Events in Ukarumpa - March

It's been a while since we last updated the blog, and that's partly because we've been busy with many things here in Ukarumpa. Here's a brief look at some of what's been happening over the past weeks:

• Interact 2015. Every two years, our organization hosts a one-week conference called Interact. As Director for Language Services, Interact is one of my responsibilities, and it was a pleasure to be involved with the planning of this year's conference. Interact is a week full of presentations, discussions, reports, and updates on language-related issues in Papua New Guinea and around the world. Our special keynote speaker was anthropologist and missiologist Dr. Mike Rynkiewich, who shared five sessions on the changing world in which we live and minister. (If you haven't read Mike's book, Soul, Self, and Society, it's worth checking out.) I knew Mike a little before his visit to PNG, and I really enjoyed getting to know him better during the days he spent here. Other topics at Interact included:
• New mobile apps for scripture tools, including an app that matches recorded audio scripture with the text displayed on a smartphone, highlighting the text in "read-along" fashion. It's a fantastic aid to beginning readers, and we can create an app in any of the languages in which we're working.
• Updates on church partnerships, as denominations within PNG catch the vision of translation, literacy, and other service areas in which we can work together.
• A report on our partnership with the National Department of Education, working in the area of literacy in elementary education.
• Information about new structures for funding the work. How do we determine what a Bible translation project costs? Where does the money come from?
• Classical Concert. The Saturday after Interact has traditionally been the date of the Classical Concert: an evening when anyone in the community is invited to perform on the Meeting House stage. This year's concert was really enjoyable, and included pieces on piano, flute, haegeum (traditional Korean bowed fiddle), and, of course, saxophone. I still practice saxophone
  
  (alto or soprano) almost daily, and I long for more opportunities to perform. But I'm always excited to have a chance to perform something new at the Classical Concert. This year I played a fantastic piece by Dana Wilson, called We Sing to Each Other. It was very challenging, but finally performing it after practicing for months was wonderful. (This week I went to the studio to record a clean version of it, and I will post that recording online within the next week.)
• Branch Conference. Administratively, our organization follows a biennial (i.e., two-year) schedule, with a Branch Conference every two years. Conference is the time that we come together for reports and presentations, voting for new administrative positions, and looking ahead at strategy for the next biennium and beyond. For me this was a strange Conference, because at the previous two Conferences I was selected as Director for Language Services. This year I'm simply looking ahead to leaving PNG in June, so my engagement with Conference was quite different. 

We continue to look ahead to the big transition back to the US--now less than three months away! We're all excited about it, and we wonder what the relocation will be like--many unknowables! We'll write more here in the coming weeks about the details of that transition. Thank you to all of you who have shown us support and encouragement in so many ways since we wrote about the move!