NTM - New Tribes Mission | Planting Tribal Churches

Last week our family hiked to a garden nearby that belongs to some of our friends.  We helped them work and start planting a few things.  It was great for the kids to be out there working (Annie playing) and being exposed to it.  They had a great time and met some new friends (the bright blue bugs).

Annie and her buddy James

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Look how clean her dress is! At least she is wearing one...

Below is a video we created for the Wildman Business Group thanking them for serving as senders. We thought all of you might enjoy watching it as well. Click on “Scholl’s In Papua New Guinea” to view the video by Vimeo.

Scholl's in Papua New Guinea from Drew Scholl on Vimeo.

1.) I never thought it would feel so “normal” to live in such a strange place.   2.) Even though I miss a lot of things from home, I’m thankful for the sheltered, simple lives our kids have right now.   3.) I have a love hate relationship with the generator here on campus. Though it provides the electricity we need, it creates a constant noise outside our house.   4.) We buy our milk in a 1-liter box or powder form now. The box says, “product of Australia,” but everything else on it is written in Chinese??   5.) I think it’s pretty cool that I’m teaching Malachi how to read.   6.) It doesn’t matter how hard I scrub our kids feet, they are still black on the bottom.   7.) We have a new definition of expired food!! If it’s 1- 6 months past date it’s totally fine after that it’s use your own discretion.   8.) This is the only place where you can get away with hiring a one eyed, one-armed man and call him a security guard.   9.) I think it’s really neat that at any given time our kids hang out with an international crowd of Germans, Canadians, Americans, and Papua New Guineans.    10.) I really miss my sisters.   11.) I’ve always wanted to learn another language and now I can almost say that I have!   12.) I love Monday mornings here. The ladies from the village bring all of their produce to ITF and put on a special market for us. They always bring great fruits and vegetables!   13.) I also love Sunday afternoons. Drew takes Gracie and Malachi to the NTM PNG headquarters where he plays soccer and the kids hang out with a bunch of other kids. It makes for a nice quiet afternoon for Annie and I.   14.) I never thought I’d say this, but I’m thankful for face book. It’s a great way for us to stay connected to what’s going on in everyone else’s world.   15.) It is possible to go bare foot anywhere and everywhere. We witness it everyday!   16.) The national workers here on campus wear rubber boots…not because of the mud or because they want to keep their feet dry…that would be silly… They wear them because they like to fill them with water to help keep their feet cool and they just like the way it feels.   17.) This is a great place to learn delayed gratification. There is no such thing as instant gratification- unless you’re craving a banana!   18.) I’m still amazed at the amount of flour, sugar, oil and eggs we go through here. I feel like I run a small bakery sometimes.   19.) Here is a list of just a few things we’ve made from scratch here: sour cream, tortillas, sausage, pepperoni, chocolate syrup, maple syrup, spaghetti sauce, pie crust and barbeque sauce.                   20.) I’m thankful God brought Drew and I together as friends first. He makes a great built in best friend. He makes a pretty good husband too!   21.) Here’s a little something about our kids. Gracie is smart, emotional and a great artist. Malachi is a sweet little man, sensitive and a great helper. Annie is down right sassy and incredibly lovable.   22.) I actually like hanging our clothes out to dry- there’s something therapeutic about it. Or maybe it’s the simplicity of it.   23.) I’m amazed at the variety of people and cultures God has on this earth.   24.) I don’t like bugs, cockroaches, flying who knows what, geckos or rats! And we’ve got plenty of them all!   25.) I’m just beginning to see the power of prayer. Please continue to pray for the Bena people and their salvation. Also be praying for the effectiveness of ITF.

We have been at ITF now for 4 weeks and in PNG for almost 9 weeks. The time has gone by fast and things are beginning to normalize a bit. God has been stirring our hearts in many areas and one day at a time we can see his purpose and plan unfold. He has put things on our hearts that we never imagined prior to being here. We have an exciting adventure and ministry ahead of us!

