Pidgin Monologue

When most people find out that my mom grew up in Papua New Guinea, an Oceanian country above Australia, they look confused. I imagine a thought similar to a famous Mean Girls quote pops into their head: “If your mom’s from Papua New Guinea, why is she white?” But of course, you can’t just ask people why they’re white. So, to lessen their confusion, I immediately explain how my grandpa, Robert “Robin” Thurman, and his wife, Ruth, moved to PNG with their two daughters to work as missionaries. While there, they not created a written language based off the natives’ oral language, Pidgin, but also translated the Bible into Pidgin. I’ve known this story for most of my life. But I didn’t know the beginning. My grandfather, Robin Thurman, moved from Portland, Oregon to Los Angeles, California with his family when he was around twelve years old. That first summer in a new city was spent at his mother’s aunt’s house in Laguna Beach. But when the start of school drew nearer, the Thurman family moved into an apartment complex in East LA, only four or so miles from the Civic Center. Robin and his brothers, Steve and Tim, went to Huntington Park Schools, forty-five minutes from where they lived.
Two years later, when my grandpa was in eighth grade, he and Steve began going to a tiny Baptist church about half-a-block from where they lived. …show more content…
He took a Bible class about Jonah during that time, but the only part of the class he can still remember was the emphasis his teacher put on being a missionary. By the end of the week, Robin had dedicated his life in service to God’s glorious work. At the last service the teens shared testimonies of how the Lord had worked in their lives that week. Robin told everyone what he had decided, and can remember saying, “I want to serve him wherever he leads me, whether it’s washing out toilets at a Christian Camp or serving him on the mission