gng2png

BTA server

2012-02-09T20:56:00.001-08:00

I should have taken a photo while I did this.

Today was the final step in helping a partner translation organization.
A national run organization here named BTA has zero budget or staff for
technical issues, so I have been donating time and equipment to helping
them.

We replaced an XP desktop with a Windows 2003 server with RAID array,
AIT3 tape drive, duel power supply, more than twice the storage space,
and RAM.

Then I setup network printing for them, and trained everyone how to save
data to a network share, how to print to the printers, and several other
'how to's.' Then I had them do it to be sure my training worked.

Then I made videos so they could refer to the video training afterwards.

All in all, hopefully some of it will stick. One comment was

"I've worked here for 3 years and have never printed in this office
before. Thank you."

That's what we do often with our older technology. We re-purpose it and
donate it to local national Papua New Guineans who employ it in the
ministry they have a passion for. Rarely does anything get wasted.

Churchiness

2012-02-08T15:34:00.001-08:00

I don't often 'preach' on my blog.... but today in reading through James during my devotional, I had these thoughts.

-Often times I run into people who dislike Christianity because they have been hurt by Christians or by the Church. This seems to be the number 1 thing people have against getting to know Jesus Christ.

It dawns on me that this makes total sense. For years I have been thinking 'wow, I wish Christians were nicer to people so that we don't give God a bad reputation.'

But now I'm changing my perspective.

-The church is like a hospital. Inside the hospital are people who are sick, but they know they are sick. They come to church because they are seeking something, they seek healing, or a diagnosis. Coming to know Jesus Christ doesn't instantly make us perfect, it makes us people who recognize we're hurt and broken and need healing. We're people in the process of being healed. So of course a wounded person is going to make mistakes. It's hard to be loving when you're still healing from hurt.

Outside the hospital are people who are sick but they haven't been diagnosed nor do they realize it.

If you see the church as a hospital, a place where people come for help and healing. Christ offering the ultimate healing, then you can see the label 'Christian' as 'sick, but being healed.' instead of 'perfect person who always gives God a good reputation'.

I am hoping that seeing a friend who is sick and broken and hurt, find healing is would be a huge testimony to the power of Christ. And that even if during that process we do bark and bite a bit and possibly leave a bad taste in people's lives against Christianity... that in the end, the transformation would give testimony enough.

Still... people are upset at Christians because they do expect us to be perfect.

Which to me is ironic, because it is this lack of perfection that is often used by those who want to discredit the Bible.

"The Bible is inaccurate because man is sinful and flawed." Is the statement I hear most.

Seems like a bit of a double standard.
Either forgive us our hypocrisy because we are flawed, and call our Bible inaccurate, or call our Bible accurate but consider us all hypocrites. It should be one way or the other.

If you get scorned by a boy friend... your tendency is to say 'all men are pigs'. So I understand the reaction 'all Christians are hypocrites'. It isn't necessary logical, but it seems to be a popular point of view.

You see these bumper stickers 'not perfect, just forgiven'. That's great, but Christians are supposed to be striving to be more like Christ. Not simply to be forgiven humans, but to be the best version of ourselves as modeled by Christ and Scripture teachings.

I think I would favor a bumper sticker that read 'not perfect, but forgiven and trying hard'

Anyway. Enough of my preaching.

Ratnest

2012-02-08T15:29:00.000-08:00

When you've been in a place since the 1950's, you're likely to run into old wiring. This is a picture of a mess I've recently tried to begin cleaning up at our Aviation department. Cleaning one of these up is like defusing a bomb. You have to ask everyone to leave the building (because their network is down), and then you have to be VERY careful not to cross any wires.

glow night

2012-02-04T03:06:00.001-08:00

Tonight we hosted a fun night for the 7th and 8th graders. IT was GLOW NIGHT.
We had brought some glow necklaces and bracelets from the dollar store on furlough, to use here for fourth of July. We used those now instead, with some borrowed black lights and played lots of games. It was good. Kids who have never come to our fun events came! It felt great to offer the kids a fun thing to do that is a little out of the ordinary for PNG.

If anyone out there wants to contribute to our next glow event, when you're at the dollar store, pick up a few glow sticks for us, and ship em on over. One of the things we love to do with these is on the 4th of July, the young kids LOVE the bracelets. It helps us feel like Aunt Kendal and Uncle Chad again.

God's Megavoice

2012-01-29T16:22:00.000-08:00

Some of this blog is 'life here' and some of it is 'What God is doing Here'.
This is a 'What God is doing here' post.

The child above is holding a megavoice player. The Megavoice is an affordable, long battery life, simple to use digital audio player. We use it to put audio Bible's on and give to people who are illiterate.

The Pinai-Hagahai people aren't a huge people group, it has around 1000 people in it. Several years ago a couple moved here to translate the Bible into their language. They were met with all kinds of trouble and hardship. Their house was moved several times, then burned down. They were held up by gunpoint, and many other crimes and troubles. Their furloughs were difficult, their time in country was difficult, and if not for the prayer and support of others, they would have never made it through those tough years.

When they completed some of the books of the New Testament, they had them recorded into audio format. One of the biggest criticisms that we get is 'well great you translated the Bible but how are they going to understand it if they can not read?'

We handle that in 3 ways:
1 - we teach literacy. But this often excludes the elderly who most likely will never learn to rean
2 - we partner with audio based organizations
3 - we have our own recording specialists who go into the village and record mother tongue speakers reading the Bible that has been translated.

These translators, had rough times, and in a fit of creativity, bought 70 megavoice players, put the four Gospels and Acts on it and GAVE it to the nationals in the village. They gave it, because they had funding. It's a bit of a taboo to 'give' because it means that there is little value on the item. If they were charging for the item then perhaps the people would take care of it, and not abuse or lose the player. But, because of how remote the village was, they had no cash economy whatsoever.

So according to 'how we do things'... giving the megavoice players was not a wise move. It wasn't technically 'the right thing' to do. But they were finding the elderly and also young men were being excluded. The church was full of women and children.... and they wanted to do something.

So they distributed the 70 megavoices, not hoping for much and went on furlough.

Markus (the ex-pat translator) tells people that joining the goal of Bible translation is like joining the marines. It's hard work, lots of training involved, you're on the front line, and you may be in danger... but when you're ordered to go,... you go.

When they came back from furlough the results were beyond their wildest dreams. People had taken to listening to the devices as their daily devotions, as their bible study.

young men were turning to Christ
the elderly said 'we finally understand God's Word, it didn't make sense until we heard it in our language.'

They interviewed 100 people, which is 10% of the people group and every single one of them had changed their lives to Christ. The revival had begun.

And it was no act of man.

Since then the people have asked for more, and they have distributed 400 more megavoices (with funding from people back home).

God is great.

Right now, there is a two man team in a village far into the Sepik doing audio recordings so that we can reach more people who can not read.... in a different language group.

But it's a very hard location to get to, and they've been stuck there for much longer than they expected to be because of the road conditions and inability to fly in or out. They are separated from their families, while doing this work.

They could use prayer.

God's word endures. We're trying to get it to people in a way they will understand it. Through all the work, and hardship that happens, we know, because we've seen it so many times... that once people get the Gospel in their heart language, it changes their lives, and the enter into a meaningful relationship with Christ.

We pray for good discipleship of these people.

PNG situation

2012-01-26T14:17:00.001-08:00

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

2012-01-24T22:49:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-24T21:16:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-20T15:32:00.001-08:00

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

2012-01-19T22:27:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-19T22:26:00.000-08:00

My kids and I played mud football on saturday

Slicing fibre

2012-01-19T22:25:00.000-08:00

Splicing fibre optic cable is no fun

going Dark

2012-01-19T00:39:00.001-08:00

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

2012-01-10T15:13:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-07T17:33:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-07T17:27:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-02T22:28:00.001-08:00

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

2011-12-29T23:35:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-29T23:31:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-29T23:29:00.000-08:00

the Sat Saga

2011-12-22T21:42:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-21T20:01:00.000-08:00

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!

Evolution of Technology Use

2011-12-20T17:16:00.000-08:00

Someone asked me a good question about my last blog post. 'Why is this a problem this year and not previous years?"

more new people = more people who are used to "always on" internet
higher res equipment, newer cameras, smartphones, laptops, all are now assuming you live in a place with always on, high speed internet. Even though, several ISP's across the world still charge Per MB.

More and more technology is geared towards using more internet access, and it is harder to retrain the folks that come from fast 'always on' internet.

One of the places we use to train our 'new recruits' is called Pacific Orientation Course (aka jungle camp). It is an emmersive course which teaches language, culture, food, environment and survival skills in the village. Until recently it also had the added side effect of cutting people off from technology. No television (people overcame by watching dvd's on their laptop when hard pressed), no internet (people used modems if the phones were working), but all in all, you really do get disconnected or 'unplugged'. As a result, you begin to feel rather isolated if you're from the Facebook/Twitter generation. The isolation works in your favor, because when you finally get through the training, and arrive here on this network.... it won't seem 'slow' to you anymore it'll seem fast. BUT alas, recently with new improvements, that adaptation hasn't happened.

Fewer people know how to operate in a low bandwidth environment. And there really isn't that much training for it, other than what we have posted online for people to read, and the occasional training sessions we might conduct. It's counter intuitive and people without computer skills really don't want to be bothered with learning how to make their computer go against it's nature.

6 years ago:
-during jungle training camp there was no internet access, no way to communicate from the village (not even hf radio because new-arrivals hadn't been set up yet)

5 years ago:
-during jungle training camp there was modem access, which was at 56k, and we had 2 hours to share daily among 20 people, so you downloaded email, read it at night, replied, then uploaded the next day. If someone in the village got sick during training, the trainers scheduled a mid-stay visit to be sure you weren't dying of denghe fever.

3 years ago:
-there was modem access and people had cell phones in the village, so they could call when they got sick, and then get pulled out.

2 year ago:
-there was modem access and people had cell phones with digital EDGE subscriptions and could get internet access that way

1 year ago:
-there was usb EDGE modems and everyone plugged one into their laptop, no sharing, no more 56k modem.

Today:
-there is a 5.8ghz Wireless N bridge link with high gain polarized antenna, at 11mb per/sec supplying all of the camp with internet.

Why this evolution?
Because the technological demands of how we do work is increasing. As you can see, we're at a point now where people don't have a huge technology culture shock when they get here, and as such never get the training on how to survive in a low bandwidth world, even though, relatively we're still low bandwidth.

EMAIL fury

2011-12-20T15:20:00.000-08:00

This is gonna be geeky. But let me weave you a tale of how Christmas newsletters can down your internet connection much like a Denial of Service attack.

First you have to have hundreds of people sending newsletters larger than 4mb each, to hundreds of people.

Missionaries have to stay in communication with their support base, so they send out newsletters. None so popular as the Christmas newsletter, often filled with pictures and longer than usual. Everyone is familiar with a family Christmas letter. Well missionaries are no different.

THEN add to that, the fact that missionaries move all over the world. That means email gets forwarded.

THEN add to that, that people SEND newsletters to missionaries who love to read them.

And you get a lot of email activity.
Couple that with a slow internet connection, dash on a little 'we all decided to send it on the same day' and bingo... NETWORK NIGHTMARE.

So, last night I realized the network was slowing down, our up(tx) bandwidth was 100% utilized because we were sending out newsletters.... hundreds and hundreds of large emails.

BUT THEN also our down(rx) bandwidth was slow because of the way satellite works when up(tx) is 100% pegged.

Our email servers weren't pegged, I have divided them up enough with their respective responsibilities and networks, and have even put a packeteer in place to prioritize the right traffic weight so that work can get through.

The trick is, that when vsat is pegged in either direction, the other suffers. But, also people sending out these emails sent to people NOT here which invokes forwarding.

So...
You're in the U.S., you send me a newsletter at my email here, but I'm in Africa at the time, so it comes INTO my server over my satellite link which says 'hey, he's in Africa,' then it goes BACK out the same link.

