PNG situation

Political and military tensions have risen in Port Moresby, capital of PNG.   A quick summary of the background is as follows.  While long serving prime minister, Sir Michael Somare was under long term health recovery in Singapore, parliament voted in a new Prime Minister – Peter O’Neil in Aug 2011.   This was subsequently challenged in the Supreme Court of PNG, who ruled in December 2011 that this vote was not constitutional.  Parliament immediately had a re-vote, re-confirming O’Neil as Prime Minister.   That piece of political activity happened peacefully, with the police and military remaining distant.  

 

This morning, it is confirmed that  certain elements  of the PNGDF , led by a Col Yaura Sasa , have place the Commander of the PNG Defence Force, Augwi under “house arrest”. Col Sasa has stated in a press conference that this is not a coup  and that they are calling both sides to recall parliament and uphold the Supreme Court decision reinstating Sir Michael Somare. He reiterated that they are only trying to  protect the Constitution .

 

As always with these situations , any trouble or risk, is currently localized around the specific locations in Port Moresby.   Most business in Port Moresby are closed today and we have no reports of trouble in other towns.   Our Port Moresby staff are monitoring the situation and avoiding any unnecessary travel.   Air Niugini have cancelled nearly all their flights into Port Moresby as a precaution.   We have no reason to believe that any SIL staff would be targeted, if this situation escalates.

 

However, both side have weapons.  Please pray that a peaceful solution will be reached. 

da bridge

Many of you know bridges and erosion caused by rivers are a constant battle.  In this pic our industrial and maintenance folks repair our only bridge to on center.  They are putting on thick sheets of steel to help fortify the bridge and give traction.  The river beneath has been growing, but they also are putting gabian baskets in place along the edge of the river.

Missions within Missions

some of the high schoolers had a chance to visit a hospital in Angau. Here is one high schooler's take on it

Along with dropping off our donations we had a chance to go and visit with the families and patients in the children's ward. It was a challenging time to see these very sick kids in not the best of conditions, but also really rewarding. We passed out toys and prayed with the families. Our prayer is that we were able to touch these families and these kids would have a bright future following after our Lord. It was a true blessing to be with these little kids and from it the dreams of someday being a nurse/doctor were fueled even more for several teens

proud of my daughter

yesterday we were outside heading to school and a spider jumped onto my daughter. I said 'sydney there's a spider on you!!!!' pretending to be all panicky. She gave me a roll-your-eyes look, reached over, grabbed the spider with her fingers, squeezed and tossed it away.

The look said it all "dad... geez, don't be such a girl." I was trying to scare her, but apparently spiders don't give her cause to be squeamish. Neither do mice apparently. A mouse jumped out at her yesterday and she said "dad, I've finally seen the mouse, I think you need to trap it."

Could a dad be more proud than to raise a daughter who doesn't flinch at such things?

Ending the week

This was a weird week full of odd technical problems. One person had somehow created a nested loop of email automated replies such that when 1 person sent her an email, over the course of 2 weeks, her inbox filled to 170,000 "I am on vacation" emails. That took hours to fix, but on Friday we fixed it.

As I decided to move to plan B on linking up a satellite office, having tried to splice fibre and failing repeatedly (something we know how to do and have done).... I walked outside and saw this picture.

It may not look like much, but those cubicles are translator cubicles. The open doors mean there are people in there (you can't see them but I did) sitting down with books and translating God's Word.

Open doors, mean people, people mean work, work means translation. Translation means changed lives.

So it was awesome to take a moment step outside and see people translating God's Word right there in front of me.... as a little reminder "Chad, this week has been wierd, but this is what you're supporting!"

oh yeah!

I love ending the week on a good note, and I got a special encouragement today.
*GEEK CONTENT*
-------
we have a Dot net nuke module that has been complaining of 'max number of concurrent sessions reached" which has the server dropping email to people all over the world. We attempted to fix it earlier this week and couldn't find the root cause. I thought I had fixed it by boosting the max concurrent sessions in exchange 2007.

But it didn't fix the errors, and so, the 1 guy we have (our 1 webmaster) is going away for 6 weeks... we decided to leave it until he returns.

