Family Musings

It is a nice quiet Sunday morning. In a bit, I’ll head over to the meeting house to go to church. Afterwards, I go have birthday pancakes at a friend’s house. Yesterday, calendar-wise in PNG, was her birthday. And we had a nice dinner with cake last night. But she is really a California girl, so today’s lunch is about when she was born, and birthday pancakes are our traditional birthday fare, partly because they are easy to make when in a remote village. We even have them to celebrate the birthdays of friends and family. The pancakes are made with either currants or chocolate chips, whichever we think that the honoree would choose. Today we will have currants, mostly just celebrating that we finally have currants. There has been a dearth of currants for a long time now. It is difficult on days like birthdays & holidays to be so far from our families. Yet, it is also sweet & comforting, how we are family to each other. Karen is like my sister; and the couple the couple that was at the birthday dinner are also like family. In fact, I call the husband, Uncle David. I am very thankful for the family that I have here in PNG.