If that email is 10mb huge, then suddenly my email servers and internet link just had to process a whole lot of data for someone who wasn't even here.

And that is what has happened over the last 12 hours.
A perfect email storm of email going, coming, coming then going, and all of it killing our network link so that no work can get done.

Now... call me the Grinch, because I had to deliver the sad news that I had to delete the sending of newsletters from the offending parties that sent hundreds of very largehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif emails out at the same time.

I didn't want to have to do it, but I had to find a way to clear things up so we could get priority information through.

So if you're expecting a newsletter from someone you support, and you don't get it... you CAN blame the responsible network administrator...

or you can kindly wait for it to come late, and be understanding of resends. And if you really want you can send them this link (but don't send the email until after Christmas (-;

HOW TO KEEP YOUR EMAIL SMALL

That data is GONE bro....

2011-12-19T22:59:00.000-08:00

Today I did some housecleaning. I took an old server that we had since virtualized this year and powered off. As I was going through installed programs, and I found this.

It gave me a good laugh. I guess no one uninstalled the application, and then it just sat there.

2521 Days ago... yeah that data is GONE.

Hmmn, but it made me think, where was I on Jan 24,2005 (2521 days ago)

I had been to PNG for the first time, only a couple months before, October 2004. I was working at Cisco. I wasn't considering coming to PNG full time, in fact I enjoyed the trip but was convinced I would never return.

Wow, that was a long time ago... yup that data is lost, NEVER EVER apparently has an expiration date. (-;

rant on Exchange

2011-12-18T14:49:00.000-08:00

I have never liked the Exchange mail server. I learned email servers from one of the originators of Sendmail. Sendmail has it's problems. I enjoyed Qmail. I even enjoyed Postfix, I have generally enjoyed most unix based mail servers because although confusing to some, the puzzle pieces make sense in my mind.

But Exchange is a different beast.

I've been doing this job for nearly 5 years now and in that time I have upgraded Exchange 3 times.

EACH time I have become convinced that the newer version is WORSE than the previous.

Exchange 2010 is losing it's GUI-ness and going more command line. So, it was with the experience of knowing that moving to Exchange 2007 with 2003 was wrought with bugs and problems, that we very carefully went to 2010.

While the gui on 2010 looks very similiar, the under workings are very different and so when someone from the helpdesk came to me and said,

"our imap clients can't send email" I thought 'it's probably some super secret hidden command line somewhere that says 'make sending mail work for Imap clients'.

After hours of experimentation and searching, I found it. YUP... there's a super secret command line for imap clients only, to be able to send mail.

THANKS Microsoft. I really needed to waste 5 hours of my life. Why wasn't that in the training I took? Why wasn't it in the documentation? Why wasn't it in the gui? What were you thinking?

I know what they were thinking. See this super secret command line isn't needed if you're running microsoft products only. But we support Mac's and Linux boxes which run non-microsoft email clients. And so they use imap, and so, it didn't work. Outlook in imap mode works great.

Our department may quickly be switching away from microsoft products simply because of the cost involved. I'm looking forward to that day. If you want, you can pray that God sends us the right staff who understand unix enough to be able to maintain unix servers.

Mumu 2

2011-12-15T21:46:00.000-08:00

Mumu

2011-12-15T21:45:00.000-08:00

Christmas 2011

2011-12-15T21:39:00.000-08:00

The Christmas Party

In our department we have several ex-pat (whiteskin) workers and more PNG workers than that. Each year we have budgetted to have a little get together for

christmas. The aim of that budget is to have enough money to have some cake, sit together and grow together as a team and celebrate Christ's birth. But

the proper way to celebrate has been elusive to us over the past 5 years or so. Previous management has tried various things. Some years we have had a

small party over banana bread (sweet kai), some years we have purchased rice and sugar and gifted the PNG employees (as a Christmas bonus instead of a

party), but neither of these things really help the team to come together. It is important in PNG culture to share celebrations. Working side by side

isn't enough to form lasting relationships. Last year our well meaning department manager thought he'd surprise everyone with a nice breakfast at his

house. It was a great idea, but the PNG employees disliked it greatly. We're not 100% why.

This year we have an acting department manager. He decided to give the employees the options before them.

It's important to know that between last year and this year, there was a 1 week training for all PNG staff on centre to learn a little more about ex-pat

culture. Many of us coming here have received cultural training and have tried to adapt and not make huge mistakes, but still, we do things that seem odd

to Papua New Guineans. Odd in such a way that we may have caused insult which harmed relationship building without even knowing it. So keep in mind, that

they have had their eyes open to how we operate and live.

The idea of financial support has eluded some. The idea that we volunteer to uproot our lives to come here because we want to help is not entirely grasped.

A lot of ex-pats come to this country to harvest it's resources, we come to provide a resource that will last.

So given that this year has been a remarkable shift towards really developing relationships.... we should not have been as surprised as we were to have our

PNG employees come to us and say

"we want to throw you a mumu."

A mumu is celebratory feast. It is a lot of work to prepare, as a cooking pit must be dug, food donated and gathered from gardens, a pig killed. In PNG

culture, when a pig is killed, it is a significant event. It shows that the occasion has a special meaning.

But, we didn't have enough money in the budget for anything more than buying a pig.

This is where THIS Christmas story begins.

The employees said 'the pig is important, we will donate food from our gardens, we will also donate 20 kina each, and we want everyone to bring their

families'

?!?!?!

WOW. Such hospitality is not unusual here. They even got together and wrote a letter from which I'll quote:

"We feel that this time together will signify Christ's birth and strengthen relationships within the departmen. As you will learn over time, Papua New

Guineans are relationship orientated people and this will definitely mean a lot to us. We extend our invitation to our Expat Brothers who are working in

CTS to attend this mumu to show as a team we have stood together this year 2011"

What started out as a "how are we going to accomplish the department party and grow relationships without angering the staff" turned into the staff honoring

our desires, and not only GIVING to the cause, but doing so with hospitality and cheer. How does this type of thing turn around like that?

Very simply put, God is at work in our lives.
Our department manager put it out there, was willing to take their guidance, and they responded.

I am excited as we will partake of this mumu today. My son and I went to help kill the pig, and learned that in the highlands they kill the pig differently

than in the coastal area. They take a blunt axe to the crown of it's skull. Then they bath it in boiling water to shave the hair off, because they don't

skin the pig, they leave the skin on when it cooks.

I asked a friend what the best part was, he said 'the spine'. In PNG, the best piece of the pig, often has no meat. Often it's a piece of skin covered,

hairy fat. And often as an ex-pat they will offer this 'best piece' to you to eat.

So what do you do in that situation? I personally have given it to my son, who seems to enjoy that part of their culture.

The other day the high school vice-principal said "I was in my office and I heard a young voice speaking perfect tok pisin and I thought, 'who is that

student'. And he stepped out of his office and my daughter was talking to the office staff. He was impressed with her Tok Pisin.

Two days ago I heard my son teaching a line of PNG boys and girls how to play a ball game in tok pisin. For him it's important to do proper training and

rules before the game begins, so he was explaining the rules to them. They all looked on at him and listened, and fully understood him as he fluently spoke

to them about boundaries and outs, and fouls, etc.

This Christmas I'm thankful for the changes God makes in our lives and in the lives of people around us. I see a significant difference this Christmas in

the way we interact with our PNG friends and the relationships seem deeper.

I learned a lot today. It wasn't my first mumu, but it was perhaps the one I was closest to. Apparently, the thrower of the mumu mounts the pig head in front of their house as a way to declare 'I have killed this many pigs'. Also traditionally whoever keeps the head, throws the next mumu.

This mumu we sang praise songs, read Luke 2 in Tok Pisin and honored each other by giving certificates for time with CTS as well as doling out portions of the pig. This is a sign of honor and respejavascript:void(0)ct and appreciation. Even I was given a section of the cooked pig, having been here nearly 5 years.

It was a good day.
javascript:void(0)

Mumu prep

2011-12-14T23:47:00.000-08:00

Dig a pit. Check
Gather banana leaves. Check
Stones for heating. Check
Killed the pig. Check
Got all the ladies together to peel taro and Kaukau and banana kuk? Check

Mumu time

2011-12-14T23:45:00.000-08:00

Our png coworkers are treating us to a Christmas Mumu. Today we observed the killing of the pig

7.3 in PNG

2011-12-13T21:12:00.000-08:00

I was in the middle of troubleshooting my email servers when a long violent quake hit. Don't know the stats yet, but guessing it was in the 6's.

Possibly the most violent quake we've had here, and I recalled from years ago that a big quake made the server room racks jostle... so instinctively I dashed to the server room, and pressed my feet against the door jamb and my arms against the server racks.

My co-worker caught a clip of it, but by then it was rather calm, those racks were all over the place, until I stopped them.

At one point there was a big 'boom', and I ducked, but it turned out to be a loose floorboard that went.

Someone asked me "at what point do you say 'leave the servers and protect yourself?' and I replied "I suppose when something hits me in the head." Nothing did.

I can survive a scrape or two, but damaged servers will mean days of work for me....

Of course at home all was well, some paper spilled on the floor.

The biggest damage risk is a fallen power line, or a burst water tank uphill from you. Thus far, no reports of bad damage have come in.

I'm from California. I've been near the Loma Prieta 6.9 in October of 1991, the Eastridge 7.0, and now the PNG 7.3 in the Eastern Highlands, and let me tell you, I prefer the PNG 7.3 to the California 6.9 WOW what a huge difference. The land didn't split here, buildings didn't topple. My servers started rocking, some paper fell on the floor, and that was it.

I went outside to hear two men, their hair now white, who have been here well over 2 decades and said 'that was the strongest one I've ever felt here.'.

So, for those wishing to come here, not from quake country. Yes we have quakes. We don't have big animals of prey. (nothing larger than a small dog) We don't have tornadoes. We have rain, quakes. If you're from California, come on over, the quakes are docile here!

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/usc00076e5.php

Two Funny Stories

2011-12-12T17:01:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I was at the aviation department saying goodbye to a friend. While there I saw a Papua New Guinean friend and I said hello to her.
In tok pisin the conversation proceeded:
me: Hi, are you leaving?
her: yes to port moresby
me: ah, why are you going?
her: to get Kero

now I think to myself "kero is short for kerosene here, but if she's buying kerosene she must be buying it in bulk because air fare is costly... so I figure she has to be buying a lot, or I misunderstood, so I cleverly figured out how to verify"

me: Kero?
her: yes.
me: How much?
her: this much (she shows me with her hands about the height of a 55 gallon drum)

now I think (1 drum? that's it?)
me: That's not much.
her: huh?
me: That's a long way to go to buy kerosene
her: not kerosene, CAROL! my daughter, her name is carol, you don't know my daughter's name?
me: I guess I don't.
her: Carol, my daughter has been in the U.S. for 5 months going to school.

I laughed out of embarassment but she wasn't laughing. Around here, everyone knows everyone and their entire family. It is the PNG way. But I am horrible with names and faces and so I had no idea she had a daughter nor what her name was. I didn't want to tell her that 5 months wasn't a very long time to be in school in the U.S. But I've also found that those who do come back from the U.S. often have learned a LOT in a short time, enough such that they can become quite successful at interacting with ex-pats. Which goes to show, the people of this country are intelligent. They seem to grasp things very quickly that we often overlook.

Second story:
I was driving around in our department vehicle when a man came up to me and said,
(again in tok pisin)
him: I see you are driving this vehicle, so I waited for you.
me: okay, how can I help you? (knowing this might be an interesting conversation)
him: I have a camera that won't flash. CTS will charge me 90 kina to fix it.
me: Yes they will.
him: all I need is someone to fix it, and I don't have 90 kina.

