Growing up, Christmas was always my favorite time of the year. Probably because I like presents. But it wasn't just materialism, it was also gluttony. I liked the food. I also liked coming in from the cold weather and sitting in front of my parent's glowing coal stove until my shirt nearly started on fire. I liked that I had a break from school for a week or two. Christmas carols are timeless and the Christmas season gave you a good excuse to listen to them. "Peace on earth" was the defining theme of the holiday: Family, friends, food, and fellowship. It was the best time of the year.
Fast forward to this year. We're living on the northern coast of Papua New Guinea and Christmas here is the opposite of everything I expect it to be.
It seems that while the rest of the earth is celebrating peace, Wewak missed the memo. Crime usually increases during the holidays. I guess it does in my homeland too, I just didn't have to medivac the victims to the hospital when it did.
One reason crime increases in Wewak is because town is full of people who don't typically live here. There's a bunch of strangers visiting their relatives or just passing through town on their way home for the holidays. Town is packed beyond capacity. And, when you have few social ties to the neighborhood, apparently there is less shame for your actions.
On New Year's Day somebody got stabbed in town and then the victim's family burned down a couple of the murderer's family's homes in retaliation.
The next day I was driving to the hangar and the smoke columns from the smoldering houses were still rising over the main street. I had just saw on a local WhatsApp group that there were some armed men coming down the beach road looking for revenge. I wasn't their target and it was probably just a rumor but I still took an alternate route. I didn't need extra cultural lessons that day.
As I picked my way through the extra police cars and security personnel loitering around town, it struck me as ironic that I was driving through all this unrest so I could get to the hangar and worry about things like safety footwear, fluorescent vests, safety glasses, and eye wash stations. I sighed and shook my head. I've been doing that a lot lately.
It's important to note, especially since my mother is reading this, that there are lots of great, peaceful people here. When you take Oliver to the market, he gets treated like a celebrity. I could sell his blonde, curly hair for some serious cash. But since we're here in Papua New Guinea supporting free medivacs for bush villages, we see a lot of trauma cases. Trying to figure out how to fit people into a little Cessna floatplane with a six foot spear through them isn't an uncommon problem. But we're dealing with all the cases that arise along the seven hundred mile long Sepik river - and all its tributaries! There are lots of good people on this island who go their whole lives without stabbing anyone. But even good people like a little drama so when there's a disturbance at the market, for example, a crowd will materialize in an instant. I'll try to take a quick note which direction everyone is running, then I'll go the opposite way.
Every so often, usually when I'm shopping for land in Alaska, Janice has to remind me that this isn't a bad place to live. Pineapple season, whenever that is, finds us eating pineapples the way God designed them to be eaten: ripe, juicy, sweet, cheap, and plentiful. We don't have to wear seatbelts or shoes. I probably discover species unknown to science every time I go snorkeling. We have beautiful palm trees here and that makes it hard for me to find meaningful amounts of sympathy from my friends, especially during Christmas.
"How can you be grumpy? It looks like paradise!" they say, as they shiver in their parkas.
It's just that this place turns everything I view as normal on it's head, and that puts me in a bad mood every so often.
Since it's the hottest time of the year, that undoubtedly contributes to societal unrest. I know it contributes to mine! Dawn softly illuminates the cool morning sky at around 5:45 am but half an hour later the afternoon sun has already burnt it away. Singing "Silent Night" as loud as you can does little to push the sun farther from earth. You can try to wish the heat away but it'll always find you, like the summer sun finds a box of crayons your children left on the dashboard of your car.
The lack of seasons here is what makes life go by in a blur. That, and the sweat in your eyes.
Oh sure, we have seasons. One season is hot and wet and the winds blow up the coast. Another is hotter and a little drier, and the winds blow down the coast. Or vice versa, I can't remember. Mangos grow better during one half of the year and worse the other. That's about it. It's easy to get the two seasons confused, especially since I don't grow mangos. In fact, a season will go by and I won't even notice it. Because of this, time blurs together. There is no digging out flannel sheets or sweatshirts or jumping in piles of leaves. There is no excitement of the first snow. There are no rosy cheeks filled with hot cocoa or tingling fingers full of cold. There's very little lengthening or shortening of days. It's just a featureless dash towards the End Times. One day you wake up and realize your children are larger than you remembered and so in a daze, like a prisoner coming out of solitary confinement, you ask what month it is. "December" is the reply and you suddenly realize Christmas isn't far away.
I've never had Christmas sneak up on me before yet here it does.
This year, though, we started a new tradition that helped me remember my favorite holiday was approaching.
Maybe two years ago Janice bought an Advent nativity set. The idea is that on each day of December you remove a character from its little wooden box, read a short devotional based on the character, and then slowly assemble the nativity scene. On Christmas Day, Jesus makes his appearance and you lie him in the manger. It's neat and everything but it doesn't work well if the nativity set is 8,000 miles away. Or stuck in a box somewhere in between.
