Post Christmas thankyou letters

1963 February 24  (a copy)

Dear Helen, Charlie, Greg, and Vicki, (Alvin’s sister Helen)
Thank you Helen for taking care of our little business transaction for us. I’ve forgotten that we had check banks here and could do it from here. We hope that you are feeling better- back aches can be so miserable and so difficult to get rid of.

Thank you so much for your thoughtful Christmas package. Paula loved her little dress and keeps begging to wear it. It looks really cute on her. Tommy wore his new pants to church last Sunday. It was cool enough so he wore the little blue sweater that your mother gave him before we left the States. He was so proud of himself and he sticks out his big belly and marched around with a big grin on his face so everyone could see him. The kids enjoyed the toys too. They don’t know about Donald Duck but do enjoy the duck. Tom can even say duck now. He had a bunch of company when the box arrived so we put the game Password to work right away. We did have lots of fun with it. Oh, if I played the record on Tennessee Ernie Ford once I’ve played it 20 times. We both really enjoy it. He surely sings with sincerity.

Al was at the annual conference the last two weeks. Phyllis, our teacher went also. We’ve been having so much company that our dispensary had been so busy that it was really wonderful just to relax and read a little. I planned on getting a lot of sewing done, but didn’t get to it. Al got home on Friday night and left on Saturday morning for a trip into the mountains –Hotec (pronounces Hote)- in back of Malalo. I just got a note from him today saying that they had a service Sunday that lasted for four hours. They baptized 20 infants and 20 adults, confirmed about as many, married two couples, and had communion for 200. So all in all it was a long day. He expects to be back next Monday or so. But I won’t expect him until I see him.

Kids are changing. Tommy is talking more and more. He imitates Paula or Pawa as he calls her. Always calls me Ina and will not say mama. He often calls Al -Al, But usually it is daddy. Paula calls him Bingsu. So cute. In a note from Al today, he said he found a bag full of toys that Paula had thoughtfully included. I told her that daddy said thank you and she said “welcome daddy” so she knew what I was talking about. He really got a charge of out of that. Tommy loves the “twactoa “ which is what he calls our tract grip. Believe me, that thing doesn’t leave the yard but what both the kids are in it. Tommy can crawl in by himself now. He’s always fooling around looking under it, like daddy -I guess trying to fix it. Al had been so disgusted. Trying to get parts for it and keeping it in repair that he is getting rid of it. That means we will be walking up the hill. It cost so much for the little we run it. As long as we can get schoolboys to help carry things and kids up the hill then we don’t really need it. The schoolboys are usually short on food so we can pay them in rice etc. for carrying things up. That will help a lot with that problem. I’ll miss it but we are young bodied people so it won’t hurt us to walk up the hill.

Tract Grip near the top of the Malalo Hill. The 3 older children are the Ramin children and Mr Ramin in the cap, Paula and Tommy are the smaller children. The women are maybe guests from Lae or shortterm teachers from Bula or maybe the Lae area. I’m not sure who the driver is- it looks a little like Mark the carpenter? One of the staff’s children in front of Paula.

Tommy’s collarbone healed nicely. He didn’t have any pain with it. He moved his arm very well even before I put some kind of a sling on it. He just had a little bump to prove that it was broken. Otherwise it was none the worst for where. No wiser however. He still climbs…..
The last sentence is cut off.

Much of the Malalo circuit is in the Mountains. There are 3 main mountain areas each with many villages. The Buangs to the north of Malalo near Lae, the Hote area straight west of Malalo or ‘behind’ the station and to the south the Kiawua tribes. The only way in is to hike to them.

1963 February 24  (a copy)

Dear Inez, Charlie, Ben, Ricky, Ellen, and any boarders you might have. (Ina’s aunt Inez)

Thank you so much for the bandages. They came at a time when I was completely out in the dispensary. Tommy use the first bandage to wrap his arm after broke his collarbone. I hope the letter from our nurse Glelmo arrived OK. As you can, gather, Tommy is helping me type. I surely was aghast at the postage. I guess if there is no cheaper way to send them, it would be better not to send them. It is much too expensive. Thank you so much we really appreciate them so much. It is so hard trying to take care of sores without bandages.

Happy birthday, Ben. I hope you had a nice birthday. No doubt your mother baked you a lovely cake. Paula says happy to you birthday. I was trying to teach her to say happy birthday to her daddy on his birthday and she would sing. Happy to you. Happy to you and leave out the birthday, now however she adds it at the end.

The missionaries that talked us into coming to New Guinea, the Fred Scherle’s  just returned to the States. Fred had been having so much trouble with his back that he is going to have surgery on it. Their son Fred Junior has something wrong with his chest so will have to have something done to it. The breast bone has sunken way in. I was worried about it when I saw them here. I hoped to return when everyone gets straightened around again.

I made potato chips tonight. I won’t be satisfied until I have them all eaten up. I don’t often fix them it takes so long but we do enjoy them once in a while. My house girls went shrimp hunting and brought us back some shrimp so while I was frying them, I made some potato chips too.

We hope that all is well at your house. What are you working on your jobs? Keeps changing? We all have been quite well. Al is in need of a vacation. The weather has been so hot, that is it is almost unbearable. However, the evening cools off. It’s been so dry, that the gardens are burning up and it is their only source of food and income when they sell their vegetables. So I don’t know what they will do for food. Gideon, one of our teachers said that most of the people have a staple called Sago– like tapioca – that they get out of the center of a tree. They have to beat it and cook it. It’s very starchy, but maybe with fish they will be able to get along until the new crop comes in April.