(at this point I know this is one of those broken devices that will not go away. Often times people throw away items that will no longer work nor are repairable, and CTS can end up wasting all kinds of time on these things. Which is why when we get one, we don't throw it away, we dissect it into parts we can use to repair other things. There's nothing worse than working to fix something that you think is important to someone else, that they picked out of the trash, and then keep bringing it back. It really wastes a lot of time, especially since the item was already deemed 'unfixable'. You'd be surprised how much electronics these days cost more to fix than to replace. At this point, I recognize that the 90kina number was a 'this is unfixable' rate, intended to deter people from trying.)

me: I can't fix it, I am not an electrical engineer, I fix computers
him: but you drive this car.
me: yes I work for CTS
him: oh... will you fix my camera?
me: I can't fix your camera
him: do you know anyone who can?
me: I know 1 guy who might be able to.
him: who?
me: He works at CTS.
him: but they will charge me 90 kina to fix this.
me: no, they will charge you 90 kina to TRY to fix this, they may not fix it.
him: can you fix it for me? I don't have 90 kina.
me: I can't fix it. I don't know how.
him: oh... okay.

Now, to you, it may seem like he wasn't getting the point. But he was. There were two cultural aspects at play here. First, was the tendency in this culture to repeat oneself. In fact to get the idea across and be sure that someone fully understands, you should repeat yourself several times. Second, the 'no harm in trying' concept we call 'traim tasol'. If you find a camera in the trash, and can also find someone to fix it for free, why not try? No harm done.

Next time I'll not drive the dept. vehicle. (-;

Back on the repeating something. This is something it takes a bit of getting used to here. But it is important, because if something is important, it bears repeating. This culture does not tire of repetition. They can hear the same story over and over and over.

Whereas in the U.S. you rarely enjoy watching a re-run. You have more important things to do with your time. Which is why if I said,

"Be sure to check that the oven is off before you leave. Before you leave, be sure that the oven is not on. If you leave, and the oven is on, that is bad, so check that the oven is off."

But here, that is perfectly appropriate and if you were to only mention the oven offing once folks might think 'well it can't be that important'.

Which is why, when discussing things of import, like Christ's redemptive blood, you repeat it. So you can imagine... given that it takes twice as long to say most things in tok pisin as it does in English, that a quick sentiment like 'check the oven' could turn into a ten minute conversation.

This is partially why a lot of the South Pacific areas feel like a slower pace than the rest of the world. You take time to stop, talk to people, repeat yourself, tell them the same story you've told them a million times, they'll laugh as if they've only just now heard it, and eventually you get around to business.

And while it is one of the HARDEST parts of adapting to the culture here, the slower pace... makes you feel as if you're wasting time... it is also why we love this place so much during Christmas.

Mind Upload

2011-12-08T22:57:00.000-08:00

So it's such a busy time for everyone, I figure no one is reading blogs now anyway until maybe that Friday before Christmas vacation and you're killing time ??

Well I didn't have time to throw up any photos and such... but here's the download.

Weds - co-workers got back from Wewak.. YAY wewak internet is online now!
Buka internet still needs prayer, not coming up, but on the morning we prayed as a centre for it, it got an actual TX lock which was very encouraging. Still not enough though.

Thursday - threw a 'goodbye' bbq for a friend and co-worker leaving for Canada, not planning to return.

Thursday evening - hosted bible study

Friday evening - having the single ladies over for our annual Christmas Classic movie showing double feature of "It's a Wonderful Life" and "Miracle on 34th Street". We find that around this time of year, many single people miss family more than at other times, so we try to offer a nice evening of placebo family. We serve up soup and I start a fire, and the kids get to spend time with some of their 'aunties'.

You wouldn't believe how many people have never seen It's A Wonderful Life.

I typically bore them with movie trivia about the film, and how it was produced. Soup, popcorn, cookies.

Saturday - youth group event, doing 'minute to win-it' Christmas Style for the kids. They should enjoy it.

Saturday - there is a big christmas hoo hah going on here, that we may attend if we haven't collapsed from an already busy pre-weekend.

Kids had a musical concert last week, this week it's final exams.
What else.... Oh Sydney won a contest at school for more 'festive' dress.

She wore a hat I fashioned with a close hanger to point straight up I also rigged it up to a thread so you could make it 'dance'.

and finally we did our annual "tree hunt" in which we hide our fake christmas tree and then go hunting for it. The kids enjoy that tradition.

WE find we have to create new traditions, but being creative is definitely something our family doesn't lack.

This year we have a real-tree we got from planting a christmas tree 3 years ago, it was finally tall enough to harvest (fake tree is in the pic).

And what else... oh yes... Merry Christmas!

see if I can list our family traditions:

-tree hunting w/cocoa and christmas mp3's
-hide pickles (hide a pickle or an ornament and whoever finds it before Christmas gets to open the first gift).
-Christmas decoration and music
-caroling - often carolers visit us (the high school choir) this year they brought cookies
-daily craft - there is a christmas calendar and for 25 days we all do something together, last night it was 'dance to christmas music'
-advent story - each day we read part of the advent story... and each Sunday we light candles
-reading of the christmas story

oh this year I will be performing with 2 friends at a little christmas gathering... I chose "this is our God" as a Christmas song, and while it's not really a Christmas song, it says "this is the one we've been waiting for" which is really the message of Christmas.

..okay sorry for the speed blogging... had to get that out and now I have to run!

Sunday

2011-11-26T22:17:00.000-08:00

Saturday

2011-11-26T22:15:00.000-08:00

Friday

2011-11-26T22:13:00.000-08:00

Thursday

2011-11-26T22:11:00.000-08:00

Back

2011-11-24T19:24:00.000-08:00

Getting into my final plane for a while. A week in tropical Buka setting up Vsat Internet didn't go according to plan. More on that later. Here's the completed dish with belas (decoration) after the ribbon cutting ceremony in which three ribbons were cut asan official thank you to the three groups involved in getting it working. Richard and I cut the middle ribbon.

Good laugh

2011-11-22T22:18:00.000-08:00

Needed something sweet so grabbed some cookies and was well into them before reading the label. Had a good laugh. Pretty much sums up most food experiences in this country.

Vision

2011-11-17T15:13:00.000-08:00

(found this at Honiara, Solomon Islands at Henderson Field....a key victory by the U.S. over the Japanese in the south pacific)

I am now a manager of a section in my department. We are in charge of repairing and maintaining all the laptops/desktops and servers, the telephones, and the software of in this country. Since I'm the manager, I thought that I finally should share my passion for this work. I thought I'd share it with you too.

When a Bible translator puts their laptop in your hands to repair, when they entrust their internet communication to you, when they trust their hard work in the form of data to your backup system.... they are putting in your hands their ministry tools.

We are responsible for many of the tools that people use to get the Word of God into the hearts and minds of people in this country.

Because of this we should give them the utmost professionalism. We need to deserve their trust. We need to have excellence in how we deal with these tools, so that we can glorify God with our skills.

And that's what we do.

When you come to our department, you are not getting third world technical support. You get first class, professional help. That is what our aim is, that is what we have achieved and endeavor to continue achieving.

Sometimes we get very fortunate and get to do something glamorous like flying to the Solomon Islands or to a regional centre like Buka (leaving for there in 1 hour) and get to do something that is good and hard work. We get to take awesome pictures that help our people back home realize we're not always at a desk.

We get to install satellite dishes, run cabling, climb ladders, dig trenches, run conduit, patch cables, crimp connectors, raise antennas, work with nationals, etc.

But that isn't every day. 9/10 days we'll be at our desks, accepting broken hardware, and repairing it.

We do this so that these tools can go on serving God's purpose. So that His Word can get into the language of the people in this country and their lives would be changed by it.

We work on tools. We do so to glorify God with the skills we were given.
But as we work on tools, we work WITH people.

We get to treat them with love, and care. Let them know they are valued help in this common goal of seeing lives changed by God's Word.

We work with the people who trust us with their tools.
We work with the people who enable us to be here.
We work with each other as we need help fixing these tools.

We work with people whom Christ loves, and whom we will treat with love.

And this is how we justify why we get to do this work.

It is exciting and fun and rewarding to be serving God.

Let us not get discouraged by losing sight of why we're here in this country.
We are here because we are fortunate enough to be sent here by all the people whom God has worked in to get us here.

EACH person who supports us to be here has a story of why they support us, how they met us, why they sacrifice to send us here.

We are indeed blessed to be doing this work. What better job to have with your skills, than to be serving in the King's court?

Some people want to do something more exciting. There are a lot of exciting jobs out there. Sitting at a tech bench and fixing computers may sound like the most boring job to some people.

But I get excited.

My life has been a non-stop series of surprises and excitement since signing my life over to Christ.

I look down at this modem I'm repairing, and I imagine it is making it's way into a village. And it's being connected to a solar panel/inverter system that a co-worker setup. And it's getting power, and turned on.

And then it starts sending and receiving data, and that data is the latest revision of Mark in the Kuman language. And it travels through the radio waves, across hf-radio, over an antenna that another team member installed, and into our servers here.

Onto our file server, and our tape backup, and it will never be lost. And then, eventually that data gets printed out and put into the hands of someone who previously thought God didn't speak in their language.

And they are changed.

And that excites me. The same way it should excite the guy who makes the bolts and screws to hold together the antenna tower. OR the electrician who powers the whole thing. Or the radio technician who makes sure we are experiencing low interference.

There are things we know, feats we are capable of, that we can employ to serve God and enable the feats that OTHERS are capable of to see fruition.

So this job excites me, and I'm honored to be doing it.

Interview

2011-11-08T20:43:00.000-08:00

Cross Cultural Interview

Today I gave my first job interview to a Papua New Guinean. I've done international job interviews before (where I am the interviewer). However I've never done them in this country. It was definitely a cultural experience.

Having conducted several job interviews in my career, I have found doing so cross-culturally is difficult. In an interview you want to gauge the applicant's personality fit, enthusiasm, and technical ability.

Personality fit you can do pretty quickly, cross-culturally.
Enthusiasm is hard, because different cultures have different ways of expressing this.
Technical ability is rather easy, so long as you're using the right terms. BUT to get to the point where you're 'getting down to business' you first have to lay the ground work relationally to get to where the applicant is comfortable enough to share with you and not feel bad when they don't know the answers.

That all is pretty much the same world-wide. What isn't the same is what responses comprise a successful interview.

The one phrase that came up repeatedly in this interview was 'I am a slow learner.'

What does that say to you? In our culture, it is a bad thing to be a slower learner. But it was said so many times, as if it was the winning characteristic of the applicant, I tried to figure out what was meant.

'slow learner'
If I put the emphasis on the 'learner' then this comment suddenly means that the applicant is trying to tell me that they have the ability to learn. That they are diligent in learning, and they take their time to learn it well. THAT is what I think was meant by 'slow learner'.

Anyway, the point is, as part of my new job I have to figure out how to wisely navigate the already tricky waters of hiring skilled personnel for a job. Hiring the wrong person could mean a ton of headaches that would distract me from doing other parts of the job.

You can pray for a skilled heldpdesk technician, who will fit in well, require minimal training, and be a good performer for a long time. This would drastically lighten the load on a some already overworked people.

Flurry

2011-11-07T22:26:00.000-08:00

We are in a flurry of activity here at work. Having just returned from setting up a network in the Solomon Islands and Vsat in Aitape. We are now prepping for two more trips. Vsat and wireless and file storage for Buka and Wewak. We're using every last inch of space as we prep the equipment and configure the network and run test. The goal is to make the solutions as foolproof as possible so they don't break after we return to our home base.

Exciting!

Vsat saves lives

2011-11-02T18:22:00.001-07:00

from a friend's blog, regarding the VSAT internet our team put in last month:

The VSAT has already helped save the lives of a mother and her twin babies! After coming back from the village, we learned from Emil via SKYPE that an Arop woman couldn’t deliver her second baby. Ben called the hospital in Aitape, a 2.5 hour drive away from the village and connected Emil to them using Skype so that they could talk to each other. The hospital personnel sent a car out to get her right away. A week later, I was able to reach the hospital by phone and found out that although the mother and babies survived, the mother needed blood. Once again, we got on SKYPE and asked Emil to send a family member to the hospital to donate blood for her. We praise God for the life of this mother and her babies. We are grateful for the VSAT which allowed us to help them get to the hospital!

