We were told that after the second bell, we should meet outside of our houses to be escorted to the church for the dedication. Since we had heard lots of talking over a loudspeaker around the time they told us the first bell would be ringing, we then assumed that the actual bells we heard 30 minutes later were the second bells. I'm still not sure if we were right or wrong, but it was a beautiful morning, so we just waited outside for a while until our "escorts" (ladies with endangered Birds of Paradise on their heads, and men in traditional clothing playing the drums) arrived.
Once everyone had arrived, we marched to the church, took our seats of honor at the front, and enjoyed dedication #2. It was similar to the first dedication in that it was almost fully done in a language that the good majority of our group didn't understand, included the presentation of the New Testament to the head pastor, and ended with a receiving line (minus the photo shoot!). Other than that, though, it was completely different. First of all, this entire ceremony was held in a church (with people who didn't fit standing outside in the on-and-off rain!). There were multiple different groups who performed special music numbers (our group being one of them.... the Papuans had heard us singing a hymn after dinner the night before and decided we HAD to be a part of the service!). We were each introduced by name and presented with a handmade Papuan purse/bag as a thank you for coming all this way. And, the podium which was used was about 3 feet shorter than any podium any of us had ever seen, which proved to be quite humorous when the tallest guy in our group, Will Davis, had to read some verses from behind it. It was a very meaningful ceremony and such a privilege to be a part of.
After the service and receiving line, we were escorted to a room next door for a filling lunch, including baked/boiled pig and lots of veggies. (Forgot to mention that we had chicken the night before. The entire 30 years the Joneses have been working on this translation, they've NEVER been served meat at a meal... for this occasion, we got it twice in two days! Must've been pretty special!) When we were done eating, we made our way into a classroom at the village school. About 30 kids arrived when we did, but by the time we started the "lesson" 15 minutes later, there were more than 125 kids crammed into the room. They were the most well-behaved children any of us had ever seen. It was absolutely silent while we waited for Larry and Linda to arrive to translate, so we just awkwardly stood in front of them. Steph tried to get some conversation going, but that crashed and burned when both of her questions flopped and the Papuan teacher was the only one answering! Thankfully Larry showed up shortly and the program could get started. We just briefly walked through the different colors of a salvation bracelet and then handed out all of the ones that we had (one hundred of them!). They went like hot cakes and we had to figure out arrangements for sending more bracelets up the mountain because we ran out before a good portion of kids got bracelets! After Linda repeated the meaning of the colors and had some of the kids come up and do the same, we wrapped up the program with the donation of some books to the school from the Teubl family (family friends of the Joneses from New York).
After Sunday School, some of the group (Ben, Leah, Molly, Charis, Daniel, and Sally) hiked up a very steep, long set of mud steps at the edge of the village. Before leaving, Birage asked, "What’s on top of that hill? Besides a really healthy family?” They were also told to hurry back down because the kids of the village were going to have a dancing and singing presentation for us. About 30 minutes later, they made it down in one piece (Leah had to use Papuans as a handrail and stepping stones, but whatever it takes, right?). Since they were told to hurry, we assumed the kids were going to start fairly soon after they returned, so the Wacek family and Ethan all headed over to the stage where the main event would occur. After three hours of talking, story-telling, and laughing amongst ourselves, a man with a drum finally took the stage and we got excited about the show starting. Little did we know, the show actually had started when we arrived, since during those three hours of carrying on, we WERE the show, with half the village watching intently as these crazy white people (including Monster Clown) stood in a circle and talked. Unfortunately, we got our hopes up for nothing as the man with the drum only did two songs (with a handful of other elderly members of the village dancing along), reason being, as we soon found out, you can’t have a real performance with less than 3 drums! So, as the sun was setting, the rest of the drummers arrived, along with the rest of our group who had been hiking this whole time, and the show started.
It was another remarkable experience. The kids all sang native songs and did some tribal dances on the stage (which mostly consisted of stepping in rhythm in a giant circle around the stage. Occasionally stopping to do a jumping/stomping move during which we were all amazed that the wooden planked stage was not collapsing!). Gradually, us Americans got up enough courage to make our way up on stage and join them, which obviously was met with lots of cheering and applause from the Papuans.
After we were all danced out and our stomachs were rumbling, we made our way back to our host home where we all enjoyed another tasty supper and some more fellowship. Then, everyone went their separate ways; we stayed up talking, singing and dancing with our host ladies, and finally hit the sack…or wooden bed.
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