I really can’t put into words how excited I am to be headed to PNG in just a couple of days. (Before I go any further, if you don’t know where Papua New Guinea is, you aren’t the first to ask. But, if you want to know more Visit PNG is a great site). Chances are though, if you’ve been around here for any length of time, you will know that I grew up in Papua New Guinea and actually Lonnie and I lived and worked there for 2 years when we were first married. And…..our oldest, Denali, was born there. We haven’t been back in 12 years, so this trip is a BIG deal! The last time we visited, it was the Summer before we moved to Yemen, and Denali was about to start Kindergarten. It was time to go back and take our graduated senior so that she could experience and see a little more of her roots.

I’m so excited to take along my O+P friends with instagram and IG stories. PNG is such a big part of who I am, and I feel like this is my chance to really share ME by sharing the place and the people I love so much. If you have ever met anyone who has lived in PNG or even visited, I’m sure they spoke of this magical place with deep affection. Papua New Guineans are the BEST! They are passionate, generous, and really just fun loving people. The land is lush, wild and untouched. Air Niugini, the national airlines, used to have a slogan that describe PNG perfectly -“Land of the Unexpected”.

We will be in Papua New Guinea for 3 weeks (really not long enough). We are headed there with my parents, my youngest brother, Ash, and a couple of friends. While we are there, we have two projects planned. First, we will be helping Lae Christian Academy. It is the school my parents started just over 25 years ago and this is where Lonnie and I worked. The school is located on the banks of the Bumbu River and actually the river is washing away their property. Some of the building are actually hanging over the river bed already. We are going to help them come up with a plan to stop further erosion and possibly even relocate one of the buildings. We will also be doing some children’s programs at the school and helping with some teacher in-services. The second part of our trip is more on the medical side, we will be flying out to the village of Imane in the Morobe Province. This is a village I spent a lot of time in as a child. We will (mostly my mom who is a nurse) hold a clinic there and we will also be doing some repairs on the church building that was built when I was a teenager.

Over the last couple of weeks we have been hustling to raise funds for the projects we will be working on in Papua New Guinea. I sold a bunch of Bakersfield Bags and my brother, Ash, has made some beautiful pieces that I’ve been selling on Instagram. He made some gorgeous walnut framed Tapacloth art pieces. Tapacloth is a bark-like fabric from PNG that is painted with natural dyes. These Tapacloth pieces he framed were actually from the 60’s. He stretched the Tapacloth, framed them in walnut and then added some geometric walnut details.

We sold all but two of them, so if you are still interested, please send me a message. He also made another run of cutting boards and all of those sold out in one day!

We are extremely overwhelmed by everyone’s generosity in making purchases to help support the work we will be doing in PNG.

If you didn’t get a chance to buy one of our handy crafts and you wanted to help with these projects, I have a couple ways you can still give.

We have a GoFundMe page (which also has more info about the school is Lae) and you can also give through The Church of the Nazarene with THIS LINK (this is a charitable donation for tax purposes.

We would really appreciate your prayers for our safety and health over the next month. And pray that we can be a help to the people of Papua New Guinea. And now, follow along on IG, I’ll share whenever I can find wifi!