Then around 4pm today, I was looking at our network traffic graphs and saw an odd pattern. It hit me that email was having an issue, so I started digging through the queues. I found several emails from the same problematic server bogging up our internet connection.

It dawns on me after reading through the mail headers that I see that the SEND connector for exchange 2007 linked to another send connector on Exchange 2010... so I boosted THOSE numbers as well for the max concurrent connections, and.... bingo... the problem resolved itself within 1 minute.

I love it when good honest detective work gives you a theory and you test the theory and it works, and you resolve problems RIGHT before the weekend.

*end geek content*

I do not like going into a weekend with unresolved urgent issues. So long as there is a problem to be solved, my mind doesn't allow me to rest. My wife knows this about me, which is why she no longer says right before we go to sleep "oh yeah, and the faucet in the kitchen is dripping."

Because she knows that I will toss and turn all night as my brain works out how to resolve the issue and comes up with a plan.

Anyway, the point is, it was glad to end a week of weird tech problems with a few solutions.

Mud

My kids and I played mud football on saturday

Slicing fibre

Splicing fibre optic cable is no fun

going Dark

Sorry I've been less than communicative lately. The days fly by. I find that while I committed to myself to take more photos and videos to share to everyone, that I haven't done much of it at all.

My job is very busy, and I find I end up crashing on the weekends to prep for the coming week. We've found some new technology (a sim card wireless router the Global Surfer III) which is proving to be very handy here for the translators.

I'm still trying to get Buka online.
Send a couple out to the village last week with a radio setup, we spent a day on that, but when they arrived they found someone had stolen their solar panels. So they used plan B (a netbook with a cell phone modem dongle (huawei) ). They had almost no power because of the loss of solar panels, so the netbook was helpful to them.

I'm finding that the day to day work of running this place is becoming far too overwhelming. More people are returning with more gadgets and more needs and we simply can't keep up with the demand. We lost a good couple of workers not long ago, and are looking to lose a few more.

So Feb/March/April/May is going to be my 'dark' quarter. I will be overworked to the point of being unable to spend a lot of time blogging.

We have REALLY enjoyed the christmas cards/letters/facebook notes we've received. IT helps to know we haven't been forgotten.

Let's see. What's on this week:
-managing the network/helpdesk team
-planning youth events
-trying to restore 2 satellite connections that are down
-terminating a fibre run to a partnering bible translation organization (proving difficult)
-spending time with my kids (last sat played mud football in the rain, WAS FUN!)
-welcoming back friends
-bible study
-in spare time I'm working up a web site for an idea I have that might prove to be helpful to the community. I'm not a web master so I'm finding the project educational.
-twice a month our band gets together to practice. We have a fiddle, mandolin guitars, and my banjo now.. so we're getting a nice folksy sound going.

I know.. what kind of geek works all day at computers and then comes home to work at a computer? Well not me usually... usually I unwind by playing some music or playing a game or watching a show. But from time to time I get these ideas that I think would help the people living here, and I go for it until it turns out to be a good or a bad idea.

The good ideas often mean more work for me.... (-;

Anyway, the summary is... I'm tired. Work is transitioning to more of a managerial role which is taxing to me. I enjoy the interpersonal portion of it, but the amount of paperwork is overwhelming (at least at first).

I'm thankful to be here and doing work, and that I get to say even on the 'hard' days, that it's all a sacrifice of worship.

I sure do like that.

Back in the U.S. if I had a bad day, I had to drive home in congested traffic, in the city, and get home and grouse about the bad day I had.

Here, I have a bad day, go outside, see this beautiful country, get home and instead of grousing, I think 'when I have bad days, if I can handle it with a good attitude it's a sacrifice of worship to God'.

Knowing that God appreciates even the efforts that yield very little (at least for that day)... is enough to keep you going.

IF you want to pray,
pray that all our 'down' connections come online... specifically
BTA
BUKA
AITAPE

we need to get these places online quickly because we don't have the resources to be spending hundreds of man hours on it. We're coming to the end of the rope on these projects rather quickly.

thank you!

VBS

Every year Kendal and the kids help with a local version of Vacation Bible School. Kendal this year is in charge of the administrative tasks (registration, name tags, organizing groups, etc). Both kids are student leaders and helping out with small group activities.

