Hello friends and family,

I'm writing this realizing that I am down to the last few days in the Solomons.  I am excited to see family and friends again, but there are many things I will miss about this beautiful country and the hospitable giving Christians I have met here.

Actually the plan was to fly to Figi today to debrief our trip as a team.  However, due to bad weather, the airline was not able to drop passengers off, so our flight was full.  We are on standby to fly on Thursday, but right now are waiting to see if we can get tickets.  Thankfully, God has allowed our team to respond to the situation with grace and flexibility and in some ways it is nice to have a few more days here, even if it means a shorter time in Figi.  We are thankful that we can come back to the SITAG base where we have been staying and are still planning to do some debriefing and reflecting on our trip while we are here.

God has taught me a lot about the importance of flexibility this past week.  I was planning to go to the island of Malaita with Scripture Use specialist Cynthia Rollins this past weekend to do a follow-up survey on the distribution of audio New Testament devices in the Wala language.  However, Cynthia has been fighting some serious sickness and one of the Wala villages was unprepared to host us, so it seemed that God had different plans for the timing of the trip.  We canceled the trip, so I have stayed back in the capitol city of Honiara.  One blessing about this change of plans was that I was able to help with a literacy workshop which has been taking place these past few weeks.  The environment of the workshop was very exciting to me.  People from eight different language groups attended this workshop to develop reading materials in their language, including primers, alphabet books, and Sunday school materials.  Literacy work is very exciting because it gives people access to God’s Word.  Many translated scriptures are not used in the Solomons because the people cannot read or write.  However, the materials these the people at the workshop created could be the first step to teaching someone to read God’s word in the language that speaks to their heart.  Many of the people in the workshop were learning to use computers for the first time to create their materials, so I was able to help in small ways like helping with basic computer skills and typing some of the translated literacy material. 

Overall, my experience in the Solomons has been wonderful.  I would appreciate your prayers as I say goodbye to this place.

Other prayer requests:

·         Health for Cynthia. She actually went to the hospital yesterday, and the doctors are trying to figure out how best to help her.  Pray for wisdom for the doctors.

·         That our team can find tickets to Figi, and that we can use these next few days to say goodbye well to the Solomons

·         Our team debriefing is effective and helpful

·         Guidance for God’s future direction with Wycliffe and missions

Thank you for your prayers! I look forward to seeing you soon!

Melissa

Busy two weeks in the Solomons!

After a week on the island of Malaita with no internet access and then a busy week helping with the Festival of Pacific Arts in back in the capitol of Honiara, I finally am sitting down to write an update.  So much has happened, and it will be hard to shorten everything to a few lines, but I will attempt to sum up these past few weeks.

We headed to Malaita on Monday, July 2^nd and landed in the town of Auki. Even though it is the biggest town in Malaita, it seemed very small to us with only a few streets for us to navigate. People in Auki are very friendly, so we got accustomed to raising our eyebrows as we passed them in the streets (the typical greeting in the Solomons). Our group split up and stayed in different three villages close to Auki.  My leader Tracy and I were very blessed to stay in the spacious guest above the home of a couple named Rose and Collin. While we were prepared to bathe in a river and use an outdoor toilet, this house was had indoor plumbing and air conditioning. The house also contained several bedrooms with queen sized beds and a spacious living room, so it ended up being the perfect meeting place for our group. We were really blessed to hear from Rose about how she felt God had directed her to buy the house, how he had provided the loans and finances for her, and how he had revealed to her in a dream that he wanted her to turn the upstairs into a place for traveling missionaries and people in need.  It was obvious God’s presence was in the place, and I felt honored to receive Rose and Collin’s hospitality.  I was also able to connect with their daughter, Susan, and especially Rose’s nineteen-year-old sister, Sharon.

Each day we were in Malaita, the part of my team who had undergone the ethno-arts training in Dallas put on a workshop about how to use local arts to address community needs.  While I did not teach at the workshop, I was able to help in support roles, such helping prepare for tea breaks and doing shopping for the group.  My confidence using the Solomon Islands Pigin grew as I “storied” with the Nationals during tea breaks and after the workshop. “Story” is the Pigin word for conversing, and it is the perfect way to describe a conversation, as storytelling is extremely important to their culture, and many conversations included stories about their lives.  It was encouraging to see the positive response from the Nationals, as most of them were extremely passionate about their art forms, and excited to use the resources they had learned in the workshop to help their communities.

Other highlights of the Malaita experience included swimming in the river in the village where six group members stayed, visiting a waterfall and playing with Malaitan children in the pool underneath the waterfall, eating a traditional feast, and being surprised by a “traditional welcome” at the closing church service at the village where I stayed. The traditional welcome included men dressed as traditional warriors running from the trees, waving weapons, and shouting.  After startling us, they welcomed us into the church and explained that this kind of welcome was their way of honoring us, as they only perform it for people whom they consider “big men.”  We were presented with flower necklaces and escorted in the church with a traditional song.  I think I can speak for the entire team in saying we were overwhelmingly honored by the hospitality we were shown.

This past week has been busy, as we have been attending the Festival of Pacific Arts in Honiara and  promoting the arts workshop, which the team conducted on Wednesday and Thursday.  I have been shadowing Cynthia Rollins, a woman who does Scripture Use in the Solomons.  I am still learning about how her role fits in with the larger picture of Bible translation, but from what I have learned so far, she works with all denominations of churches in the Solomons, trying to promote the use of mother tongue scripture and providing training and resources so Nationals can better incorporate the Bible into church services and daily life. This includes facilitating workshops and doing a lot of networking between churches. This past week I went to two workshops she organized on Biblical storytelling. As I mentioned before, storytelling is extremely important to the culture of Solomon Islanders. At each workshop, we learned how to tell a particular Bible story, as well as five basic questions to ask to lead a Bible study about the story.  This training is especially exciting for groups with no mother-tongue Scripture translations, as they can transfer the stories they learned at the workshop into their mother-tongue, and tell the Bible stories orally.

I praise God for the relationships I have formed so far, both with the Nationals and relationships with my team, which are growing deeper and deeper. I also praise God for the receptiveness I have experienced towards both the storytelling workshop and the arts workshop, and the excitement of those who attended to make a difference in their communities. I praise God for the exciting multitude of ways he is working here in the Solomons.

Prayer requests for the upcoming week:

·         Many of us, including myself, have been fighting colds and sickness. Pray for health and healing.

·         Pray that the people who attended the workshops would be empowered to use the information and tools they have learned.

·         Cynthia and I plan to back to Malaita at the end of this coming week to do a follow-up survey on the distribution of the Megavoice in the Wala language, a machine which contains the New Testament in oral form.  Pray for all the arrangements which need to be made for this trip.

·         Continued team unity

·         That I can be sensitive to God’s voice and direction and that I spend quality personal time with God each day.