Things are progressing very well with language and to our surprise we are further along than we thought. (Although we shouldn’t be surprised…God will move us along in our language as quickly as he needs us…even if that means supernaturally!) We had our first language check yesterday and the report was encouraging. Bobbi is at about 25-30% proficiency which is truly amazing considering what is on her plate with home-schooling and not being able to freely walk around the villages and talk with the nationals (she has to be with me, which can only happen with the kids, or with another woman). I am at about 50% proficiency and they said that at the rate I am learning I should have no problem being fluent at a high level within a month or so!! That was encouraging to hear!!

We included some pictures of us going to spend time with the nationals at their gardens. The one way we can have an impact and show them the love of Christ is to spend a lot of time with them doing simple things like sitting down and talking, spending time working with them in their gardens, and just existing with them in their environment; simply showing them love. Last Wednesday I (Drew) met up with a guy and we hiked down through his coffee garden to a little valley where he is clearing a place for a new garden. They have almost completed building the fence to keep the pigs out and then they will prepare the ground for planting. The fence is important in keeping pigs out because pigs got in and destroyed everything in their last garden. The pictures are of us clearing out the vine type grasses so they can prepare the ground. The other pictures are of us splitting a tree. Have you ever seen someone cut a tree down, cut it into 10′ sections, then split it down the middle, then split the halves into thirds….all with an axe? Pretty interesting…and a lot of work! This guy is one of the people who lost their house in the bush fire that happened a few weeks ago that took 14 houses all together. They have been cutting trees to make posts to build new houses.

I (Bobbi) went to Uriso’s garden this past Saturday morning. Uriso is my language helper and lives just across the road from ITF. She has 2 beautiful gardens, one is just behind her house on the side of a hill and the other is much farther from where she lives. We worked in the garden closest to her house. Uriso’s garden was also destroyed by wild pigs recently and her family is working to put up a fence to protect it now. So together with Leslie, a friend from ITF, we helped Uriso dig up some ginger root. Ginger is all that is left in her garden right now. We filled a nice size bag for her and she was happy to have found so much. It felt good to do a little work and be a help to her! She thought it would be a good idea for me to carry the bag back up the hill on my head (which is how they traditionally carry their bags). Right now in PNG we are in the middle of their dry season. This year’s dry season has been especially dry. The nationals literally live off of what their gardens produce so this is has been a hard time for them. Their gardens are dry and are producing very little food for them to eat.

It often blows me away how hard these people have to work just to survive- and they do it all barefooted! Last week I helped a woman fill her two 5 gallon plastic containers with drinking water from the hose at our house. I could hardly carry them from the hose and back to her (about 10 feet). She on the other hand put one in a bag and hung it from her head and carried the other one in her hands. She had to carry them at least a 1/2 mile up hill back to her house.

The more time I spend with these people the stronger my attachment is to them. As different as they are from me they are created by the same God who put in them the same desire for something bigger than themselves. There are very few believers in the village, so many are lost and trying to appease God with their animistic beliefs. Please pray that these people would come to know the freedom they can have in Christ. Pray for the Foster family as they teach the word of God to these people and that the Bena people’s hearts would be open to this teaching.

I would like to attempt to put into words a few events that have moved me. Everyday I head out to the villages at 6:30 am to spend the morning interacting with the tribe and to practice the language. In just a short while I have made many new friends and have been adapting as I learn about their culture and their ways and have witnessed a couple rare cultural events. A few days ago, I was in a village talking with some of the men. Slowly, more and more people began to show up. I soon found myself surrounded by about 30 men all interested in what I had to say. Most of them had bow and arrows, spears, knives, or guns slung over their shoulders. I had a flashback of our life in America, and then back to the circle of tribal men, thinking to myself, why am I not afraid? Why am I not scared being the only white man here and encircled by them? In an instant I saw myself from a businessman in America to standing in the middle of a tribe fearlessly interacting with these men. It is truly amazing how God can equip, prepare, and give us everything we need. I was blown away as I pondered these thoughts all the while engaging in a cultural experience with these men. People continued to come to the village and in a short while there were over a hundred people in the village and the circle of men around me got quiet and focused their attention elsewhere. One of the men I had been talking with whispered to me that I was getting ready to experience something. Soon everything got quiet and all the attention turned to a man who had come with a group of people from another village in the tribe. They had come to offer a “bride price” for a woman one of them desired to marry. They laid a pink cloth on the ground with some money on it as the bride price. It was very interesting to watch this whole thing go down. Normally these kind of things can take a day or longer to figure out. But because of some specific reasons, this bride price offer was declined within an hour or two. I was thankful I was able to witness this cultural event take place.