Honored

2011-11-01T02:41:00.000-07:00

My time has come to a close. Not only did God smooth the way for us to complete everything we HAD to do, we got to finish a lot of the WANTED to do's as well here in the Solomon Islands. Being that nearly everyone here is translator staff, I was really privileged to support Bible translation so directly.

off the top of my head:

We have accomplished a LOT here:

-file sharing

-secure wireless

-wireless and physical network coverage

-firewall

-billing/metering solution

-better throughput

-networked printing

-physical cabling to specific locations

-computer training

-language data backup/archiving

-offline windows updates

-anti-virus strategy planned

-hf-email more reliable

-remote access

-overall faster network performance
-webserver

-usage reporting

Then there are the smaller one off issues as people found me and asked me questions.

I.T. guys, you'd be hard pressed to find a spot of the world more grateful for your help, and more hospitable to boot. I had dinner in every one of their homes, some more than once! Great group of people.

At the end I had to fight back tears for the 'thank you' dessert they threw me and the prayers they prayed over me. They called me a blessing. Having those people, call me a blessing.... that's one of those.... 'woah, me? wow!' moments. I can't express to them how awesome an opportunity to serve them this was for me. To serve God with my skills.

Let's be totally honest, I'm not the world's smartest guy, nor the best I.T. guy around. I'm just a bloke who said 'yes, I'll go.' And God has filled in all the gaps since. So all the glory goes to Him. He kept me from crashing and burning this week, He gave me what skill I have, He solved problems quicker and smoothed the path for me. I GET to do this? Are you serious? Go exotic places!? Serve people who call ME a blessing?

THEY are the blessing. They brought me here, paid my plane ticket, fed me, and made me useful. Then they appreciated my work, and heaped thanks on me, and gave me a special 'dessert' send-off where they prayed over me. I covet their prayers.

Anyway, it has been a very incredible week. I miss my family and it's time to go home, but thanks God for letting me do this, and for making me useful to these people and this project.

HERE are some of the languages that I was able to directly impact this week:

LANGUAGE

Areare

Aiwoo

Amba

Anuta

Arosi

Asumboa

Babatana

Baeggu

Baelelea

Bauro

Bilua

Birao

Blablanga

Bughotu

Cheke Holo

Dorio

Duke

Fagani

Fataleka

Gao

Gela

Ghanongga

Ghari

Gulaalaa

Hoava

Kahua

Kiribati

Kokota

Kusaghe

Kwaio

Kwaraae

Laghu

Lau

Lavukaleve

Doku

Longgu

Lungga

Malango

Marovo

Mono

Nagu

Nalogo

Natugu

Ontong Java

Oroha

Owa

Pijin

Rennel-Bellona

Ririo

Roviana

Sa'a

Savosavo

Sikaiana

Simbo

Talise

Tanema

Tanibili

Teanu

Tikopia

To'abaita

Touo

Ughele

Ulawa

Vaeakau-Taumako

Vaghua

Vangunu

Vano

Varisi

Wala

Zabana

Zazao

Humbled

2011-10-29T04:57:00.000-07:00

If you have ever had a missions experience then you most likely know the feeling of humility that comes from being treated with hospitality from people who have little and whom you are there to serve.

You go with the idea to give and yet you are given so much. That has been my experience here in the Solomons this week.

I'm honored to have been invited here, sent here,housed and fed here. I'm aware if the rare treat to be in a place with such significance during WWII.

Working hard is the best way I know how to thank God and thank the folks here for the many blessings that come with thus opportunity to serve.

This is the market here. These are the people seeking food. These are the people we are trying to reach with the bread of life.

Runnin cable in Solomons

2011-10-29T02:24:00.000-07:00

Found this

2011-10-29T02:22:00.000-07:00

Part of what I am replacing is the outside waps. Found one in the rafters on a deck with an external antenna connector. But to get power to it they did some splicing and I assume rats or geckos liked the tape glue because it was off and the two power leads were touching. I don't know how the wap wasn't shorting out. But it may have played a huge hand in some of the network faults. This has been replaced with nicer wiring and a wap powerful enough to keep indoors. The wap had geckos all over it staying warm. I would have snapped a pic but it was too dark out.

What I'm here to replace

2011-10-28T02:56:00.000-07:00

Honiara harbor

2011-10-28T02:54:00.000-07:00

Choices choices

2011-10-28T02:53:00.000-07:00

Pop cone!!!

2011-10-28T02:52:00.000-07:00

Family Wagon

2011-10-21T17:16:00.001-07:00

This is a 'tuktuk' popular in India. It's a 3 wheeled vehicle, powered by a small Diahatsu truck engine. It's a manual transmission. Left foot clutch, RIGHT foot brake, right hand is the twist throttle, and the stick shift rests between your knees.

My wife and kids love this vehicle. My wife, who 4 years ago didn't know how to drive a stick shift, now can drive a tuktuk with ease!

We had this unique family vehicle for a short amount of time and then passed it on to a family who needed it more. For me, driving it was a pain, literally. I had to bend far over to see out the windshield and crouch down. Which is why we passed it on to someone who would use it more. Still, it was a nice way to stay dry in the rain for getting around centre.

THIS is why I didn't enjoy it. They call me Mr. Incredible when I drive it.

Mr. Incredible

2011-10-21T16:53:00.000-07:00

Family Wagon

2011-10-21T16:51:00.000-07:00

the Family Wagon

2011-10-21T16:46:00.000-07:00

Solomons Islands

2011-10-20T23:45:00.000-07:00

Honiara here I come.

Our organization has a branch in the Solomon Islands. Currently they have no I.T. guy and are in need of a network across their center to improve communication. Good communication furthers the work of Bible Translation in many ways.

at the business level:
-internet access speeds access to information and resources
-communication to remote areas can put people together who to get the job done quicker
-backing up of data avoids having to re-do work when laptops are damaged by weather, or lost to theft or accident.

on a personal level:
-you feel less remote when you know you can email or call a loved one, a prayer partner, a financial partner.
-overall sense of connection with the different worlds we move between helps decrease the sense of isolation, which in turn, increases the ability to stay in a remote place longer and get more work done (good communication helps to DECREASE the 'island fever' feeling of being all alone and wanting to go home)

Those are simply some highlights of why communication is so important. Some people use it rather creatively and can do multiple translation projects from anywhere in the world!

I'm pretty sure since you're a blog reader, I don't have to fully sell the idea of a reliable connection to the world. Even if it is only 256k download speeds.

Well, as a favor to this sister branch, our directors have lent me to them to go and:
-install wireless networking
-install network printing
-install file server/backup solution
-install internet routing/firewall/billing system (this is my own custom home grown solution that we're using, and so far, it's been very useful. My manager was asked to give a presentation at a local tech conference on it. Fully opensource, best-of-brand (so to speak) but also customized so that administrators can easily create accounts for people to use their internet with billing. (think of it as a low cost Metered Hotspot).

It's rather complex actually, but cool.
I run VMware ESXi on top of a small PC. That serves 3 virtual machines. Two of which are PFSENSE (opensource firewall, opensource captive portal) and 1 is Ubuntu 10.04 running FreeRadius and a customized version of Daloradius). It can plug into an LDAP domain or Active Directory domain, or, simply use it's own local Mysql database of users.

It's really something I'm proud of having been able to piece together and document. To get the effectiveness of this 1 box, you'd have to pay at least $2000 USD for something akin to what Starbucks uses to provide you with wireless. My cost, between $400 and $630 USD!!

Anyway, geek moment aside...

I'm heading to the Solomon Islands on Monday!!! How cool is that! The sister branch is paying for me to come out there, work my tail off for 1 week, and then come back.

They have no I.T. person, and could really use one, but my hopes are that when I'm done, I'll be able to remotely support them.

I'm telling you, it'll be an adventure for sure. Flying internationally always is. I'll be leaving behind my family for about 10 days. Please pray for them.

Please pray that the trip goes well and things don't break, and that when I'm gone it keeps working well for them. That's the trick. Designing and implementing something that will work for a very long time when I'm away.

Well, time to go pack.
Can you imagine... it's like I'm becoming a world traveler or something! ME!?

I'll definitely take pictures!
I think it's too much to hope for any actual site seeing time, there is too much work to do in too short of a time. But maybe I'll get some good pictures of me setting up the network! That's what you want to see isn't it? No one really wants to see tropical landscapes, and such. You want to see a sweaty guy sitting in a dark room, splicing cables!

Prayer and Hardware

2011-10-13T18:13:00.000-07:00

Mock me if you must, but since high school I have believed in the power of prayer on hardware. Since that very first time I was troubleshooting a broken professional tv Video Tape Recorder. The teacher said 'Chad this isn't working see what you can do.' I spent an hour on it, couldn't resolve it, put my hands on it and prayed. It started working.

We don't battle against flesh and blood alone, but in my job it seems that is my primary function. To battle against the physical and logical failures of computers and networks.

Today we had the most catastrophic failure here that I've ever seen.

-one of our VM servers had a hardware error which crashed 8 virtual machines

-when the second VM server came up, and brought them back up, they were in a confused state because the boot sequence was broken (our Active directory came up last)

-at the same time, a motherboard lost a sensor and refused to boot on our main backup server... which means, not only would we not get a full backup tonight, but backups last night probably failed.

-all of this, on top of massive email failures, because one of our smarthosts went down and was refusing connections and I had 900 email messages in the queue.

In short, almost everything was broken at the same time, and I could not find a common cause. Typically you could look at power, but that wouldn't explain why the datastore filled up.

So as we sat there, working, trying to get it back online, I got to a point where I said 'wow! This is a lot to fix.' The phones were ringing, I was both network manager and acting department manager.

I was stuck. I had to fix these things with my co-worker, and had to do it fast.

I stopped and looked, and closed my eyes and prayed.
I put out a quick shout to some of the people calling in to tell me what I already knew (that it was broken)... and said 'all you can do is be patient, and pray'.

"God, if this is some random act of failure, please give me the ability to solve it quickly. If this is a spiritual thing, I pray against the enemy and his attempts. You are greater than he, and I pray you would bring healing to this equipment, bring it online, and I thank you for the skill you've taught me over the years, please make my brain work well right now."

It wasn't even 2 minutes before things starting coming online again.
I can't explain to you the joy that comes from seeing all reds, to all greens, in a very short amount of time.

In the end, we still haven't been able to diagnose a single root cause. It seems like multiple simultaneous failures.

We lost 1 server, the motherboard is dead.
But, as God would have it, we had another server recently offlined (we virtualized it), so we could steal it's motherboard.

We brought the crashed backup server back online in 2 minutes or so, and guess what.

The crashes happened in such a way last night, that we got all of our backups!

Not only did stuff come back online, but when it went OFFLINE, it went in such a way that we still did not lose a single bit of translation data, and all the other data that enables this work. And email is routing properly now too!

Some may cry 'coincidence'. Others may say 'well that's why you have I.T. guys'.

I say, God is great. He spared us.

It could have been really really bad, and I think, it would have been if we didn't realize we needed to pray. If we didn't submit and try to continue on in our own way, sure it may have gotten fixed eventually but God's way is so much better.

It is SO awesome that we're back online, what a crazy morning, but it ended without sorrow and that's a good thing.

Death of Music

2011-10-12T16:06:00.000-07:00

This is my M-audio fast track. I bought it close to ten years ago in the U.S. and use it to interface a microphone and a guitar pickup into my mac. I use garageband from there to record tracks and goof around with music. My daughter and son LOVE playing with garageband, and I haven't done vocals for about 1.5 years. So my little fast-track sat in a locked cupboard, next to my microphone.