You see, some family members had shipped it (along with some tools, clothes, and other things) to Papua New Guinea in February of 2024. After waiting eight months for it arrive, we gave up hope of ever seeing it. One day Janice and I had an impromptu meeting at the kitchen table, between screaming kids, bowls of overturned cereal, and flying utensils.
"Well, Janice... I don't think we'll ever see that box."
"Nope."
"Should we buy that stuff again and just send it with whoever is coming next?
"Sure," Janice sighed, "except I can't get another nativity set right now. They've stopped making them until next year."
I shook my head, sighed, and left for the hangar. Not that I didn't care. It's just that the planes are my masters and they were demanding that a 100 hour inspection get finished.
The very next day we found a box on our kitchen table that looked like it traveled 8,000 miles. We ripped it open, which wasn't hard considering it was already was, and were excited to find it was our missing box of goodies!
Just then, Mary, another missionary here on base, burst through the door. She had checked the post office that morning for a package she was expecting. She was elated when they handed her a package but then just as disappointed to find it wasn't hers. She had put it on our table. She was trying not to look too jealous of our newfound possessions.
Janice expressed some obligatory sympathy then asked, "How long have you been waiting for your package?"
"Two months," she said.
I shook my head and sighed.
If you need something urgently delivered to Papua New Guinea, you'll be better off waiting until teleportation is invented and then sending it that way.
Still, we did get it before Christmas. After gluing a few broken pieces together, we set it up on our shelf, along with whatever festive lights the local store had to offer. It felt a little bit like Christmas. At least when the electric is on.
The electric here is really unreliable so we have a big diesel generator right in front of our kitchen window, which does have it downsides. Imagine a semi-truck idling on your front porch. But the upside is that we have electric. It has an automatic switching mechanism that starts the generator when the power goes off. It's a very nice feature because some days the power will switch on and off twenty times.
When it does switch, it causes all ten of our light strings to switch modes and start blinking rapidly in uncoordinated madness. If you were just randomly thrown into our house, you would hear the deep throaty thrum of the generator, see the seizure inducing light show, and probably just assume you're in some kind of poorly decorated nightclub. Granted, I don't really go to nightclubs so I'm making a few assumptions.
I think it goes without saying that the generator carries on its shoulders the hopes and dreams of everyone living on the base.
So when it breaks down in the middle of the night and all the fans and air conditioners suddenly stop working, the missionary wives push their husbands out the door - along with strict instructions not to return until it is fixed! This results in a motley crew of husbands in various states of undress gathering around the generator blinking their bleary eyes and asking each other what went wrong this time. Inevitably we try fixing it the same way we did last time, progressing through our list of home remedies until one works. Then we hop into bed smelling of diesel and soot and telling our wives that if they don't like it, they can go fix it next time. And so brave men, by the sweat of their brow, help civilization hang on just a little bit longer.
That is until Anton, the Russian philosopher, pilot, and car mechanic arrived here awhile ago with his family. He's adopted the generator as his own and takes care of it like he knows what he's doing. It's been awhile since I've had to go hit some doohickeys with a wrench or drain water and scum from a various filters while holding a flashlight in my teeth. That's not a complaint.
The other day Anton was helping me fix some bitter, old airplanes and he said something that struck me. He said, "I came to the mission field to change the world but so far the only thing that has changed is myself."
The Bible talks about trials refining you. During the process of refinement, all of the impurities in the metal rise to the top. This has been happening to me. Whether it's sweating during Christmas, taking bleach baths with a snorkel to treat some sort of skin condition, having someone swing a machete at me while I'm driving past on my motorcycle, or having all the children on base practice their circus routines on my back deck while my wife is trying to sleep, I've been finding trials have been melting my personality and I've been disgusted by what floats to the top. I didn't know I was such a bad person. It shouldn't be much of a revelation since the same Bible I mentioned before says this, repeatedly. But, just like a good science experiment, seeing an abstract theory come to life with your own eyes is startling. And educational.
Nice Josh and Nasty Josh can be triggered by a good meal, an un-signaled left turn, a broken generator, a cold Coke, or an unfortunately aimed blob of spit coming from a passing bus. The spit really sets me off.
Maybe I'm lucky. I'm learning things about myself that most people never do. But that's Nice Josh talking. Tomorrow Nasty Josh will be at the airport trying to hitchhike home because someone sold him some bad mangos. He should have known they were out of season.
Luckily for us (and our coworkers), our furlough is coming up in April. We'll be flying to Alaska first, and then down to Michigan. Then spending time in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Nice Josh and Nasty Josh are both really looking forward to it.
