Changes

One of Bishop Bullen's famous quotes is "Change, change, you must change, or change will change you." He says this to the clergy and people of Lui a lot when he is urging them to do something in particular. Lui Diocese and Moruland seem to have taken the charge to heart -- things are changing before my eyes.

The big news today was that I saw a man in a galibaya walking down the road. I asked Gordon if the man is a Muslim. He said, Oh, yeah. I said I thought there were no Muslims in Moruland. He said, Well, there are now. Apparently there are Muslims here with shops in the market, and it's no problem. Gordon says Muslims and Christians get along fine as long as the government leaves them all alone. I fo.und the conversation very heartening.

Before the rest of the teachers' conference, Mary and I walked to Lunjini School and addressed the assembled 570+ children. Seriously. We were pretty much wiped out before we even started our adult ed meeting, day 2, at 10:30. We were running an hour late, but we kind of thought we'd stop at 3:00 anyway. However, the students didn't want to do that; we kept going till 3:45, answering questions about the use of adverbs, the difference between the past participle and the past tense, and the use of interjections. (Have any of you thought about interjections since 4th grade?!) Four of our eight participants gave a demo lesson using materials they teach, and we gave them some feedback and discussed especially how they could incorporate kinesthetic activities into their lessons.

Getting back to change, there is an electric light in the office that runs when the generator is on. Today there is an extension of it that runs to the middle of the room and is hooked up to a compact fluorescent bulb!!

And the World Harvest Missioners at Mundri have some new staff members. We met Larissa today, who is there for a couple of years, I think. WHM works in a very sensible way, as far as I can tell; Larissa is working on learning the language and understanding the community before she begins any kind of project. (Crazy, right?)

We are done with the formal part of our program. Tomorrow I'll be doing office stuff with Vasco and Gordon. Saturday we have more Moru lessons and English tea with the CMS missionaries here, David and Heather. Sunday we go to our respective sister parishes, and Monday we see the new diocesan center site and PACK!! Tuesday we're off.