The other day my daughter and I had an idea for a fun project and I got all the equipment out and set it up for her to sing into, and something wasn't working. After trying a few things, I opened up the little box for the first time and saw this

You may be confused as to what you're looking at. Look for the little piles of dirt. At first I thought it was cockroach poo, but then upon conferring with my son, it's dirt, and dead ants.

Corrosion in electronics is common, notice the copper plate at the top there? Copper corrodes quickly here. Also if you look at the bottom pic you can see light green corrosion near the bottom. This type of thing happens from time to time here. Electronics that are stored, can suddenly become some pest's home. Others can be subject to corrosion from the humidity. The electronics you leave on, can become nice warm places for interesting things like geckos to lay eggs in.

We have what we call a 'dry box' for important electronics. It's a wooden cupboard with a light bulb in it and a fan. That is usually enough to keep this type of corrosion at bay. Although we do find it much more common near the beach (more humidity and salt in the air).

I took several Q-tips and some rubbing alcohol and clean out all the dirt but the corrosion was unrepairable. So I'll be replacing the unit somehow. Still it lasted me several good years, and I can be happy with it.

I have a backup plan, there are some electronics gurus here who could probably fix it, but the time involved would be quite a bit. I think that it might have been salvageable if I had caught the corrosion before plugging it in. I think giving it power zapped something inside that no amount of cleaning will bring back to life.

And this, is only 1 more reason why having technical people here to support the work is important. Someone needs to be able to open up your laptop and point to the big pile of dead ants and dirt and say 'Well, THERE's yer problem!' ... and then fix it.

Tim Tam

2011-10-09T18:24:00.001-07:00

...from life in PNG

came across this pic from fail blog and thought it pretty funny.

Arnotts is an Australian company that makes 'biscuits' (Aussie for cookie which is funny if you ever invite an Aussie over for biscuits and gravy, you'll get an odd look 'why would you put gravy on cookies?')

TimTam is a chocolatey flakey cookie that the kids love. Some will actually drink MILO (chocolate flavored energy drink) through a TimTam. (they also eat ramen noodles dry).

So this picture had me laughing. We don't often buy these, because being imported from Australia, they're a little pricey.

Jury Rig of the Week

2011-10-09T02:53:00.000-07:00

This is a close up of a FIXED Australian cistern.

A few days ago, our septic overflowed. Septic here is often a small tank, that leeches into the ground. Our septic was full because our ground is so saturated with water from the rains, that it doesn't leech very quickly. The water table is very near the surface, and as such, we depend mostly on the bacteria in the tank to eat the septic up and leech the water.

(for those unfamiliar with how a septic system works, don't worry I'll spare you further details (-;).

I tracked down the cause of this overflow by two methods:
1 - I had no idea where the tank was since I never installed it and found out by following my nose
and
2 - the lid wasn't below the surface, it was near my bedroom window.

I kept telling my wife as we go to sleep at night for a week, 'that funny smell, is NOT me... what is that?'

Long story short;

The toilet had broken, and was flooding water very slowly into the septic tank, filling it up. A small plastic piece, specially shaped to stop the flow of water when the float bob raised, had broken in two.

EASY fix right? head on down to the local hardware store and buy the internals to a toilet.

WAIT.. no one sells the internals to these things?

Okay buy the top half of a toilet then.
$75.00 and a 6 hour drive. Okay crazy glue? Except the crazy glue here doesn't work like it's supposed to, it comes out tacky instead of liquid possibly because of the heat, and once you open the tube, it's worthless the next day. So I don't keep it around too much. I considered duct tape, but tape and water don't mix well.

I asked around if anyone had half of a broken toilet I could scrounge from, but I couldn't find the right piece from those.

A 25 cent plastic piece broke. THERE HAS to be a better way.

So, I scrounged up a thick bit of old sheet metal, looks like it used to be used for some sort of radio bracket. Traced out what I thought the piece should look like.

Took an angle grinder to it, and made a small 2 inch piece of metal, specially shaped with a hole through it... mounted it in place of the cheap plastic piece that broke.

and.. viola... FIXED TOILET.

I was pretty proud of my fix. Admittedly, first I tried wood. I always try a wood fix first, but then I quickly went to metal, seeing as how wood rots slower than metal rusts.

You can see the piece in the pic above, top right. It's shaped like a little tiny noched pistol, but you can't see that part.

That's my jury-rig of the week.

I'm proud of myself for having been able to shape the piece and cut it precisely enough to fit where it needed to go.

Total cost $0. saved myself $75.00 and a 6 hour drive!

I came bursting out of the bathroom, beating my chest and raising my arms in triumph.

"Wife of mine, children, gather around, I have accomplished a great feat!"

and my wife replied,

"that's great dear, but most of us conquered that activity when we were five."

pa dum ta.

no she didn't say that, but it would have been really funny had she.

what she actually said was
"okay?!?!?"
"I fixed the toilet!"
"it was broken?"

doh!
Well, jury riggers unite, revel in my newly fixed toilet, and stay tuned for the next jury rig saga.

Fixer upper

2011-10-09T02:52:00.000-07:00

This is the cistern (top part) of an Australian toilet with the lid off so you can see the inside. These toilets have 2 buttons. 1/2 flush and full flush and while standard here, that type of toilet is making its presence known in the U.S.

Aitape Online

2011-10-07T17:56:00.000-07:00

As part of our goal to bring our regional areas on line, Kurt and Wayne (co workers) fly to Aitape and successfully installed a VSAT internet connect.

256mb down
512mb up
(blazing fast I know!)

Later this month, I'll be heading to Buka to do the same thing.

(from left to right, Kurt - fellow network engineer, Ben - translator and his co-translator whose name I can't recall, and Wayne - radio/electronics engineer)

Fridays

2011-10-06T21:42:00.000-07:00

Fridays around here are really super busy and exciting and I never have figured out why.
But this week I'm acting department manager, which means I'm the guy in charge of the craziness.

RAIN RAIN RAIN
KABOOM, what was that?
I dunno I can't find out right now I have to get a guy out to Aviation to fix their printing, and return the autoshop's rental truck.

On the way, I find the industrial manager looking up, so I stop.

AHA!!! the the kaboom was lightning having hit a tree, broken a branch off, the branch took out a power line.

SEE the light green on the branch? It is most likely the path the lightning took down it,taking a strip of bark with it, but it could also be the branch sliding across the power line as it dangled and took it out.

HARD to tell, but it definitely fell, and it definitely took out the power.

People are running around trying to keep their homes from flooding.

It's a CRAZY day.
WOW.

It is at times like these, that I remember the adrenaline rush of working in I.T. in a third world country. I.T. can be exciting in Corp. America, here, you're working without a net, and soaking wet.

Kaboom

2011-10-06T21:06:00.000-07:00

Beautiful sunny morning.
At lunch, it turned into a torrential downpour. Heavier than usual.
I headed back to work, got soaked in the process, to the bone.
the roads were rivers, my yard was a lake. I saw no grass, and I contemplated the chances my home would flood.

Lightening, thunder... and was about to post to the community to unplug their electronics to avoid lightening damage when

CRACK!!!!
lighting and thunder at the same time, had to be less than a thousand feet away from us, probably hit a power pole, because our radio repair room shot sparks into the room. (I was outside, didn't see it)

Anyway, definitely expecting some repairs due to lightning damage.
VERY thankful our servers are on DC power.

WeWak (aitape part 2)

2011-10-06T00:10:00.001-07:00

Today I'm acting department manager.
At 4:30pm I get a call.

"Chad, aviation called, the rain has cancelled the flight that was going to take our sat dish to Wewak.... can you pull off a miracle?"

Our two guys who are out in Aitape, have a 5 hour bumpy truck ride to Wewak, where they are trusting, our equipment will arrive for them to install a second VSAT dish for a regional centre. (Regional centres are where our translators go to get supplies, recoup, do data backups, and more).

SO... how do I, knowing that everything closes in 30 minutes, get a satellite dish all the way across the country?

HELP. I use help.
a friend in Aviation was able to make a connection with a friend from a different missions organization who had a plane that could go to Wewak.
BUT that plane was 2 hours away.

So I needed to, in 30 minutes:
-find out the flight time
-get a vehicle
-get a driver (I can't go, I'd be leaving the department without a supervisor)
-take the two to aviation
-load the equipment in the vehicle
-arrange for the trip
-book the flight at the end of the trip.

AND did I do it? no.. WE DID IT.

I felt like saying 'we're on a mission from God.'
I called the autoshop - they had a vehicle they could rent us big enough to haul the load.
I asked an employee friend of mine who knew the area, who had a license was a good driver, if he could be willing to go.
Together we loaded the equipment.

So.. thanks to the guys in:
-aviation
-autoshop
-a neighboring mission
-the helpdesk
-and communications department

we are able to deliver, (unless something else changes) the equipment 2 hours away at 6am for a flight going to Wewak to meet our installer friends, so they can do the setup.

IF the equipment fails to get there, then their long bumpy ride and plane flight home will have been wasted time, effort, and money.

AND YOU THOUGHT installing internet was easy. (-;

Aitape online

2011-10-05T23:20:00.000-07:00

so today I am acting department manager. Five minutes ago I checked the email and got this

"Could you please call (our ISP contact) and let him know we DO have an internet connection. I can't get through to him to tell him because the sat phone is cutting out."

!!!!
THIS IS GREAT NEWS.

Aitape is one of the locations that is hosting a multiple language translation project (translating more than 1 Bible at a time). We sent a team of 2 guys out there, they left two days ago. They installed a 2.4 meter VSAT dish, and tuned it in successfully.

YES!!!
You have no idea the amount of work that goes into installing a VSAT dish in a remote village location.

In your home area, you'd pour a cement slab, with some bolts, and put the dish together and mount it to the slab.

HERE, you have to make sure all the parts fit in the plane, the bags of cement are considered hazardous so have to be dealt with specially for the plane trip. Then you have to be sure there are workmen to do the pouring, etc.

It takes weeks.

AND THEN, how do you call your ISP to say 'turn on the pipe?' when you have no cell phone or phone service? You use a sat phone.

Anyway, it's online!!!! That's awesome..

stay tuned for part II.

Nobnob

2011-10-03T22:36:00.001-07:00

(view from the top of nobnob near the tower)

In Madang Province, at the top of nob nob hill sits a wireless bridge that connects to Divine Word University.

about 4 years of effort goes into that statement.
4 years ago, the reality of having inter-connectivity to remote parts of the country was only a hope. Having that connectivity to POPULAR areas of the country was still only a hope. 4 years ago we had no relationship with Divine Word University or their IT department.

Nobnob is the place that hosts our training for people first coming into this country (and surrounding countries). It is like a jungle boot camp. But a little less so now that they have high speed internet.

For those that remember when my family went through this camp nearly 5 years ago, we went 'black' for 6-14 weeks. No email, no web browsing, no way to really contact us.

Today, the new trainees have cell phones with data access, and laptops. Is it a luxury?

Well sure any technology can be used luxuriously. Calling family and emailing them instead of writing letters that you hope will arrive via airmail... is technically a luxury. (one that makes living here more sustainable). But it is also a useful tool. Imagine getting sick in the village and having no way to call for help.

Even WITH the ability to call for help, last month we lost a dear member of our community to illness that came on quickly in the village. She was able to call for a medical evacuation, and sadly, passed away during the flight. Without communication technology, we wouldn't have known about it for a very long time.

Of course these are extreme examples. The more practical day to day application is that translators can receive communications from anywhere in the world to get their work done, as well as make backup copies should their laptops get damaged or stolen in transit.

As I write this two co-workers are flying to another remote region to install VSAT technology (I'll be doing this next month to Buka) which will bring them online for the first time in the Wewak and Aitape area.

THIS IS A HUGE win for Aitape and for Bible Translation, because it means that the work can continue without a physical presence (if someone has to return from the village, they can remotely help with the translation). It should speed things along greatly in the work.

