Arrived in Ukarumpa PNG!!!

Hi Everybody,

 I arrived in Ukarumpa PNG around noon on Monday. It was a wonderful flight on a single prop PT-6A Kodiak 100 plane .The mountains and highland country  we flew over was beautiful!  You could see the villages with the thatched roofs and smoky fires sprinkled throughout the highlands. The weather is about 78 degrees during the day and drops down to around 55 at nite! Ukarumpa is the largest mission center in the world with over 1000 people living on the center. It is amazing how many different professions are represented here. Only about 50% are actual bible translators with the remaining as support staff for the SIL (The Parent Organization for Wycliffe USA). There are 3 full time doctors, 4 nurses, medical technologists, 6-8 accounting personnel, teachers, Directors of Finance, Security, Special Projects, auto mechanics, pilots, store managers etc, well you get the idea! I was surprised how God can use every gift in missions and I love hearing everyone’s story about how they became a missionary in PNG.

 A 5^th member was added to our team at the last minute. Wendy Marple was coming to PNG to visit her 23 year old niece who just started as a bible translator for the long term. She just “happened” to already have booked a flight to PNG the exact day that we were coming and she “happened” to be a CPA and was just going to find something to do as a volunteer for the month. Voila! Another team member that God knew we needed and He supplied!  So we have Dave and June Freswick-Alaska, Stewart Goode-South Carolina, Wendy Marple-Minnesota and myself.

We started our work on Monday afternoon and met with our team and divided our responsibilities.  We are doing an internal control audit for SIL( Summer Institute of Linguistics). These reviews are done to gain an understanding of the internal controls used by each dept within the SIL organization and make suggestions improving their processes. We are given Audit review guides and questions and spend 3-4 days with each dept. I am assigned to audit the medical clinic and the print shop and the regional center in Mapang. 

Here is my schedule as far as I can tell:

Mon- 5/14- Ukarumpa- initial meeting, introductions and tour of Ukarumpa

Tues-5/15- Ukarumpa-Meeting with finance dept and initial meeting with the Head Doctor and Director of the Clinic

Wed-5/16- Fri- 5/18-Audit Interviews with the Dr and bookkeeper of the SIL Clinic and the Ukarumpa Health Center-clinic for PNG Nationals and writing up the review.

Sat-5/19- Going out to a local village for a “moo-moo” feast to meet some of the Papua New Guineans.

Sun-5/20-Church

Mon-5/21-Audit Interviews with the Print Shop Manager and bookkeeper

Tues-5/22- Fri-5/25-Fly to Madang – A city on the eastern coast of PNG- I will be going alone to audit the SIL Regional Center-Guest House

Sat-5/26- Sunday 5/27 Drive to Lae – a coastal town on the east coast of PNG to visit  another regional center of SIL

Mon 5/28-Thurs 5/31- Audit Interviews with the Print Shop Manager and bookkeeper

Fri 6/1- Fly back to Port Moresby – Meet with Audit team to discuss Audit Review findings

Sat 6/2-Stay in Port Moresby- Continue to discuss and write up Audit Review findings

Sun 6/3-Fly back to Cairns, Australia

Tue 6/5-Fly back to the States

Praises for my trip so far:

·         Praise the Lord that He has protected my physical health. I have not been tired, had neck or back pain, travelers sickness or even jet lag!!

·         Praise the Lord that He gave me such good missionary friends in Cairns to help prepare me for PNG

·         Praise the Lord for great team leaders, Dave and June, who are patient supervisors, and have done many of these audits throughout the world.

Prayer Requests:

·         Pray that there would continue to be good communication and unity among our team

·         Pray that we would be efficient gathers of information so that the personnel effected would be not frustrated, since they have a heavy workload too.

·         Pray that we would not get sick so that we would be able to get the audit completed in the amount of time we have.

·         Pray for clarity of mind and understanding the processes as we move from dept to dept.

·         Pray for good and consistent devotion time with the Lord

·         Pray that we would be a blessing to the missionaries that we meet and serve.

Thank you all so much for praying! As you can see from my praises, the Lord has truly answered so many requests. I love being here at PNG and already I feel like the time is going to go so quickly! I am not easily able to get on the internet or email or update my blog with pictures until I get back to Australia, so I will try to email when I am able ! Talk to you soon!

Blessings,  Anne 

please post if you are able! its exciting and encouraging to see who is reading the blog! thanks:))))