Some of our mountain people brought watermelons for me to buy– eight to be exact. We have watermelon for morning, coffee, for dessert at noon and for afternoon coffee and for dessert for supper. Then to make the day complete we have watermelon before we go to bed. There’s only three left. And no one has complained that they are tired of watermelon. I guess it was a good commodity to get an abundant supply of. Cucumbers have been about the same way. One of these days I must get some pickles made. They won’t keep very long, but at least they would keep longer than the plain cucumbers. Nothing keeps potatoes, and they only last about two weeks. We can never save up on anything because it all goes bad so fast. Even salted meat doesn’t last more than a little while.

My stove has been giving us so much trouble. I was investigating and found a couple of big holes in the stovepipe. So today I have been having a couple of men making me a new stovepipe. They really had a job, but they got it all put together and now my stove doesn’t smoke. I have to try baking tomorrow and see if the oven heats better. Everything rusts out in a very short order living so near the sea. I guess every paradise has it disadvantages. Speaking of disadvantages, it sounds like you are having quite a winter this year. We really don’t feel too badly about having to miss both last winter in this winter.

I’ve been having so much trouble with sores on my legs. I just scratch my ankle while shaving my leg back in November and I haven’t been able to get it healed up. I’d get it to just about healed and then it would get all blistering and swollen and sore and then weep and weep. No one else seemed to get it so I thought it couldn’t be impetigo or something like that. I thought maybe it was something I’m putting on them, so I didn’t put anything on it and didn’t get better, but it didn’t get worse. Then I tried just one thing at a time found I was allergic to iodine that I was using as an antiseptic. When I applied it, it started to itch, and soon there were those bubbles again, had it back as bad as bad as ever. So I didn’t put it on anymore and have my ankle at long last almost healed.

Both the kids are getting so big. Tommy isn’t much of a baby anymore though he still likes to cuddle. Paula never did like to be held, but Tommy comes and snuggles up all the time. He loves playing with trucks and tractors and cars. He knows the sounds little boys are supposed to make when they push their trucks around. Paula plays so nicely with her dolls. She wraps them at her filthy blanket and is always showing them something. I would say look Paula at the cow, or airplane, or what have you so now Paula has to show her babies the kitties and everything. “Look kitty, cow “or look baby- Philla coming” as she calls Phyllis or short term teacher.

Last Saturday Al went on a trip to the mountains and back at Malalo. His plans on being gone about two weeks. He sent a note Paula had so thoughtful, included a string bag of toys in his packs. We got a bang out of that as I’m always finding little extra things in my packing if we plan to go to Lae or somewhere. She had her blanket in when Al went to the conference, but I found it before he left.

Work progress is very slowly here. Most of the time we think that it is foolishness, trying to work among such disinterested people. But God does love them, and he wants them for his own. It seems when we are at the most discourage, that God sends someone that seems to have a little savvy or understanding or that has done a good Christian deed or something. Anyway, life really isn’t so bad and we have been enjoying ourselves. It isn’t everyone who can live in a south Pacific island and get paid for it.

We had a very lovely and lively Christmas. I think I described it in the newsletter I wrote home. We seem to be settling in nicely.

1963 February   (a copy)
Miss Nina Fosmark,
Fairview alumni Association,
2312 S. 6th St.,
Minneapolis 6, MN

Dear Miss Fosmark,

Thank you so much for your Christmas greeting and for the subscription to the Time magazine.

Here we are kind of out of the main stream of news so we really enjoyed getting some of the back of the scenes that we get from the Time. We can enjoy daily newscast major events on Voice of America, but more hommy things we like to keep abreast of in the Time. After being a New Guinea for nearly a year and a half we can speak the church wide language, well enough to communicate simple ideas, but to say anything worthwhile is yet impossible much to our frustration. We have constantly had the trouble of misunderstanding, which can be quite serious at times. (Jabemor Yabem is the common language spoken in the Malalo circuit. Pidgin is the common language spoken throughout PNG)

We live in a very beautiful place at Malalo. We overlook the peninsula of Salamaua, which you can probably find on a map of New Guinea located on the Huon. Before the war, Salamaua was the capital of New Guinea, however, it is deserted. It still is a beautiful beaches, and we’ve heard many rumors that people are interested in building resorts there if the future of New Guinea settles down a little.

Photo from PNG perspective

We have enjoyed a lot. It is so nice to have fresh lemons and oranges growing in our backyard. Have an abundance of fresh coconuts. We discovered that milk from green coconuts is very refreshing after a dry hot walk in the sun. They picked them early in the morning and keep them out of the sun, so they stay refreshingly cool. They have a bit of the tang or zip to them to make it a pretty good substitute for bottled pop. The fresh pineapple is surely delicious. It is so nice to have fresh fruits and vegetables around. We do, of course miss the snow, but the reports from home have been such that we don’t feel bad having missed the last two years.

Al is kept real busy with his five congregations and 90 schools to supervise. He tries to visit each of the villages, at least twice a year, which means some long hikes up some tall mountains. As of yet I haven’t accompanied him on any of them as the kids have been too small. A new airstrip has been opened on the back area so it is possible to fly in. It used to take two days of hard walking and now it takes 10 minutes of flying and five more hours of walking. I do plan to go with him when he visits these people in March.

We are teaching English in all of our schools. This is a slow process because English is so foreign to their thinking and it is difficult to learn. The mission has asked for and gotten what we call short term teachers that come out for two years and help with the English programs, both with students and native teachers. We are fortunate to have a short term teacher living with us…….
Letter ends here

Student housing at the Malalo Station school