New Videos, Updates, and Bunnies!!!

Maybe you are only subscribed to this Blog and not my Facebook account (Michael Ritzman) or my YouTube channel (OMPNG). In that case this will be great news: I have a Facebook account and a YouTube channel!!!!!

Now that you know you should go look me up on FB. And while you are clicking around go see the two new OMPNG Missionary Update videos on Youtube. Here, I will give you convenient links:

Most recent OMPNG Missionary Update with Rev. Dr. Willard Burce, one of the first Lutheran Missionaries to Papua New Guinea.

Second most recent OMPNG Missionary Update with me and Pastor Larry Matro. We deliver our totes to the international shipping company.

Some of you were asking if our shipping crates arrived safely. I do not want to spoil the surprise, but they are sitting directly behind me as I type. Wait, that kind of spoiled the surprise, didn’t it?

So what else is new? Well, I am finally in Papua New Guinea after a long wait for my paperwork to pass through the vaunted halls of government. But maybe you already knew that. I can’t remember what I previously wrote, and I am too busy/lazy to go back and research. So, here I am.

We are learning the language. It is easier to hear than to speak...as if my ears are connected to my brain but my mouth is not. Sometimes I speak French...is that weird?

I got a car, and the seminary students helped me build a carport to keep it dry. It is supposed to rain a lot here, but lately it has not. Here, 'lately' means about seven months, which is an incredibly long time to go without steady rain when you are a subsistence farmer.

The internet is incredibly slow here. By ‘here’ I mean at my house. There are spots where internet connection is good and speeds are decent. These spots are called Cell Towers, and if you are fortunate to live near one you happily surf the net. The rest of us click and wait.

The food is good and we sleep a lot. Not because we are lazy, but because it gets dark (very dark) at 6:30pm and stays dark until 6:00am every day. And if the power is out the only reasonable thing to do is go to bed. And the power is out often, like, right now. I’ve lost 20 pounds.

We have big spiders. I will not go into detail because you need to hear about giant spiders as much as you need to hear about some of the bathrooms I have been in. Both come straight out of your nightmares, and involve equal parts fear and crying.

Baby Bunnies are the opposite of spiders

And we are helping the drought victims…some of them. We would love to help them all but it would take a ridiculous amount of resources and we would probably only reach a portion and only for a limited time. So we pray for relief. Please pray with us:

Father of all mercy and grace, please look favorably upon the people of Papua New Guinea and give them good weather so their crops may grow and they may live to serve you and their neighbors in peace and love. Assist those who bring aid to find alternative solutions to the drought. Strengthen and encourage your shepherds to minister to those who are suffering. Give them counsel and courage to proclaim your steadfast love shown in the death and resurrection of your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. We pray all this in His name. Amen.

~Michael