Away for the week

Hi all, we are off to Ambrym for the week, painting a roof at Moru
village.

God Bless
Jon

Jon & Viv Parkes
Talua Ministry Training Centre
PO Box 242,
Luganville,
Santo,
VANUATU

blog blong jon

It has been cooler, I have a sweatshirt and shocks on while writing this. Not many bugs flying about, the ants seem to be a lot less and no bites from centipedes.

What have we been doing this week? I’ve spent a lot of time bleeding the generator. The coconut oil is not all its cracked up to be and even though the concept is great, a renewable local resource, because it is not refined and therefore pure enough, it will end up damaging the generator – so sadly we will be going back to diesel. Add to that a week of mainly cloud and hence little solar charging, we have had to use the batteries sparingly.

So some nights this past week we have sat around the table with candles, in fact we thought of writing a blog called, 101 things to do with a candle. Phillip found burning hair was cool (but it stinks), so he began pulling out more hair and burning it. By the way, Viv’s hair is fine and fine hair tends to curl up faster and burn quicker, and perhaps not smell as much!

About the cloud - again when we tried to watch the All Blacks the cloud stopped the signal to the Tata schools’ new satellite dish, so we went online to read what was happening.

Even though it’s been cloudy, there has not been much rain. All of Talua’s rain water tanks are empty. So we are drinking the water from the tap which is not very clean – we boil it. Many of the students walk up the road a few kilometers to get water from a clean stream. We have a gas top and so boiling water is easy and quick. The students cook on open fires.

 

Last Sunday I preached at the evening service, the topic was the Kingdom of God - see a bit of it below. Some staff and students didn’t like it, why? Well, cos I’m from a different culture therefore I am removed from the Vanuatu culture; I can bring a measure of objectivity to what I see. So last week I named a couple of small things that happen in Vanuatu that are un-kingdom of God, they happen here without people really knowing they are happening.

So what do I think the kingdom of God is?

The upside down kingdom

The Kingdom of God is where people’s hearts and relationships have been enabled by the Spirit of God to live in subordination to the reign of God.

The kingdom of God is the upside down kingdom. We as humans tend to put us first whereas the kingdom of God does not work that way. It is where the first come last and the last come first. Where the rich are the poor and the poor are the rich. Where winning is losing and losing is wining. The Kingdom of God is where to live for oneself is to die and to die to ones own live is to live. It is where justice, compassion and mercy rule.

It is where the poor in spirit are in possession of the kingdom of heaven. Where those who mourn are comforted, where the meek (that is humble in spirit and manner) will inherit the earth. As for the proud - well woe to them - they miss out. The proud, the arrogant, the ones who think they have life all sorted - they miss out.

The upside down kingdom is where Jesus calls us to be helpful to our enemies, to be good friends with those deemed to be despicable or contemptible. The upside down kingdom is where we are to be friends with prostitutes (try it sometime), where we become friends with a kava bar owner or a criminal. Where we are to exchange pursuit of status to a pursuit of slavery. The upside down kingdom is where we change our whole approach to money

 

…ohh that hurt, you can blog about anything but keep away from talking about money, preachers always stuff up when preaching about money…

 

that last bit is not from the sermon, its more thinking over things since then. I mentioned in an email to someone how we as a family we went to a resort and ate two pizzas last week. Tasted pretty darn good to be honest. The tricky part is the cost of the two pizzas, chips and whatnot equated to a reasonable percentage of a Talua student’s annual fees. Today I ordered a part for the laptop. Simple as abc, just a few clicks on the laptop and its done, painless and effortless and more money than the students or staff get in a month. It’s scary to ponder what we do with our wealth. It is also scary ponder that we rarely have the ability to suss and critique our own cultures spending habits cos we are part of the culture and spend in the same manor. 

So when it was explained to some of the staff what I meant when I said it seems many people in Vanuatu lie, “that its culturally acceptable to lie”, they said “no we don’t” but when lying was explained fuller they said “but we do that all the time, its normal,”. They don’t consider the lying to actually be lying and can’t see that its “wrong”

In NZ we spend up large on stuff we don’t need, “but we do that all the time, its normal,”  We don’t even think twice that what we are doing is against the kingdom of God. In fact the previous sentence seems way over the top cos we have become so enculturated. I wonder if in NZ we are doing a pile of things that are “wrong” but don’t even know? It seems we complain about the past generations mistakes very quickly yet forget we are digging our own hole.

 

Oh well
lets go to hell
with a pile of shopping

 

God Bless

Jon

 

aussies all blacks waves & whales clouds prayers blessed p.s.

Things are busy around here. Currently there are 3 teams of work parties from Aussie, two working on the new library and doing a few other odd jobs and the other group doing various work. Each group is staying about 10 days - most of them billeted in with the student’s accommodation - single and married quarters. So it’s different around here, at times its hard to teach cos of the noise from the building and whatnot.