I always get so excited when we get more and more connectivity and I get to see the ways God uses it.

Before this year is over, we'll have seen nearly 80% of our vision from 5 years ago come to reality. It's been a slow and patience requiring process because of the many obstacles in our path, but God is smoothing them.

I don't know God's mind or His timing, but part of me is excited as we're doing the installs hoping that God is preparing a time of harvest... hoping that finally these obstacles that have come down have come down at the same time for a reason, and that we are seeing God laying the foundations of something GREAT to come!

Something Fun

2011-10-03T22:22:00.001-07:00

Two interesting things happened today:

1 - friend of mine out on a survey (they hike around the country like backpackers, to find villages and find what languages those areas are using, so we can gather statistics to guide which Bible translation projects we do).... and he came back with an interesting story. Read, the Tonda Survey

2 - we were able to announce 1/2 price internet per/mb for October. One of my goals here has been to work towards faster, more reliable, and more affordable internet so that we can remain in contact with the places we need to, to get the work done.

After many years at it, our team has the fastest, most reliable internet that we've had in ... well EVER. But people are very used to using it the way they used to when it was expensive.

SO, we had an idea, came up with a calculation and decided we could take a risk to cut the cost to everyone in 1/2 for 1 month. IF they use it more, it'll cost us less per mb.

My hopes would be to have a nice side effect of everyone being able to skype home for the holidays at 4 cents per mb !!!

(when I came here, the internet cost was around 22 cents per mb)

Our idea to make this happen is a bit risky, a bit zany, but it's a risk we can afford to take, so it's not super risky. What it means is that if we're wrong, and price isn't the prohibitive factor, and people simply don't NEED as much here, well then we'll end up having to pay the internet bill ourselves without the income to do it. BUT, we do have the budget to cover it.

So, it's a bit out of the ordinary, but if it succeeds, it will have been a huge leap forward in making things here more affordable for people.

So... pray it succeeds!

-Chad
nothing succeeds like a toothless parrot.

God leads

2011-10-01T02:04:00.000-07:00

wanted to drop a quick line to say this thought that I had only moments ago.

My family and I were in town, scheduled to stay for several days this last week. One night around 2am I woke up, staring into the ceiling and had a thought:

'you should go home on Weds instead of Thurs.' (Yes, I think in abbreviations (-; )

In the morning I told my wife this. It meant packing up a bit early and heading home. When she asked me why, I didn't really have great reasons. I didn't want to say 'I have a feeling.' Because that's not really my style. But I did say things that made enough sense to appease her, which wasn't hard.

There were logical reasons to return early... and I figured my brain must have been identifying those.

We returned.

The next day fighting, massive fighting, broke out in a major town we would have been traveling through. 14 people confirmed dead. The fighting went on for three days. Well, truth be told, I would have been warned about the fighting and would have avoided that town and extended our stay until the fighting was over. But that would have incurred cost. But then I realized today, that the phones here have been down, and so I would have never got the call to tell me to stay out of town.

The thought I had right now was:

'WOW I'm glad we came home a day early!... wait.. GOD probably did that!'

God has us in the palm of His hands doesn't he?

I'm really thankful for those times when we get spared.

The fighting makes me sad. I long to see God's Word transform this culture of fighting up here in the highlands. They do such violence to one another. The enemy has a strong grip on them, and I long for the day I see God's truth break that and change them to a culture of love.

Found by my son in a store

2011-09-25T21:20:00.000-07:00

We always enjoy reading poorly translated packaging. Anyway it is a delight for you to have a crocodile.

Weed whacked

2011-09-25T19:19:00.000-07:00

Here it's called a bush cutter and it costs over $1000 Usd !!! Ironically paying a man to cut 3 acres of tall grass costs about $12 Usd

We are finding that prices
Are going up as the
Exchange rate devalues the US dollar more. This is partially because a lot of out of country business has moved
here because of the new nickel mine being built.

Hose

2011-09-25T19:16:00.000-07:00

In town looking for a hose. Found one but didn't buy it because it cost over $100 Usd !!!!

The bill is in

2011-09-19T16:02:00.000-07:00

Total cost out of pocket for our son's medical evacuation - $8000
These are the times that try men's faith.

Often people ask me 'is it cheaper to live in PNG?' The answer simply is 'yes'. It is not however cheaper to fly to or leave PNG. The pricetag for that is $10,000 for my family. It isn't cheaper to get gravely ill in PNG either.

But God transcends money. Money is a man made contrivance that doesn't really seem to phase God at all and yet puts man in definitely difficult situations.

This month has been a difficult month for some of our friends. As support staff we work to support the work of Bible Translation. To get that done you need Bible Translators. This young couple, friends of ours, my wife and I spend a lot of time praying for.

They've had a rough go of it for a long time now. They are newly assigned translators and so we have been supporting them and praying for them to make progress in their language group.

It seems like they've seen nothing but hardship since coming here and we pray desperately that they don't give up. But for years now, they've had major trouble after major trouble.

-Getting land-locked and separated by a huge mudslide
-Illness, fleas, inability to sleep

that was last month
this month it is the birth of their son, but then having visa problems so they couldn't get back to PNG, then their daughter got very sick and had to have a spinal tap....

and then all of this, the flights and the medical bills, they have no money to pay for all of it.

It all seems so desperate doesn't it?

Living this lifestyle means you have very few constants. Life is always in transition. That bugs a lot of Type A personalities who need to have a plan. Well you can make a plan but expect that plan to be dashed to pieces. It's hard on you to be always unsure of one day after the next.

But we do have one constant. One we know. GOD IS FAITHFUL.

Bad stuff happens, but GOD IS FAITHFUL.
Does that mean we always get the answer we want? No. BUT GOD IS FAITHFUL. GOD IS GOOD. GOD IS JUST. GOD IS LOVING.

Money and health (psychological and physical) are two things in constant flux around us. Sometimes we have more of it than at other times.

We live on the edge of faith. We depend on God to show up, otherwise we don't make it.
God shows up. He always has.

Living like this, I can see the Israelites and their behavior. How many times did they hear from God Himself, and yet continued to mess up?

And yet, we often have worry and doubt when it comes to financial and health issues. How many times has God provided for us? For our friends? For others around us?

Why do we worry then?
A problem presents itself, and our instinct is to find the solution. When we arrive at the fact that the only solution to be found lies outside of our control, then we doubt. We doubt if the solution will come. We doubt if it'll come the way we want it to.

Parents with kids who have driver's licenses understand this sense of loss-of-control.

It is out of your hands now.

But each time they return home unscathed, your confidence grows a little in their ability.

God has been so faithful to us that our confidence in the likelihood that He will not let us fall, is immense.

And yet, silly us, we tend to worry.

Today when I got this bill for the medivac my jaw dropped. I thought we had already seen the last of the bills. And I admit, I did think 'how are we going to pay this?' For a moment.

But a voice inside of me said loudly, 'He's never let you down.'

And He hasn't.

God is faithful.

This month I've heard of some friends who are gravely ill. Yet they glorify God and say 'He is good.' If you've ever asked yourself 'how can this person who is dying say that God is good?' Then I want for you to know how they could say that. It comes from a profound relationship with Christ. The kind of friendship where you know that friend has your back. Where that friend loves you despite all your failures. That friend knows you within and without, and constantly upholds you. You may be at your darkest and deepest and worst moments of your life, and they are there holding your hand. Should we hate this friend because they have the supernatural ability to remove the bad stuff from us? Or should we love this friend because even though the bad stuff comes, the really good stuff lies just around the corner, and there would be no good stuff, without Christ.

1 Cor 1:
4 I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. 5 For in him you have been enriched in every way—in all your speaking and in all your knowledge— 6 because our testimony about Christ was confirmed in you. 7 Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. 8 He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.

Managers and Donuts

2011-09-09T00:19:00.000-07:00

1 week ago yesterday I officially became the manager of a portion of my department. Management in a multi-cultural, volunteer based ministry is an interesting twist to the challenge of managing.

It's something I've been trying to avoid for a long time. There is no benefit to one's self to becoming a manager when you are supported by people rather than by your job. So then why would I want to become a manager? I really for many years, have wanted to be a worker bee. I am happiest when knee deep in technical issues that need resolving, or when thinking about how I can use some technology to further the attempts of man to serve God's purpose.

It's not the first time I've been asked to assume a leadership position here. Each time I have prayed and considered it and each time I felt more called to be a worker bee. Although managers are worker bees, often they handle the things that we worker-bees don't like to do so that we can keep working.

So now I'm a manager, but also a worker-bee. See we don't have enough people so I wear two hats.

"Chad, I think we should install wireless across the entire Aviation department, do you approve?"
-switch hats-
"Yes I approve, can I handle the paper work for you?"
-switch hats-
"That would be wonderful, thanks."

Lest you think my hair turn too pointy. I found out most people already thought I was a manager, no I've only been ACTING manager before (-;

My new challenges include all the administrative tasks, plus the well being and successful operation of telephones, helpdesk, networking and software development. I have several ex-pat direct reports as well as papua new guinea nationals.

So... why would I say yes? Would I say yes simply because no one else would?
Nope. I say let God raise up someone to do the job. I refuse to take a job I will fail at. I have a responsibility to you who sent me here, to spend my talents as best I can and to do what you sent me here to do.

The reason, is because as I age/mature I look around and I see more of the decisions being made, and more of the process. In my youth I was happy to let someone else handle the burden of leadership. But I have come to the realization that God has given me skills and talents and that I was not submitting a large part of those skills to Him because I didn't want the extra stress and burden.

I'm hopeful that part of me can be used to serve God in a new (and additional) way, that will encourage others to do their best for Him too. I hope to bring to the table, passion and encouragement.

It's time I start being part of the solution, and pitching in to do a job few really want to do.

So that will consume some portion of my time now, but I am still a network engineer and will remain so, until I find that my hair has become so pointy as to become a burden rather than a help to the network team. I hope that time will be a great many decades away.

Please join me in prayer as I need God's help to be a good servant leader.... this role can affect the longevity of so many other people. AT the worst I could be a bad manager and discourage people wanting to serve God. At best I could be an inspiring leader who pulls the best out of people!

God will be the only way the best is possible in me.

ON DONUTS:
The other day I saw a line for donuts at a store. Nationals love them. A friend of mine sells them at market every friday and makes a killing. I stood outside a store entrance the other day and saw PNG'ians coming through with sweet kai (sweet-food =donuts).

And my first instinctive reaction was "why are they spending what little money they have on junk food?" then "oh, maybe they already had something with protein in it." and it hit me... much like my kids before kindergarten, it is possible a percentage of Papua New Guineans have very little education in the area of nutrition. If you don't have that understanding, then you would naturally eat what tastes good and is available.

I'm not saying ALL PNG'ians, I'm definitely some, and maybe most. HEALTH and NUTRITION training is a constant challenge in countries like these.

And I began to compare it to spiritual matters. It seems instinctively like they are making unwise decisions that are affecting them physically.... they need to be told about nutrition.

How much more are they making decisions that affect them spiritually.... they need to be told about Christ.

That donut has a hole in the middle of it for a reason.
Comparitively, so does their 1 kina coin. A hole right through the center of it.

The kids when they play soccer, and the ball goes through the opposing players legs, shout '1 kina!' Perhaps it's because of the hole in the coin.

PNG has a hole in it's soul, and if you have eyes to see it, it's everywhere.
And it pains me to see, it hurts my heart to see. It hurts to the point where you almost need to protect your heart a little. So many missionaries can easily get jaded over the years because your soul can't take seeing a people hurt themselves for decades on end. If you ever hear one of them make a joke about the culture they serve, perhaps don't see it as an insensitivity but a self defense measure.

I can tell you there is such a geniune desire to see PNG come to Christ, to embrace Him, to change their behavior as a result of that love, that they stop tearing each other and themselves down... and start building up.

