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Carols stalwart Jennifer Eirena is off to Papua New Guinea.
Mahurangi singing teacher Jennifer Eirena compered Carols by Candlelight for the last time this month ahead of her move to Papua New Guinea on a three-year project with her family.
Jennifer has been involved in the event for about five years and has led the event three times. She leaves for Papua New Guinea in January, with her husband Bruce and three children, Indianna, 15, Tynan, 14 and Arlen, 9.
“We will be working in a language project helping people translate and write down endangered languages as part of the Wycliffe Bible Translators project,” Jennifer says. “There are 880 languages in Papua New Guinea, with a population of just seven million. There’s a lot of steep terrain and inter-tribal warfare, so communities have evolved separately and developed their own languages. But a lot of the languages are dying out and have never been written down.”
Jennifer’s parents worked in the Wycliffe project and she lived in Papua New Guinea until she was four.
“They learned three different languages each and then worked in the UK and Texas, training other people to take on the translation work.”
The family will be stationed in the Eastern Highlands village of Ukarumpa, where her children will go to school.
