and I move in on the 8th of November with the 7 men from our first work team from the States! Our goal is to get as much of the slow, tedious work done so that when the teams come we can maximize on their time and make a lot of progress.

Thank you for prayers for safety, health and good progress on this trip. While Adam, Ryan and Stephen feel very run down physically after 9 days of long hours building in the bush, they’re happy with what was accomplished. We serve an awesome Lord, don’t we?

As you may remember from our last update, we explained how when a window of opportunity opens, you’d better scramble through it before it slams shut again! Such is the case with us again.

Today is Tuesday, October 3. Once again we had been making plans to head down to Gasmata to do more building, with the idea that Adam, Ryan and our builder Stephen would fly down on Friday the 6th of October and return the following Friday. We had our flights all worked out, and we all had more than enough to keep us busy between now and then. Then the plans changed again, and again, and once again as of yesterday that all changed and the guys are leaving tomorrow, October 4th and returning October 17th. Nicki and the kids and I will fly down on Octboer 10th and be there for the last week of this building trip.

If you really want to know how it all happened, just chalk it up to the unpredictability of life here. The boat captain we are planning to ship all our supplies with is extremely difficult to reach by phone and is always changing his plans (that directly involve us) without telling us. Yesterday (Monday) Ryan really felt like we needed to get a hold of him to reconfirm our shipping plans a few weeks away, so Adam and Ryan made the 45 minute hot, rough, pot-holed ride into town to track the boat captain down. Good thing they did…

The boat captain said, “Get me all your stuff tomorrow (Tuesday). I’m leaving first thing Wednesday morning and need as much of your materials as will fit on the boat.” Our first thought was, “And you were going to tell us this WHEN?” It doesn’t sound like an unreasonable request on his part, but when you realize we thought we had 3 more weeks to get ready for this shipment and that it meant 2 more trips into town with 2 full loads of lumber, etc. in the back of a flatbed truck on that same rough, pot-holed road, along with packing up and arranging flights all in 24 hours, well….you get the idea.

To throw more excitement into the mix, we are still in the process of packing up all our belongings for The Big Move. Right now our house is about 75% packed, and the remaining 25% is strewn about in a chaotic manner, laughing at us and daring us to just try and tackle it. Those of you who have moved frequently can probably relate to the way that your unpacked belongings can behave in this way! This daunting last bit is awaiting its chance to be organized, boxed up, wrapped in black plastic (to weatherproof it for its journey by boat), taped, labeled, loaded on the truck and driven into Kimbe where it will then be loaded onto the boat that will ship all our belongings to Gasmata. As people who have been moving every year for the last 7 years of our lives, including one major move overseas, we say this is definitely the hardest yet.

And as if that wasn’t enough, the deadline of our short-term work teams arriving continues to bear down on us. Our first team (the one my dad is on!) arrives into Hoskins on November 6th. Between now and then we have to finish packing and shipping, building the office in Gasmata, and setting the posts (and we hope bearers too) for both houses. We cannot wait to have these teams coming to encourage us and help us with the immense work of house-building, so don’t get the impression that we’re not completely looking forward to it! It’s just one more thing to get ready for in the midst of the busyness that is our life right now.

We’re grateful for this change from the Lord in our plans. While it came very unexpectedly, we all see it as being better than any of the other plans we’d concocted on our own. He has a way of doing that, doesn’t He?

Adam and I covet your prayers for us during this time. A friend reminded us in a recent email that Satan does NOT want these houses built because its just one more step in what will lead to him giving up territory that’s been his for thousands of years. He will throw everything he can our way to keep this from happening! Please pray for strength and encouragement for us during this time, for physical safety and good weather for the guys while traveling and building and for us ladies as we join them, and above all that we would keep our eyes fixed on the goal of knowing Christ and one day making Him known to the Akolet people! He is sufficient!

Looking to Him,
Adam & Julie Martin