There is a hole.
There is a gap.

And with your help, we stand in the gap together, ushering them to find Christ.

Minute 2 Winit

2011-09-03T03:50:00.001-07:00

So I may have mentioned that 1 saturday a month or so, we volunteer to do something fun with the 7th and 8th graders.

IT's been hard to get them to mesh as a team, because there is a grade division.

But tonight I think we succeeded.

I downloaded 6 minute to winit videos, and my wife and I planned the events and had others help
with running the booths, and we had a marathon TEAM based minute to win it.

The folks gelled and there were a lot of good team building things happening.

If you want my formula, here is how to host a successful youth minute to win it night.

goals:
-separate the 'cliques'.
-award sportsmanship
-have fun
-award team and individual achievement.

1. Pick your six (or however many) events from the minute 2 winit website (we chose events that were titled tastefully and didn't waste food or consumables like Toilet Paper because of our limitations here.

2. Download and watch the videos, make a list of the equipment you need

3. Ahead of time, gather your equipment for each event.

4. Label your events with numbers (1 - 6)

5. Place all needed items for event in a bag marked for the number of the event (separate out your game pieces by event (1-6)

6. Recruit 1 person to run each booth (1-6)

7. The day of the event, setup is easy, drop the numbered bag off at the station it's for, explain to each leader the rules, and the setup, have them do the setup. Give them total control over the rules, let them be the booth boss.

8. Play the instructional videos for the kids.

9. Divide into teams (this method works well)
- as the kids come in have them write their first and last name on a slip of paper
- choose 6 kids to pull out an even amount of names (thus the teams are randomly assigned)
other methods are easy for the kids to cheat with... if they each pull out a number they can swap.

10. Team 1 starts as booth 1, and 2 and 2, and so on

11. Timing: EACH booth boss has a watch with a second hand.. to time 1 minute.
If you have 5 kids per team, and 6 booths, a good amount of time is 7 minutes. We budgetted too much time, we did 15 minutes because we assume 8 kids and 1 minute setup, but what ends up happening is the kids help with the setup as the play happens... so you spend almost ZERO time on setup

ROTATE teams to the next booth after 7 minutes.

12 Scoring: EACH team has a score card. The booth boss gives 1 point for each person on the team who successfully passes the test. If they have succeeded once, they don't get another stamp. This encourages EVERYONE to play and also awards individual achievement without causing one to shine more than any other. (otherwise the kids will elect the BEST to keep doing it for unlimited points). IF they run out of time they can redo for fun only.

SPORTSMANSHIP: - the timekeeper who is roving from booth to booth will put an S on the card if they get a sportsmanship point.

13 AWARDS: - we had a silly trophy and some candy to give out, because we hope to do it again. The trophy was little too 'girly' so the boys didn't care, but the girls sure did. Since when did GIRLS care more about trophies? Since the trophy was a plush toy FISH.

So that's how we did it. It was a HUGE success. The kids had a lot of fun, really went outside their social boundaries... which was our goal. WE saw some incredibly good sportsmanship, and it was the first time we didn't have some odd conflict happening in a corner somewhere.

But now, it's rest time, we're tired, it took a lot of creativity and work to pull it off, but we do it because we love our kids and this is part of living here. They don't have malls to go to, they don't have movie theatres, or whatever else kids do. But they do have these special saturdays where they never know what is going to happen... but they know it's always fun.

God wants us to know what is on His network

2011-08-29T16:40:00.000-07:00

When I first arrived in PNG there was no way to monitor the devices on our network. We knew they went down when people called to complain. One of my first tasks was to build a NOC (network operations center), so I would know, get emailed, paged whenever anything went down.

I had done this at previous jobs several times, only now, I had to do it with zero budget.

There are opensource tools out there that are nice, but they have huge drawbacks in that the guy who sets up the NOC is the only guy who understands it. I needed something intuitive that anyone on the team or following me could learn quickly.

That rules out a LOT of solutions.

One solution that I knew and liked was Solarwinds 7. I wrote a friend years ago and they donated a license. Suddenly we could see all our devices and do monitoring. We fell in love with it and it was easy to manage. Now it's several revisions old, but still very useful.

Not long after that I wrote a letter to a company producing PRTG because I needed to bandwidth monitor my firewall via SNMP. They wrote me back with a 100 node license, gratis!!! FREE donated because we are a non-profit organization.

I saved that letter as 'this is my template for a successful donation request.'

Recently though we've needed to monitor services (linux and windows). So I began playing with Zenoss. But found that while it was the best opensource monitoring, it wasn't a simple and good compliment to Solarwinds. More like a replacement. It was hard to configure but not as hard as others.

Which brings me to IPsentry and WhatsupGold. IPsentry is an unassuming little tool, it looks a bit aged, but it's very powerful and easy to configure and does EXACTLY what I want to do. Total price $695.

I took out my request template, customized it, and sent it to IPsentry. Within 24 hours they donated a full package license to us!!!!!

I'm so elated right now I can't explain it to you.

THEN, I did the same for WhatsUpGold, which is around $4000 product now. (I remember when it was free). They wrote me back and said 'how many nodes do you need?'

WHAT!??? WOW!!!

Okay so that you are following:
-Solarwinds - $3000 - donated
-PRTG - $800 - donated
-IPsentry - $700 - donated
-WhatsUpGold - $4000 - donation possibly in progress

With those 4 products, there is no way anything happens on my network I don't know about.

Oh yeah,
Bomgar - appliance costs $61,000 - donated at cost $1400
Packeteer - new $10000 - purchased at bankrupcy sale $1300

I know I groused a bit about Microsoft changing their licensing on us and costing us thousands, so consider this post equal time and a thank you.

There have been some great donations to my department in the last several years.

Whenever I run into a problem I run through this mental flow chart:

And I get to that part about a creative solution, and I sent out emails and letters, and wouldn't you know it, God responds through people.

I have had failures, I've asked for donations and been told no. But it strikes me today, that in this one thing, I've had a tremendous amount of encouragement and success. God must REALLY want us to be able to monitor what is on our network. Look at that list of products? We would NEVER be able to have brought this NOC up to this professional level without those donations.

I am so encouraged by the fact that God seems to be blessing our efforts to supply professional support to the effort of Bible Translation. It's like a huge stamp of approval on my efforts here.

I would have never thought about writing for donations, years ago. I never had to, I always worked for corporations that had financial resources.

Here, we have to be a tad more creative and I thank God and give Him the glory for every creative effort and thought I've had in this area!!

So this is a thank you to the people who have contributed, to the companies and their donations, to the work of accomplishing changed lives through Bible translation!

Lots going on

2011-08-23T23:56:00.000-07:00

This is a nice lunch snack in some villages. I have volunteered to eat one, but have been warned some people are really allergic to them, and so I have passed.

There is a LOT going on right now, so much I haven't had time to blog.
-there was a bible camp for local kids

-a 2 week training course to teach Papua New Guineans why we are here, to help us become 'wanbel' (of a like mind - but literally means 'one stomach'.. here the stomach is used how we would use 'heart' in the U.S. so.. we have the same heart for seeing people changed by God's Word....we are wanbel (juan - bell)

-bible dedications revisited - we looked over all the dedications done in the first 6 months of 2011!

-work has been busy, we're on the verge of connecting to the internet 3 new regions in the next month alone!!! using VSAT technology.

Today was a very good day at work, as I was able to help a translation consultant before he left for the village tomorrow, I was able to help solve a problem that could have put a major project off by a month, and I was able to assist a teacher to conduct some English learning training.

Every now and then, God gives you a glimpse, a reminder of how we are honored to serve Him, and how our contributions help. Today was one of those days!

Thanks God... keep up the good work in this country! I'm very pleased to see all the training and the changing of hearts and minds as people start to see the importance of growing closer to Christ and training others to follow.

anwered prayer

2011-08-10T21:28:00.000-07:00

I wanted to tell you all this story... I'm still sort of shaking from how amazing it is.

Today at 10:30 we had 4 network guys sitting in a room taking training. When the phones began to ring. Something was seriously wrong on the network. Typically we can find the issue within moments with our operations software, but we couldn't.

It took a while but we finally found out a server was down,
then another server
then another
as we tried to find the common denominator, each time we tried to fix things, it got worse.

Then a knock on the door, my wife said 'pray for (our friends) their 5yr old daughter is getting medivac'd for an appendicitis'.

Email stopped working. EMAIL is critical during a medivac because they need to get email approval before getting a plane into the air.

So now the pressure was on. Aviation couldn't fly, the clinic couldn't get approval, and servers were going down.

We worked through lunch, and into the afternoon when we found also that in the middle of this, all of our DNS records were gone.
Our ISP had a routing issue that caused the dns servers to go offline... so now, mail and internet weren't working.

DURING a medivac.

The network room was complete chaos. I took a few minutes once we realized calls needed to be made, left a co-worker to make the calls and headed home. I talked to my wife who mentioned that their Bible study was cancelled.

And then it hit me... this is NOT a coincidence.
I headed back to the office, buried my face in my hands. I prayed, 'God I don't think this is a coincidence, I think the enemy is stirring up confusion right now and I don't know why, please thwart him. God bring us victory over this!!'

While I was praying, the phone rang, my co-worker answered it, I ignored it and kept praying.
I lifted my head from my hands the call was over, my coworker said,

'it's all working again'!! PRAISE GOD!!!
and then I turned to tell him how I was just praying and we heard the medivac plane take off.

PRAISE GOD.. HE is powerful, HE is victorious.

In the end, a routing problem in Singapore was the cause of the computer issues.... and I'm glad those are over, but there had to be a reason all this strife was stirred up, so we're continuing to pray against that.

But I wanted to take a moment and praise God, for immediate answered prayer, and how awesome is that!

Krahij

2011-08-08T16:27:00.001-07:00

The tok ples name of this is krahij, and we get the word for two minute
noodles (like top ramen) from this - krahij taphmnei - rope of krahij. When you eat these,
the insides come out as a piece of thread. They are pretty tasteless - a
good thing when you need to be polite and eat what is given. The only thing
to handle is to get the thing into your mouth and then just swallow and
smile.

No, I have not had the privilege of eating one yet, but I'm sure if I visit my finish friend who lives in this village, I may be offered a few... and yes, I would in fact eat it if offered.

Often people ask me what the oddest thing I've eaten here is. I may say 'grasshopper' I've avoided eating rat, but I did eat a small river eel. I have also not eaten the popular sago grubs, which I hear are as fun to eat as popcorn.

No matter how disgusting a food sounds, when you're offered it as a form of hospitality, in a culture where food is so central to relationship building, you eat. And you smile!

like a friend once taught me 'take small bites, and think CHICKEN!' (-;

Sorcery

2011-08-08T16:22:00.000-07:00

today I thought I might borrow from someone else's blog, because the 'teen mission trip' mentioned had some of the youth from our center here and the author/translation team actually live on our center here that I help support.

from
http://www.pbtpng.org/forgiving-amongst-sorcery
Forgiving amongst sorcery

By Rhonda Hayward

“Before she became a Christian, Martha killed some of my children through sorcery. But now we are sisters in Christ and I don’t have any bad feelings toward her. Christ has forgiven me and I have forgiven Martha.” These amazing words were spoken by our good friend Druk. She is the wife of Gabriel, the Tay preacher who helped establish the first church amongst the Tay people. During the teen mission trip in April, Druk, in the presence of Martha, gave the above testimony to Carissa and a few of her friends as they were sitting talking together one afternoon.

Martha, now an exuberant Christian, was indeed an ex-sorceress. She readily testifies that she used sorcery to kill many Tay babies and children. In 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, Paul enumerates various past sinful lifestyles held by the Corinthians. Then he says, “But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God”. Paul’s words are true for Martha, as well as for each one of us.