It's a lot of work for a week, but it is very rewarding.

from the creator of the VBS here:

Thank you Kendal. About 60 kids were counselled for salvation today. Thanks again for your great organizational skills!

One fun thing Kendal told me this week was that she had three unique names:
Bathsheba and Rahab were two girls, obviously named from the Bible but we're not sure if the kids folks knew who those people were in the Bible and then, a boy named Debbie.

We often find the PNG naming practices confusing but interesting.

At first site it seems like something you can sort of chuckle about, something getting lost in translation. But deeper insite makes you realize that while these folks obviously read some part of the Bible, they didn't quite fully understand something about it.

That's what happens when you want to read the Bible but it's not in your heart language. You don't fully understand what is going on, you don't fully grasp the truth until it's in your language.

This week's VBS is about getting God's Word communicated to children. Often as translators we focus on the adults, because they are the ones with the full grasp of the language. But VBS is just for kids.

Another interesting fact. This VBS is for kids ages 5 to 8th grade. But on the first day they allow everyone in. WHY?

Because when word of there being fun training, Godly teaching for kids gets out, people come from long distances, all the nearby villages and further, and when they arrive they find out "oh high schoolers can't come? Our babies can't come?..but we came this far from the village?" And so on the first day, everyone is allowed.

Of course no one gets turned away, but VBS isn't a daycare or a preschool, it's meant to lead children down the path of salvation. So the rules are put forth with the hopes that a majority of people will follow them. And for the most part they do. But the response is overwhelming... hundreds of kids come.

Workplay

Saturday we helped one of our friends do some tear down. Another side ministry is the care of our single friends. Well really the care of all friends. Sometimes there is (pardon the sexism) "man work" that needs to be done. This time that work turned into fun. Our friend Donna is a single lady that seems to always find a way to turn work into fun. What's better than tearing down a building? Doing it with the community.

Making work fun

Our neighbor and friend threw an 'epiphany party'. I've never heard of this. She's a history teacher and one of my daughters favorites so we are always learning interesting new things

As a community we also tore down a rotting tree house and then turned it into a bonfire.

I brought my sledge hammer and had some fun.

We drank wassail. We ate 'damper'. It's an Aussie tradition of bread on a stick that you roast over the fire.

Epiphany is also called 'three kings day'.

Lightning

I didn't take this image, I wish I had. I seem to have plenty of opportunity to snap photos of lightning and never actually get one.

We were out in the valley with some of our PNG friends, supporting them with a visit and we saw a huge lightning storm off in the distance (towards our home). It's really a remarkable thing to be outside in the rain, on a plain, watching lightning strike the hill tops.

Lightning and electronics don't mix.
One time in 1990 we had a thunderstorm that killed our PABX (telephone switch) and left us down for 4 days.

This last thunderstorm did a little bit of damage as well, it took out a few telephones.

But the biggest damage, was a friend of ours whom I work with, was at home, in their living room when their house was hit with a bolt of lightning.

She said 'the entire living room lit up and it was like a bomb went off in our house' She is a really great christian Papua New Guinean lady named Lucy, and she has been working for my department while trying to find work closer to where her husband lives.

She said 'there was no hole in the roof, but the floor had a huge hole in it'.

Thank God they were all okay. What a thing! To have lightning hit your house, while you were home, right in the middle of your family... and no one get hurt!

Praise to God for protecting her family.

the game

imagine my morning.
I spliced fibre at 9:30am, finished by lunch, then headed to a friend's rugby game. There was a moment when I was standing in pouring down rain, crowded shoulder to shoulder by hundreds of papua new guineans, trying to get protection under the brim of my hat... watching a rugby game in the mud and the rain... under the rim of a hut.. (haus win)... and I was sitting next to my son.

And I was thinking... 'this is like taking your son to a ball game, but it's so much different'.

In the distance lightning was striking the hill tops, and thunder was ominous... and it was such an amazing surreal moment.

I'm doing this. With my son. We've come this way, through the mud, got lost a bit on the way, were treated like visiting royalty, escorted to a nice chair, watched 2 rugby games and a women's soccer game.

Got treated to PNG's version of clowns. (I can't post the pics as the men wore nearly nothing).

And saw a friend win the game.

