Thursday, April 30, 2015

pictures from Easter Sunrise Service






Hello Again



Dear friends,
Time to start up my blog again.  I am sorry it has been so long.  For a while I wasn’t able to get online much due to problems with both power and internet access.  Then I got out of the habit.  However, I am going to start this up again and hope to make monthly posts
.
I am in the middle of the first semester for the 2015 school year here in Senior Flierl Seminary.  Since our school year here in Papua New Guinea and much of the Southern hemisphere runs from February through November, you never have two different calendar years in a school year (that’s handy).  This term I am teaching three classes in English – English 1 (first year students), English 3 (second year students), and  an elective course in which we are reading an English language book on the Beatitudes.  I am also trying to teach two classes in Tok Pisin.  One is a class on Spiritual Life (Laip long Spirit)  in which we do Bible readings and discussions.  The last one is Pasin Bilong Studies, which is a study skills course.  My  Tok Pisin classes end up having some English in them unfortunately.  

Holy week and Easter are very nice here.  The students stay on campus during this time so we have quite a few celebrations together.  For me there were two highlights.  One was Palm Sunday.  The year 1 students did a great drama before service to get everyone into the church.  The re-enacted the entry into Jerusalem.  Two of the students were dressed up as the donkey.  One student (the lightest) actually rode into the church on top of them.  I then gave the sermon. Thanks to help from friends my Tok Pisin made sense.

Easter Day was a lovely sunrise service.We held it outside at a spot with a lovely overview of the Pacific Ocean. They had cleaned the brush away so there was a wonderful view. We started singing at 4:30 a.m. (well, I was a few minutes late).  The service started at 5 a.m. with the sunrise at 5:30 a.m.  We finished around 6 a.m.  I went home to take a nap, though had friends over afterwards.

Hope to talk to you again soon.