Yesterday I decided to go listen to the teaching of the NTM tribal church planter to a clan of the Bena people group, in a village right outside of Interface. (I have included a picture of this) I was awstruck by the fact that I was sitting in the dirt watching the core and sole objective of NTM take place; to reach the unreached with the Gospel. Again, I had a flashback of our life in America and how all of the sudden I am sitting here in the bush, in the mountains of Papua New Guinea, watching a fellow American missionary teach tribal people in their own native language and how God has brought us from our homeland to here and how God has provided so much peace, endurance, and strength to move ahead in His perfect will one day at a time. Emotions were high for me during this time and it’s hard to explain.

The third experience I would like to share happened today. (I have included multiple pics of this) I headed up to the village as normal and greeted one of the men who I have been talking with. He said that he wanted me to walk with him a few villages down to go visit a houseline of people who had just lost everything to a bush fire including a suitcase of money which had been savings from selling crops like coffee. They feel it’s more secure to lock a suitcase in their house than to take a 3 hour journey into a town to a bank and risk getting robbed by rascals. A total of 14 houses were burned to the ground. As we approached the houseline, you could hear wailing, crying and mourning. Our culture does not express sadness or emotion over loss to the extent they do here in PNG. Here it is customary for people to come from nearby villages when there is a tragic experience to mourn the loss with them and tell them how sorry they are for them. So, we went around to the families who had lost their houses and we hugged the men, shaked hands with the ladies and said our sorries to them. The ladies would gather together in large groups and cry, wail and mourn together. Eventually all the commotion would turn into a song that they would sing…but is was like a never-ending wailing cry song. Here in PNG, even if you might not really be so upset that you cry loud like this, it is customary to do so anyway. It was so sad to see all of this take place and to think they all have to start over again. After awhile everyone gathered and sat down to discuss how they were going to move forward and if they could figure out who started the bush fire. It was neat to see how everyone from different villages gathered around the people of this houseline to help them out. I just kept praying that the Holy Spirit would some how use this as an opportunity to reach these people and glorify himself.

Please pray for the Bena people and specifically the clan in the surrounding villages. Recently they have been experiencing many difficulties. Pray that their hearts would be open to the teaching and that the people would respond by giving their hearts to Christ.

Drew

Last Friday we made the move  to the Interface campus. We were so excited to unload our suitcases for the last time! We are sooo tired of those suitcases! It had been 8 months that we had been living out of those bags…needless to say we were ready to be settled again. We are living in a wonderful house on the ITF campus. We couldn’t have imagined anything better for our family. After unloading the bags off the top of the Land Cruiser we began unloading all of the bins we had shipped back in December. Have you ever packed up most of your belongings and your kid’s belongings for 8 months? You should try it sometime! It was so much fun to open all those bins and boxes to see all of our familiar things. The kids had a blast finding all of their long lost toys and books! The looks of excitement on their faces were priceless. It’s taken a few days, but we finally feel like we are able to start settling in to life here at ITF (Interface). We have been able to get out into the villages to meet some of the people and begin to learn our way around. We will continue our language and culture learning here with the Bena people. Drew usually starts his day up in the village around 6:30 a.m. He has to be up there early in order to catch the men before they head out. He spends a few hours there and then comes home to study more language and culture. I try to start school with the kids by 9:00 a.m. We finish around 11:30 and after lunch I go into the village with another lady to practice the language. We usually stay in the village for a few hours and then I come back home to start dinner. I try to fit language study in whenever possible. Drew will not start any responsibilities with his role here at ITF until he has reached a high level of language learning. So he is a full time language learner right now! The kids and I are beginning to feel comfortable with home schooling. It’s been a good reminder to me of why I went into teaching. I really do enjoy it! Life has changed so dramatically for us, yet we are still serving the same God. Some how we as a family have been sustained and held up by that. It is amazing how God continues to fill the voids we should have here. We are so far from all that is familiar to us, but the familiarity of our Heavenly Father is more than enough to make up for those unfamiliar things. He is faithful and kind to us even when we don’t deserve it.