It was truly an odd, not-quite-like our home country sporting event, but totally awesome.

leaving the game

leaving the game was treacherous. It was fortnight so a lot of drunk people on the road. The road was slick because of the new rain, AND it was downhill and rutty, and people all over. The truck in front of us got sideways and slid off the road, but the young men all around, simply began pushing and slipping and pushing and made it up. We made it with no problem, a little slipping but that was just for fun. (-;

rugby game

the Sat Saga

The Sat Saga
Nearly a two years ago, I was on the verge of deciding what my latest tech challenge might be. I decided that a skill around here that would be useful, would be to learn about satellite reception. The high school typically had received a free-to-air australian channel, but then one day all stopped working after a lightning storm.
The electronic engineer working on the dish came to me and said 'Chad, I think I've fixed this but without a dish to plug into, I can't make it work, and the high school configuration is too confusing, too many pieces of equipment, I can't be sure which is failing.'
So I decided to get involved. I asked the school to tell me everything they knew about the satellite configuration. What bird it was pointed at, what type of lnb they had, etc. They had no idea.
Okay... so how does a guy like me, knowing almost nothing about satellites figure it out?
By reading, joining internet forums, playing around with the equipment etc.
So I think I've got a decent understanding of Free-To-Air Cband and KU band satellites. About the easiest beginner level stuff. I get there and I find 2 dishes, 4 coax cables, and 2 sat receivers.
No one knows what satellite they're supposed to be pointing to, nor which dish is functional if not both.
So, I give it a try.
On the first visit I find 1 dish has been knocked over in a storm, which tore a huge hole in the roof. ( Oh yeah, it's mounted up on the roof. Our roofs are shiny tin, so tuning a dish is like sun bathing in a tanning salon) was that the functional dish? We decided to remove it, and make 1 good mast. So we do.
Now I have 1 dish, and I have to guess where to aim it. I notice a dual lnb, one looks to be C-band so I guess, given the direction it's pointing, that it's probably intelsat8 (pas8). But I can't tune it.
Visit 2 - a month later (because I'm doing this on my free Saturdays since it isn't work related). I'm convinced I have it tuned right, but still getting no signal. Trace the coax and find it just dies in the roof somewhere.... okay...
Visit 3 - several months later, by this time the school is tired of opening the door and letting me in only to sit around for hours while I tinker. We decide that we have no signal, and can't tell if it's the receiver, or the cable, or the lnb. WE simply don't know what equipment is good. We declare to give up. Do they REALLY need news channels?
Furlough.
Return from Furlough.
Get VSAT training. Install a few VSAT dishes. The self-training on the satellite tv stuff came in very valuable here. Suddenly I'm more confident and I have an idea. I had purchased a $9.00 analog sat finder tool, and had downloaded a few sat finder apps onto my iphone. I decide to give it one last try.
So today I get up on the roof, because it's the first sunny day in a while. I bring a monitor, the tuner, my two sat finder tools, and my wrenches. Very sunny day, I might get a sunburn.
When I plug in my tools to the dish, bingo I have signal... I KNEW I tuned it right... I did the math right. NICE!!! So I tweak it a bit to get max signal. And then I play with the receiver.
After 1 hour, I have a tv channel. I'm very excited, but I'm up on the roof and the sky is turning grey.
In december alone, we got 11 inches of rain. 2 days ago, we got 3 inches of rain. So yeah, I'm pretty sure it's about to start raining. How ironic would it be, to be doing this off an on for over a year, only to get a signal and then have water destroy the equipment?
So I hurry down, plug it all back in, NO SIGNAL!!!!
AHA!!!
I troubleshoot coax cables, video cables, finally I find the combination of things that were wired wrong, and I re-configure the receiver to the correct transponder signal and polarization.
BOOM.... AUSTRALIAN NEWS, and BBC come online.
I have an enormous sense of accomplishment now. I stuck with this puzzle, this detective work troubleshooting thing, where I knew very little, and finally it's working. I feel good about that.
And then I ask myself 'is getting the T.V. turned on all that important?"
Here's the answer from a friend:
"When 9/11 happened, everyone here felt so disconnected. As if it was a dream, a horrible nightmare that we were so far from. We would all huddle together at the high school and turn on the television because it was the one place we could get news. We saw pictures of the World Trade Center and were flabbergasted. We were very thankful that we had that 1 television on center to get information from."

