Our New Home

       The leaves and grass rustled against our arms and legs as we squeezed through the encroaching jungle vegetation.  Stepping down into a creek and climbing up the other side on a system of roots we stepped into a whole new habitat.  Here lofty trees towered above and beautiful palms created a second canopy.  The sounds changed, instead of the droning sound of crickets and other bugs the musical voices of frogs and birds echoed from the trees.  The enveloping shade cooled the atmosphere.  My soul was awakened yet peaceful.  "Ah, THIS is a jungle!"  I thought to myself.  My ears caught the melody of yet another stream which we descended into.  As we walked among its little current water droplets fell from a gutter system of bamboo above.  I knew we must be close.  Ascending up out of the creek we came upon an open space filled with wiry ferns.  Their aroma filled the air.  Up ahead squatted several homes.  "Have we finally arrived to our new home?" I wondered.  Our guides brought us over to the largest structure.  It was the Emrang school.  It had certainly seen better days.  Having only two walls, a leaky roof with the whole center section missing, and a rotted out floor on both ends it looked a bit woebegone.  But the sight of it could not have made me happier.  Due to its lack of walls we had a beautiful view of the cascading mountains with a blue ocean spreading beyond to the horizon.
        From there our guides took us on a different trail down to the missionary hut.  Stepping down into the little clearing of our new home we were delighted to see five pineapple plants growing, two of which had fruit!  Former student missionaries Shama Eller and Ali Westermeyer had planted them and to every one's surprise they had survived.  With excitement building Mabin handed us the key to the padlock and we ventured on up inside.  Bunk beds, a kitchen counter, a book shelf, and another small table met our searching eyes.  All our rice sacks of boxes we had sent the previous two weeks were all piled on our bed.  We were finally in Emrang and were elated!
    The eager faces of our companions communicated clearly that they wanted to come inside, and we gladly invited them in.  Remembering I had some candy in my pack for such an occasion.  I pulled them out and we all enjoyed a tasty treat and rested our weary legs from the days hike.  It was already about 3 o'clock by this point and Kiley and I hadn't really eaten a lunch.  Eating in front of others without having something to offer them is extremely rude in this culture and we didn't have anything else to offer so we were feeling stuck.  The girls showed no sign of leaving, however, so we dove into cleaning and unpacking.  They were a great help getting cobwebs and dust swept away.  After about a couple hours everything was cleaned and the boxes were in their proper location partially unpacked.  Everyone eventually dispersed then and our thoughts returned to our stomachs.
      Assuming we would have no more visitors until the next day we decided to get a few more things done before daylight slipped away on us such as getting our beds made.  At this point we discovered that we were missing one of our rice sacks.  It was the one that held Kiley's blankets and both of our mosquito nets.  We quickly decided we would both sleep in the same bed, a tradition we are still practicing today even after acquiring our lost goods.
      Once the bed was made our full attention went to getting some grub.  We had a pugun (poo-goon), a hollow, cylinder block of ceramic that you fill with charcoal to cook your food.  Kiley and I had opted to use this instead of worrying about getting propane gas out here.  Being inexperienced in the ways of a pugun we found the task of lighting it more difficult then we anticipated.  With a smoke filled house and growling stomachs we persisted but with little success.  Our earnest efforts were interrupted when we heard the stomping of feet come plodding down to our house.  We gave each other a puzzled look both wondering who would be visiting us at night and for what reason.  We opened our door and were somewhat relieved to find that Mabin and Mabit were there.  They had come just to visit.  Inviting them inside we had a look of confusion on our faces.  In this culture if a guy and a girl are ever walking alone together you know they are either married or siblings.  With them being only teenagers I assumed they must be siblings.  Feeling very curious we asked them if they were, in which case they reacted very shyly and informed us they were married, a surprise to us.  We continued visiting and I again started working on our smoking charcoal.  Mabit kept looking over in my direction and eventually asked if we had any begtik (bug-tic), which is literally a chuck of flammable, dried sap from a begtik tree.  I informed him we did not and he promptly replied, "Oh.  No begtik, no fire."  To this we all laughed.  It was obvious that we were not going to eat if we didn't get some help.  Mabit graciously went and got some of their own begtik and came back to help us get some flames going.  Charcoal and begtik he was familiar with, but not the pugun.  For the next hour we worked on it until we finally got it going.  Then they left to go home before the food was done so we didn't feel we had to feed them also.
     After they left Kiley and I just looked at each other in amazement.  Here God had sent us our neighbors in the middle of the night at just the right time to help us get our fire going.  After filling our bellies we had a prayer of thanksgiving and nestled into our bed having a peace that God was going to take care of us.