It is tough being a foreigner in a country with a lot of expectations, questions and assumptions as to how to fit in to the new community and adjust to their way of living.

There are many people in different walks of life who are either so lucky or unlucky depending on themselves, to be cast into that boat.

Among those many are missionaries who are called by our Lord to serve in foreign countries further away and much different from their home country.

There are both positive and negative sides to such a big move and it all comes down to the individual on the receiving end.

Papua New Guinea is no stranger to missionaries, they were in fact the first people to set foot on this island nation.

Most people can recall different missionary tales in their different contexts and can fill hundreds of pages with them,

Unlike other island nations however, this small nation is known to over 800 different language groups and is home to a diverse ethnic community.

Imagine the early missionaries who had no form of technology and not even a single knowledge of the territory they were entering into except their mission for the conversion of souls. They really had to prepare for the unexpected.

Fast forward to centuries later, missionaries are still doing this selfless act of bringing out the Good News away from their comfort zones.

It was only 50 years ago that missionaries coming to Papua New Guinea started receiving Cultural Orientation Course that helped them to know and understand the different aspects of Melanesians and their cultures.

This COC was the first born of the Melanesian Institute borne in November 1969 in Vunapope and became an annual program up until this year.

For the first time in 50 years MI held for the second Cultural Orientation Course for expatriate missionaries in the same year for the first time in its history.

The Melanesian Institute (MI) hosted it’s second COC for expatriate missionaries from the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) PNG based in Aiyura Valley of the Kainantu district in Eastern Highlands Province recently at the MI campus.

The 25 missionaries who attended the three-week course were of different nationalities some American, Latin American, Canadian, South Korean, Australian and European including those of Polish and Russian descent who attended as either a participant and an observer.

The Melanesian Institute’s annual COC enables new expatriate missionaries to be equipped with knowledge about the tradition, culture and practices of Melanesian societies especially in PNG in the traditional and modern times.

The course took the missionaries through

• Mission and Contextualization in the first week
• Social Institutions and Integration in the second week
• Social Mobility and Sustainability in the third week

MI hosted it’s annual COC as scheduled in January like it does every year but was requested by the SIL PNG also in the beginning of the year to host another one for its recently arrived missionaries.

The missionaries who attended the course have lived in PNG from as long as 8 years to as short as only a month.

Amanda Kundil