I would not have thought 2 years ago, that my growing interest in satellite technology would have allowed me to get 3 regional centres online, and a news channel on at the high school. I am feeling pretty good about that right now.

Here's a note I got from one of the directors here:

Dear Chad,

I want to thank you for all the sacrifices you have made to help bring the "Good News" of Jesus Christ to the people of Papua New Guinea. Chad, your service as the IT Manager helps keep people connected and has allowed language workers to focus more on their work. Because of your support of Bible translation, you have helped six people groups receive the New Testament in their tok ples this year alone.

Thank you also for all the other ways you serve our community. We all depend on each other.

It's time like this when I think 'wow God, you fashioned me this way, taught me these skills, gave me this attitude of total obsessive desire to solve technical puzzles, and you let me serve you in ways I never could have predicted, you use skills I never thought could be used to serve you, and you use them to server you.... you are AWESOME'

Christmas in PNG

I've been asked, "What is Christmas like in PNG?"

The answer is a long one. I'll try and divide it up.
It's definitely not like in the states. The entire country celebrates it, but there is not a lot of commercialism or hype. It's very simple. It's a time for people to come together and enjoy each other. Take a break from work.

It's not really about the food. Turkey is pricey and not at all flavorful. The food is homemade. The ex-pats typically celebrate similar to how they did as kids, although most christmas trees are fake, because we don't have tree farms here, so they are brought from home.

Gifts under the tree are usually not as plentiful as back in the states, but we've not found that to be a bad thing. Our family makes a point to send gifts each year, and that's nice. We also find ways to plan years ahead and buy gifts and have them shipped for the kids.

Most couples don't give gifts to each other, it saves money, plus, unless there is something really special, the gifts aren't extravagant. For example, last time, my wife gave me a six pack of Dr. Pepper. Which at $1.25 a can was pricey, but also a very special gift because I hadn't had REAL Dr. Pepper in a while. In fact drinking soda is a rarity here because of the expense.

The nationals and the ex-pats often come together (bung pronounced boong), in some sort of celebratory way. The picture above is a mumu. A traditional feast of potatoes and pork or chicken, and talking.

Relationships are key here. So getting together for no reason at all and talking is highly valued. Christmas break allows time for that. Dropping in on someone, sitting down and simply talking about anything and everything.

It resembles Christmas back in the U.S. We have our traditions. We drive around to look at lights, but with so few houses here, and power at a premium, there are few families who light up their homes. And when we do, it's often very simple. Although I have been tempted to look into the technology like "light-o-rama" that synchronizes lights with music.... that sort of fanfare is not really seen here.

We celebrate with many church services and worship services. Usually around this time of year you can go to at least 2 or 3 different services on the weekends up until the new year.

We celebrate boxing day as well (day after Christmas) which is more casual and relaxed.

All in all, it is more about Christ here than gifts, more about people than events. We share goodies, Kendal makes cookies and pies, and we simply come together and enjoy each other.

Jigsaw puzzles are put together, board games are played, songs are sun, the Christmas story from Luke is read several times, advent is observed, candles are lit.

It's a time for me and my family of closeness, appreciating the gift God gave us. Thankful for the gifts others have given us, enjoying the beauty of God's creation, and taking a short break from work to accomplish other things that are valuable as well.

I think you would enjoy it for it's simplicity and calm.

The flipside of that coin is that the kids end up saying 'I'm bored' a few too many times near the end of the break. But as a result, they really enjoy and look forward to the little things.

The differences are subtle, and perhaps not that different than how you celebrate. It is always a joy to be back in the U.S. for Christmas because of the delight in how everything is decorated and festive. But it is also nice to be here, because of that rainy, calm feeling that is almost the opposite of the stress and excitement feeling in the U.S.

In that way, Christmas isn't just for kids anymore.... big or little ones. Adults can enjoy the relaxation. I know in the states, me, the dad, was always loading stuff into the car, driving here and there, and then loading back up and driving here or there, with exhausted kids. That doesn't happen any more, all your neighbors are within 5 minutes walk.

This way of celebrating may appeal to some, if it does, come visit us!! But be warned, we'll put you to work! (-;

Merry Christmas from PNG!