When 'Three' Goes Missing

Imagine the world without the number three. It would be a disaster—three truly is an invaluable number. I mean, without three the famous book or movie trilogies wouldn’t be possible (goodbye Lord of the Rings or Jason Bourne), and how could Earth be the third planet from the sun? Most of our months would have to join February and no longer end with 30+ days, and we would have to start the teenage years at 12 instead of 13.

Our traditional sets of three sizes (small, medium, and large) would cease to exist, and the superlative (a grammar term for comparing three or more objects) would feel lost. And, I ask you, what would we do without the triangle? I know the third time’s the charm and disasters always come in threes (as do wishes), but if we had no three, what would the letter “E” look like backwards? Finally, there are all the groups of friends who only travel in a threesome—Three Stooges; Three Little Pigs; Goldilocks and the Three Bears; Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego... and really, the Trinity has to count for something!

Yes, three really is an important number for the world—and for writing blog posts. In fact, to write a good blog post, I need three ingredients: time, creative energy, and internet access. Because you are a clever reader, you know where this is going—over the past month and a half, at least one (if not all) of these vital three ingredients have gone missing, rendering this blog silent.

For instance, my spare time got zapped, with the arrival of my aunt in mid-May (she was coming as part of an audit team assisting our finance office for three weeks; it was very exciting to have her here—more on that later). In addition, I finished my project in our linguistics office, went to Australia with my aunt for a week-long holiday before she travelled back to the US, and then flew to East New Britain for two weeks where I managed the kitchen for a church engagement training course!

The theme for Banquet was "Around the World in 80 Days."

So I painted a Paris skyline (and a sumo wrestler).

My creative energy, also requiring three components of adequate rest, minimal transition, and low stress (all of which were in short supply these last three weeks), was further exhausted by helping prepare for Banquet (our school’s version of prom) and compiling a massive pile of gifts, notes, and even a video (more on that later) to send back to the US.

Finally, even if those two former ingredients had existed in adequate amounts, I have been out of internet access for the past several weeks, axing any chance for me to share those stories with you.

BUT, not anymore! Now, I am back in Ukarumpa and all three components are rising to acceptable levels such that I can now share with you a bit of what the Lord and I have been doing in Papua New Guinea (PNG) over the past month or so.

After all, there is one place that I would like to no longer see the number three—currently, there are about 300 people groups in PNG that don’t have access to Scripture in their own language.