It was 12 years ago that our family--the three of us, at that time--were packing up our belongings on a frantic Thanksgiving weekend and getting ready to travel to Papua New Guinea for the first time. Looking back, we can't believe how little we knew then. We had very little idea what we were getting into! We would soon be arriving in PNG and spending 15 weeks at the Pacific Orientation Course, where we would learn Tok Pisin (Melanesian Pidgin) and have our first experience living in a village for 5 weeks. From there, we'd spend most of the next three years living in a remote village in the East Sepik Province, putting our ethnomusicology skills to work as we lived with the Alamblak community, working together with local people to produce new music, develop literacy, and increase Scripture use.
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| Music survey research with the Alamblak, 2005 |
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| Joyce teaching at the Alamblak church in Munduku, 2005 |
After a furlough back to the US from 2006 to 2007, we (the five of us, by then) transitioned back to slightly different roles in PNG. We lived in Ukarumpa, our organization's base town in the Eastern Highlands Province. I traveled frequently to other parts of PNG to lead music and songwriting workshops and Bible studies or attend international conferences, and Joyce began teaching high school English classes at Ukarumpa International School. It was a busy but fruitful three years.
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| Creating a songbook with a couple of Seimat friends, in the Ukarumpa ethnomusicology office, 2008 |
We spent a little less than a year back in America again from 2011 to 2012, and our return to PNG saw me moving into upper-level administration, taking on the role of Director for Language Services, as well as continuing to oversee ethnomusicology and arts work in PNG and the Pacific. As Director for Language Services, I oversee the training, consulting, and publishing work for our organization--including Literacy, Language Survey, Anthropology, Translation, Linguistics, Typesetting, Media, Language Software, and a number of other sections. Joyce returned to teaching English classes, but also became the Head of the English Department at Ukarumpa International School. It's been nearly three years now of exhausting and challenging work in our administrative roles. We're both glad that we've been able to serve our colleagues and the work of Bible translation in these ways. We've learned a lot about ourselves and about leadership.
Some of you who are reading this now have been on our prayer and financial support team from the beginning, and we're grateful that you've kept with us all these years. We're now excited to announce a big transition coming as we return to the US in June 2015. When we leave PNG next year, it will be for the last time, at least for a while. Following much prayer, fasting, and seeking God's direction for our family, I have decided to accept a position as Assistant Professor of World Arts at the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics, in Dallas, Texas.
How did this happen? Over the next several days we'll write a serious of blog posts telling you more about what led us to this decision and what our new role in Dallas will be like. We hope you'll catch the vision of a new and vital role for training and equipping many more ethnomusicologists and arts specialists to go out to many countries and continue the kind of work you've been supporting all these years.
To give a short answer to a question you might have right away:
No, we're not leaving Wycliffe Bible Translators. We will still be missionaries, based in the US, and we'll still be looking for our amazing support team to continue on with us to exciting new opportunities!
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