Shellfish

I’ve been wanting to go looking for my favourite type of shellfish since I arrived back in Bougainville (it’s called ‘bohara’ in Teop, and I’ll write a blog post about it in a few weeks). One day two ladies from the next village were passing through on their way to collect shellfish, and I was able to tag along with them .

We wandered in the shallows looking for shellfish in the water. I wasn’t very good at finding them – I only found one, and a big one at that, so probably the easiest kind to find. Here’s a picture of the kind of shell I found:

Fortunately my friends were generous and shared their shells with me (including some bohara!), so I returned to the village with this basket of shells:

We cooked them up and had them for dinner. These two photos show the cooked shellfish, removed from their shells, before we mixed them with vegies and noodles.

Sharing a testimony or an item at church

“What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church.” 1 Corinthians 14:26 (NIV)

At many churches here in Bougainville, there is an open time during the service where anyone can go to the front of the church and share a testimony (perhaps of what God has taught or done for them during the week) or present an item (usually a song). If someone has something to share, they don’t have to arrange with the service co-ordinator to have it put on the programme, as there is this time set aside for it.

I really like this aspect of church in Bougainville and I think that the verse quoted above encourages us that these sorts of things should be done in church.

Well that’s just my thoughts, but I don’t want to stir up any controversy, and in humility let me give a disclaimer regarding the interpretation of the verse above – I haven’t done a thorough exegesis (study) of this verse and I could be wrong in my understanding of it, plus I’m sure that there are various ways of interpreting and applying it.

Weeding: Before and after

I took these two photos at the same spot before and after weeding in the sweet potato garden. If you click on the photos to see them bigger, you might be able to compare them and see the differences.

Watermelon season!

It seems that now is the time for watermelons, and there are two watermelon patches growing in our village.

We decided to put a fence half-way around one watermelon patch as there was a bit of a thoroughfare there and the impact of peoples’ steps might disturb the sensitive new fruit and make them fall off prematurely. I got in the mood for working on the fence, and the resulting, very basic fence is shown in the two photos below.

Here is a watermelon that has started to get big.

Simone and Jill giving you some perspective of the size of this baby watermelon.

Bugs

Some of the interesting bugs I have come across lately…

Multi-coloured grasshopper:

And now for the spiders…

The same spider as in the above photo, but as a silhouette with the pink sunset sky in the background:

Cross-shape spider. You might need to click on the photo to see it bigger and more clearly.

Nasty looking spider. This spider fell from the curtains when I was opening them in the village. Although the spiders may look nasty and scary, apparently there aren’t any spiders in our area that can bite you, so really there’s nothing to be scared of, but that doesn’t stop me from being afraid anyway!

View from Buka

Sorry it’s been so long between blog posts! I’ve been in the village a lot and not had much time to write any. Hopefully they will be a bit more regular from now on.

Well, when I got back to Bougainville, I enjoyed the nice views from the Centre at Buka where we stay when we’re not in the village. This kind of view really does match the slow pace of life – you step out of the flat and just stand and gaze for a few minutes appreciating the beauty of God’s creation.

Daytime view:

The sun sets on the other side of the island, but we get some nice pink hues in the sky over the sea sometimes.

Moon above the sea with pink sunset clouds:

Moonrise with reflection over the sea:

Two weeks until I leave

I must apologise to any of my blog fans who have been faithfully checking my blog for the past few weeks to see if there is a new post - sorry for disappointing you!

I was really busy while Rebekah was visiting, and I’ve continued to be pretty busy since then, as I do lots of little minor things that need to be done before I leave – as well as the important work of preparing the advisor check of Mark 11-16. The chapters I’m working on are 12, 14 and 16. Chapter 14 is a massive chapter with 72 verses! I’ve finished looking at chapters 12 and 14 now, and just have the 20 verses in chapter 16 to look at, so I’m glad that’s nearly finished.

Rebekah and I had a good time while she was here, so here are some pictures of some of the things we did together.

Feeding wallabies:

Pat a koala:

Ride on Puffing Billy:

Speaking at meetings: