I grew up in the jungle in a remote village in Papua New Guinea (at the time, known as the Trust Territory of Papua and New Guinea). My parents were missionary Bible translators.

My childhood there seemed very “ordinary” to me. I understood, of course, that life in the far-away nation that my parents called home (the USA) was very different from the life that I knew. From pictures I had seen in books, I knew that in America there were tall buildings, paved roads, and lots of cars. I knew about cars—there were a couple of Land Rovers in the small town an eight-mile walk away from the also small village where we lived, and there were some cars at the mission base in the highlands. There weren’t really roads either—four wheel drive vehicles could, with difficulty, navigate the ruts and mudholes of the shovel-excavated trails.

Life without Electricity and Toilets

There was no electricity. When my parents wanted to charge the batteries that powered the two-way radio used to communicate with the missionary base three hundred miles away, they had to run a fuel-powered generator. Any food and medical supplies they ordered arrived every few weeks. My dad (with some New Guinean helpers) had to walk eight miles to the nearest airstrip and eight miles back to get the delivered supplies. We had a large galvanized water tank to catch rain for drinking water. We had no toilets; we had an outhouse about a hundred yards away from the house.

The “everyday” of my childhood was for my mom to be up before dawn. She would read her Bible and pray for at least an hour. She prepared meals and got school assignments ready for her kids. She treated New Guineans who were injured or sick (she was a nurse and kept a stock of medical supplies on hand).

My mom translated Bible stories and told them to the women and children. My dad worked on analyzing the grammar of the language and translating the Bible (my mom helped when she had time—she spoke the language better than he did). They started with the books of Mark and Romans and went on to other New Testament books. Sometimes, my dad took his rifle and went hunting with the New Guineans for birds or wild pigs (the New Guineans generally hunted with spears).