Question...

When you live in a country such as we do there are times when things happen that cause you to question what you previously believed to be true or thought you believed to be true. This past weekend there was a young man, who lives down below us, who was possessed by a demon. People here believe that trees have spirits and when you cut them down they go into a person. Three days before the event, a tree was cut down in our area. Apparently the young man ran out of his home asking where his home was and why did they cut it down without asking for permission first. He went bezerk and broke his fish aquarium, which was how he earned money, and was screaming and uttering guttural sounds that those who witnessed it had never heard a human make before. It took 7 grown men to hold him down and all the while they were beating him and calling out to their god to remove the demon from him. For those that witnessed the event it was very disturbing. An American woman who has lived here for 2.5 years has seen this happen a number of times. She said that the person will have no recollection of the event afterwards and they will just go on with life as before. We did not personally see this, but a few other MAF’ers did. We’re not really sure what to think about it all.
Today we completed day two of our language training. Our class is fairly large, 16 people, and consists of folks from South Korea, America, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Germany, Finland, Canada (me), and Holland (Hugo). So we are quite the diverse group. Everyday we have to introduce ourselves and say where we are from, if we are married, if so, how many children we have and where we live. We will do this everyday of the 20 days we will be in Unit 1. That way by the time we are done, we can say it in our sleep. We do a lot of repeating and mimicking in order to get the sounds right and imprint the words in our brains. Each day we are supposed to talk with 10 people and practice what we have learned that day. We have two teachers, one of whom happens to be the only Papua in the entire school, and they are very good at their job. They have an enthusiasm about them that makes the learning kind of fun. They are very expressive and like to sing… so we start out our days by singing children’s songs… complete with actions…