The Boushes’ village house. (Photo Courtesy of the SIL PNG Branch Archives)
Villagers gave them land to build their house in the Upper Tifalmin area. This village, Fasaanabip, was
located on a plateau, a 30-minute walk upstream from where the Steinkrauses were located. A team of
carpenters from Ukarumpa – Sanio Kekezeo, Vic Colvin, and Mike Walker – came to the village and
helped Al build the house from material the village people helped collect.
The house was rustic and didn’t have electricity, but Al did manage to install a flush toilet and put
running water in the house. While all this was going on, Susan and their daughter Betsy were living at a
mining company compound a half a mile away preparing meals, etc. for the workers. Once the house
was finished, a special feast was held to celebrate the occasion and the Boushes moved in.
Al and Susan continued the work on the New Testament that the Steinkrauses had started. Much of the
linguistic and translation material gathered by the Steinkrauses there was lost in the landslide and never
recovered. However, the Boushes did have copies of the Steinkrauses phonetics paper, their published
book of I John, a small hymnal of 30 songs, a rough dictionary and a literacy book on sickness caused by
flies. The Steinkrauses had been working on the Gospel of Mark, but sadly, that was lost in the landslide.
Even though there wasn’t a significant amount of material recovered from the landslide area, what was
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