Paul's PNG Mission Trip - Special Edition 01

[pandrews]

(June 16th, 2010)

This morning Dr. and missionary Steve Lutz has been granted a reprieve
from his cancer and has passed from this world to the next. He and
his
family were gathered in Indian with a few family friends. The Lutz's
have been in PNG for more than a quarter century and they have become
family to a large portion of the community here.

I have had the blessing of meeting Steve upon my arrival in PNG in
Feburary before he left to seek medical care in the states shortly
thereafter. Until last week, I had been working with his son, Anton,
when he got news of his fathers declining condition and flew home to
be
with family. They will hold a funeral for him on Saturday.

The Papua New Guinean way of having a funeral is to have a 'haus cry'
where all the people of the community gather together to mourn the
loss
of the individual. It sounds much like what you would expect from the
wailing wall in the Middle East as people just cry out in waves for
hours at a time and the whole community stops work to pay their
respects. No one goes to their gardens, few people drive their car
(because it's considered noisy), and they gather at the market (which
is
closed to business) as a community.

The contrast between this type of funeral service and a western
funeral
is quit remarkable. I find myself wanting to had a guitar to someone
in
order that something coherent can be heard through the constant
wailing. While it's usually considered taboo for western men to cry,
here the men wail right along with the women, though usually the women
keep this up for a longer period. The usual mourning period for a
death
is one week and then the people are all cried out and move on with
their
lives, but until then there will be many people gathered in the market
area to bid their farewells to the good Doctor who served this
community, and PNG so well.

Paul Andrews