Visit our blog at www.ntm.org/drew_scholl

We have been adjusting pretty well to life here in PNG. We are getting comfortable with the people and the environment and are able to get ourselves into town (grocery, market, etc.) without someone else helping us. Driving on the left side of the road is starting to become a little more natural. We haven’t quite got used to the perpetual smell of smoke though…there are always fires burning around the area…sometimes there are moments when it is lightly snowing ash.

We drove to the Interface camp, where we will be living in a month or so, to check out the area and meet the people we will be working with. It is beautiful there and is a bit off the beaten path. The road to ITF is very rough. Where we are at now it’s only a few minutes to town…once we are at ITF it will take about an hour depending on the condition of the road. Dry season it’s no problem but they say it gets pretty nasty during rainy season. Some people pay money to do that type of off-roading! We also got to see the house we will be living in while we are there.

This last week orientation has involved meeting people, seeing other NTM locations in the area, and getting to know how to get around Goroka safely. It has also been a slower week to allow us time to transition and get settled as a family in this radically different place. It has been great to meet other missionaries with all types of backgrounds. Some have been in the mission field for 40 + years, others only a short while and have a background similar to ours. Our kids have met some other kids here and have had a blast playing, riding bikes, climbing trees, etc. It is nice to see them so happy in spite of the tough transition. There is no doubt they miss their friends and cousins back home…even little Annie asks about them and tells us she wants to see them.

This week we start culture and language training. We will be working with a national who will be training us one on one. The training is not done by reading but is done in person by verbal and visual association…it’s like how kids learn how to talk.

We made it to Port Moresby, PNG on Sunday July 18th but our connecting and final flight of the trip was canceled. We spent the night in Port Moresby then caught a re-scheduled flight on Monday the 19th and arrived to our final destination that afternoon. What we encountered upon our arrival was a reality check of the 3rd world culture we would soon be living in. The sights, smells, and sounds told us we weren’t in Kansas (Indiana) anymore. We were definitely the center of attention amidst hundreds of nationals standing around outside the airstrip terminal (which is about the size of the Winona Lake Post Office), especially with the white haired kiddos. Miraculously all of our 20 pieces of luggage made it all the way here; after we gathered it and loaded it (strapped it all on top of a land cruiser) we headed to the place of our orientation just a few miles outside of town.

Our temporary location is situated in a small village down a bumpy dirt road about a half mile off of the main road and is pleasant. We are in a high valley (about 5,000 feet) surrounded by mountains in all directions. The house we have while here is very basic but nice…mostly made out of wood…all wood floors, beams, etc. Our back porch overlooks a coffee plantation which is about 10 feet away from the porch. We often see locals working and handpicking the beans and putting them into a sack.

The kids love it here. They are thrilled with things like the variety of big beetles everywhere as well as small lizards. We have a german shephard guard dog nearby that the kids love…his name is Rugar and he is very friendly with the kids but is trained well to recognize intruders. The kids have been going through orientation with us and have been troopers! Both yesterday and today we were out most of the day visiting the town and another NTM center and they did very well. The orientation thus far has basically involved getting to know the region, other ntmr’s, safety, culture, etc. We will begin our language study next week. They are squeezing a 4-6 month program into what was going to be two months but reduced it even more to one month because of the great need at Interface. The sooner we can get there the better.

Tomorrow we will be heading to the Interface camp for a visit and are very excited to see where we will be living and working. It will be Drew’s first experience tackling the challenging roads (and driving on the left side) …should be a real adventure! We are also hoping to get some of the items we shipped, like the kids bikes, etc., and bring them back to our temporary location.

We are adjusting pretty well and are enjoying our time here so far in spite of all we have left behind in the states. We really miss our family and friends but the Lord continues to give us strength and peace each day. His faithfulness and provision has been remarkable!