Last Saturday night we went to Tata Primary and Secondary School hoping to watch All Backs against the Aussies. The school brought a satellite dish for the Football World Cup - but there was too much cloud for a signal (and we don’t know if it would have been shown on the TV stations anyway). Cos Radio NZ international have not been able to secure rights to play the test I did a google for All Blacks live and found a website that had the score of the game and commentary of what was happening - updated every 1 minute or so. It was great to be able to know what was happening, we only logged in for the last 15 minutes of each half cos internet is expensive here. With all the Aussies here I’m pleased we thumped them.

We have been enjoying big seas lately - great body surfing. Sometimes the waves take us right up on to the sand like stranded whales - speaking of whales…yep been eating a lot of bread and stodgy food. We miss the lighter food one gets in NZ.

The past week or so has been very cloudy so the solar charging didn’t happen at all. We had to turn of the fridge for a few days so not to ruin the deep cycle batteries. All of a sudden we couldn’t use the laptops whenever but had to be careful - it is amazing how we take things for granted.

If you are the praying kind of person, pray for William as he is finding it the hardest at the moment, he misses his NZ mates a lot. For William friendships are important and when the local boys tease him - he gets very upset. We presume the teasing is more cultural misunderstandings (on both sides) but some days he wants to go back to NZ. Also pray for Phillip cos two nights ago be was very badly bitten by a Centipede. He came into our bedroom late one night saying his arm really really hurt. Turning on a torch he had four round bite marks on his upper arm. We found a large centipede under his mattress. So pray for Phillip and our protection in general - don’t really want any logging trucks causing disasters – read below about the dream. On Monday a truck flipped near Luganville with people killed and injured, the hospital barely coped. Talking to a nurse yesterday (from one of the Aussie work parties), she had a look at the hospital and thought it would not be a good place to be in an emergency.

So if you are the praying kind of person please do.

The following is possibly a Melfoquine induced dream.

Yesterday our family hired the Navota Farm Ute for the afternoon to go to town. It was nice to go to a restaurant and have Pizza for tea. It was scary buying supplies when they are so expensive over here. I guess the dream came from the fact we used the ute.

In the dream, a student brought the ute to Talua from Navota - this does not happen in reality as the farm manager (Ia) does not let anyone drive the ute…in fact it is hard enough for me to be able to use it as Ia prefers to drive it, it gives him mana, makes him a big man and the resulting problem is he drives it too much. Instead of running the farm he is driving into town and back all day long. Like all dreams - other things were out of place, i.e. the road was on the wrong side of Talua and therefore the ute came from the wrong direction.

Anyway the student parked the ute poorly leaving the main road half blocked. Soon a logging truck passed Talua and in order to get past the ute drove up on a ledge on the side of the road. (In reality there is no ledge). The next thing I know the truck had lost its load and massive logs were rolling everywhere. I and a few students went running around campus to see the damage, it was horrific - one student had his arm stuck - I presumed crushed - between a pile of logs - there was no blood and guts in the dream, another weird thing was this student still has his usual grin even though he was indicating there were people stuck below the logs. The prospect was grim and I felt hopeless - there was no way to get the people out, the logs were too big, running around the fear rose about Viv and the kids - total horror began to take over as I felt more and more helpless about my inability to shift the massive logs. My mind raced to the bombings in India and earthquake victims and how they must feel. I then woke up. Not a good dream…but worth thinking about.

Often on TV one sees earthquake victims from the comfort of a lounge. And often it is hard to imagine how horrific the situation is for the people. The dream brought that to life - the horror and hopelessness, especially when the panic set in that my kids could be buried and I have no idea. Including no idea if they were somehow still alive under the logs but due to the limited resources and size of the logs, there was now way to do anything - total hopelessness.

It was good to wake up - as you can imagine. I hope in the future I can show a deeper sensitivity to those who have lost love ones in such horrific tragedies. As one would think, my prayers after the dream were of profound gratefulness to God for his blessing on me and our family. I think I have been taking his blessings for granted - way too much. The blessings of having children, having a fantastic wife - a great whanau. I have always wondered about doing research into ‘what does it mean to be blessed by God and therefore what does it mean to be cursed by God, for that matter, is a person cursed by God or by some other way’. Well the dream reminded me that as a family and for me personally, we are tremendously blessed by God.

God Bless

Jon

PS

Its been a couple of days since writing the above. Being the dry season we have run out of rain / drinking water. The photo above is Connie and Beryl sitting back enjoying a good coconut drink.

Also - the Aussie groups have left, leaving us feeling a bit flat and lonely. It is great to have them here - they did a good job. Its interesting on the night after they left - the generator broke down. Using the new Coconut Oil fuel, even though the filters were changed and the tank fully cleaned out, it would seem we need new filters. Since the problem happened on a Saturday night - we will have no power till Monday night. Not good since its cloudy a lot at the moment.

Tata School

Not much bloging lately. Maybe cos it's been cold here - we tend to put on a warmer shirt some evenings at the moment.

I have updated our website with a page about Tata school. Have a look. Click on the link
http://homepages.slingshot.co.nz/~jvp/Talua/TataSchool/TataSchool.htm

God Bless
Jon