Though we knew Martha’s past, when Carissa and friends returned to the house and shared with us what Druk had said, we were amazed. We had not realized the depth of forgiveness, healing and reconciliation the Lord had done in the lives of these women. These words are a powerful testimony of God’s supernatural grace at work in the lives of the Tay recently to bring about the fruit of forgiveness and reconciliation.

In March, we held a scripture use course, requested by the Tay, on unity. It was a delight to realize that many of the scriptures on unity in the Bible are from the recently translated books of Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians into Tay. How even more delightful to see the truth of those verses “translated” into the very lives of the Tay and see the fruit of unity evidenced, as in the lives of Martha and Druk.

Druk’s testimony was a great encouragement to me, but also a great challenge. May God’s forgiveness and reconciliation be richly displayed in how I love and forgive others.

“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” Colossians 3:12-14

Rhonda is the wife of Steve Hayward. Steve is a Bible translator serving among the Tay people group. They are nearing the completion of the Tay New Testament.

zuchinni

2011-08-07T19:57:00.000-07:00

this morning I stayed home to watch my sick son while my wife taught. Upon leaving the house she had a hard time opening the door. Then she said 'uh babe, what is the date today?'

and I instantly knew....

I said 'oh no... they didn't?' but they did.
Someone snuck a zucchini on our front porch.

But that wasn't all.

When I got into work after lunch, there was on on my desk.

Whoever you are, well played.

I didn't see it coming

2011-08-07T19:52:00.000-07:00

Tween

2011-08-02T22:50:00.000-07:00

Tweens.

Our daughter turns 12 in a few days. Here the transition to 'upper grader' happens at 7th grade. It is much like becoming a freshman in high school because of the way the campuses are integrated.

As a result of this new 'upper grader' status and all the many changes that come with it, my daughter fancies herself a teenager.

All you folks out there who have gone through the transition, will laugh and know what I'm going through.

All those who have yet to face it, consider this your warning.

Currently my home is no longer my castle, it is in fact, my daughter's castle. And we, her humble servants.

At least I am tempted to say that is what goes on in her mind.

As a result my wife and I are making attempts to get to know her friends more and become involved in youth ministry.

For those of you in youth ministry, I applaud you. How you can look at a kid and say 'they have a good heart' and desire to foster that, is a gift beyond my comprehension.

I instead look at the kids and say 'these boys are going to want to date my daughter FAR too soon.' It has to be a hard thing to look at a kid and recognize that they have growing up to do. I look at a kid and forget that and somehow think 'they're going to be like this their whole lives.'

Patience in the growing process.

My house has been turned upside down a bit. Dad is suddenly requested to do a lot of projects without warning, that MUST be completed immediately. I don't understand this, but other fathers tell me ..'yes, it's true, something happens to their brains and they can't think ahead.'

'Dad, I have to leave for school in 2 minutes and I need you to build me an invention for school, can it be done in 30 seconds?'

'Dad, I need you to construct a replica of the Eiffel tower with toothpicks in the next three moments, please hurry.'

Is it any wonder that this is also the time that teenagers begin to realize their parents are not in fact, super heroes?

I'm unable to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but given enough time, I could probably climb tall ladders in a short time, and then spend the next few days icing my knees.

I am learning however, that when confronted with an unreasonable expectation, and an emotional young girl wondering why I can not conjur school supplies from thin air, the BEST way to react is a loving and patient, 'I love you and want to help, but I am unable to do it immediately.'

And then for fun I throw in 'because you see, I spent all morning using my super powers at work this morning and I'm tired out.'

The point of this blog, is about life here. My wife and I are involved in youth ministry now, but only just. We are planning activity days, every 3 weeks. It seems there is no MALL here to hang out at, no movies to go see, no mini-golf to go do. So 4 adults band together for a group of kids (we have 40 7th and 8th graders), and we plan a night. We become the MALL, the theatre, the ... hang out place.

Last week we made up a life size version of battleship that involved dodge balls. Soon we'll be doing something else... but I can't say what it is in case any kids read the blog.

That's part of life here. The kids go to church and bible study, but we also know they need times to simply have FUN together. My wife and I (and another couple) are in charge of manufacturing that FUN.

As someone once said, 'sure there is LESS to do, but that hasn't really turned out to be a problem.'

Bridges

2011-07-20T23:12:00.000-07:00

here are two pictures of typical village bridges. Papua New Guineans have an incredible sense of balance, rarely wear shoes, have very wide flat and thick soled feet. I've never seen one slip or fall (I've seen a few stagger).

So why do we care about these pictures of bridges other than that they are interesting to see?

Bridges are a huge thing here. The two main types, car bridges and foot bridges are both hazardous. The car bridges often wash out. There is so much rain here, that since moving here not a year goes by where some bridge somewhere isn't washed out making it so that travel and receiving supplies is difficult.

Everyone knows to do a bridge check before commencing a trip, otherwise you could face turning around. (a bridge check is asking around, and seeing who was last stuck at a bridge and if it's okay now.. it's all word of mouth, no official organization tracks bridge status).

Imagine you're a white-skin walking across this bridge with a laptop in your sack, and possibly some other electronic equipment. You definitely do not want to slip!

Well, as an I.T. guy, we often have to use variables to decide what types of laptops to buy or other items.

Criteria we use ranges, but among the top are:
-is it ruggedized?
-how long will the battery last?

'Ruggedized' defined: 'Able to be operational after being dropped, getting wet, having geckos live inside of it, will not short out when cockroaches climb inside, and rarely loses data when the wrong adaptor is used to charge it'

We've had laptops wind up at the bottom of the ocean, take a bath in a river, become a warm cozy home to several different types of creepy crawlies, rust over from living too close to the ocean, corroded internals and externals.

I once even had a hard drive enclosure corrode itself shut, such that I had to use a prybar to get the drive out to salvage the data. Once I did, I found gecko eggs inside.

And you know you live in a 3rd world country when a server crashes and your FIRST thought is 'a rat got inside and relieved itself on the power supply'

I recall crossing one such bridge trying to keep my balance, the nationals laughing at how uncoordinated I looked, and then having my daughter say 'daddy hold my hand, I need help'. Thinking 'wow, if I fall now I damage my daughter's sense of super-dad-dome'. But we got across fine. The trick with most things is to put fear aside and just do it.

Come on... anything else is boring (-;

Anyway, enjoy the pics.

Axe me about cupcakes

2011-07-15T21:50:00.000-07:00

this image a is a bit late but I like it so I'm posting it.

In June, Kendal organized the baking of 12 dozen cupcakes (she baked several dozen and others chipped in) so that the 6th grade graduation class could have this cool display

Two week ago a tree fell in the back of my house.
A friend came over, grabbed my axe and started swinging. Canadians love chopping wood. I know this because 2 other Canadians showed up as soon as he began. Well I had this very nice fibre glass composite handled hatchet (black and yellow) that I brought from the U.S. and also had a standard wood handled axe here. I had my son take a few wacks at it with the hatchet, while we used the axe to separate the tree from the stump so I could drag it out of the yard.

That day, the hatchet handle broke.
The next day my axe handle broke... apparently the bugs got to the wood.

It's the chilliest it's been here in years at night and a fire is a very nice thing... but our fireplace is a tiny thing and needs small split logs. I had lost all splitting power. (i tried a sledge and using the axe head as a wedge but it was not working well).

So I asked around where I might be able to find a new axe handle, and they said 'in town'. Well our vehicle isn't working and I don't feel like driving 6 hours so I have to wait until someone else goes.

Meanwhile, we need an axe.

SO, I took a limb from the dead tree that fell, had my son strip the bark, and using a combination of tools, shaped it and split the top. Cut a wedge, sanded it to size, and then put the wedge with some glue in the top. Bingo.. makeshift temporary axe handle. Talk about WAY too much work for an axe handle. But the closest hardware store is 3 hours away over treacherous road, and often doesn't have what you need.

Everyone take a moment and appreciate their local hardware store for a tick. On furlough, walking into Home Depot was a wonderful moment for me. If I start a job here, an need something as simple as a nail, I have to wait until Monday and hope the local mini-store has some nails I can use. Either that or pull a rusty one out of an old board, hammer it straight and use that (I've done this....). You REALLY have to plan ahead if you want to do any work on the weekend around here. It's not so hard once you adjust to it, but it does take you a long time to adjust, especially if you don't have the personality traits required to think WAY ahead in a very detailed way.

I also welded a quick piece of rod to the hatchet, so my son and I were able to split enough wood and kindling today for a week's worth of fires.

part of our conversation

"son, part of being a good man is taking care of the ladies in your life."
'we're keeping them warm by doing this!'
'yes, that's right, a good man keeps his women warm.'

I chuckled to myself as I said it... but there you have it a real jury rig job, suitable for PNG.

Picturesque PNG

2011-07-12T16:12:00.000-07:00

Here are some photos of life here, they include the market, a village at night, one of the many meandering rivers, mist settling in the morning, our planes (206), Yonki reservoir

Town

2011-07-07T16:17:00.001-07:00

I'm tired today. I will be working the weekend to move 2TB of data storage for our main file server. Please pray that it goes well with ZERO data loss, and gets done in the 3 days we have planned for it. We've been working at a sprinting pace lately, trying to get all the work done we can during school break when many people are gone and the schools are not as active. (it's a good time to get work done).

I'm tired because at 3am a pack of 4 semi-wild dogs attacked our dog and I had to break it up. And you know how once you wake up and your adrenaline flows and your mind thinks and you can't get back to sleep? Well that's me. Only now I have to on half a night's sleep, work the weekend (-; So pray that my mind stays alert.

So as you know this blog is sometimes 'life in png' and sometimes 'what God is doing here'.

God is always working. We are always working. We get really excited when God chooses to encourage us with a glimpse of what He's doing.

Last week there was a large meeting of men repenting and seeking Christ. That is God's hand moving.

An old friend and neighbor is visiting us and snapped some photos on his trip back here that I thought I would share.

When we say we're going to town, this is what we mean. These photos are from the nearest town called 'Kainantu'.

and for fun, here is one of the signs around town... I'll translate

(I'll do a literal translation)
STOP CHOLERA!!
1. cook your food well, don't eat the food people sell alongside the road

2. cover up your food well, flies can't come and sit down on it.

3. use the toilet when you need to relieve yourself. Don't relieve yourself in the bushes or water.

4. Wash your hands well before you eat. Also after you use the toilet.

5. Before you drink, boil your water well.

I think we can all agree, these are words to live by if you want to avoid cholera.
At first seeing a sign like this (especially because of #4) you think 'well there's evidence I'm in a third world country)... but then you realize that education is the true battle against all kinds of disease.

We teach our kids to wash their hands, don't eat that, don't touch this... and after some time they know why, and understand the science of germs and health.

In fact it's so ingrained in us as kids we take if for granted as adults that the whole world knows this stuff.. but they don't.

We're reading through the Bible and when we came to the laws in Exodus and Leviticus the kids learned 2 things:
1 - God cares about us. He made all these laws partially for our own protection and health.
2 - God cares about the details. When the kids ask 'does God care about this?' the answer is yes...

Lost

2011-07-06T20:15:00.001-07:00

so the other day I told my kids that when I was a kid, living in the mountains, I would go on long hikes or bike rides and seek adventure. I would try to get lost and find my way home again.

My son asked me 'how do you get yourself lost?'

I said, 'well you could take a bottle and spin it everytime you come to a fork, and go whichever way it points, until you feel like you've gotten very lost.'

So today he borrowed a plastic soda bottle and said 'I'm heading out for a long while, I'm going to try and get lost.'

after lunch I arrived back at work and heard 'hey dad!!!' and my son was about 50 yards away, up in an odd place on top of a hill.
I was proud...
for ten seconds... when he yelled so everyone around could hear him.

'I'm doing what you said to do!!! I'm gettin' LOST!'

this happened five minutes ago.

4th

2011-07-05T15:32:00.001-07:00

(this pic is what steel wool looks like when it's on fire and you spin it... my son had a BLAST doing this... don't attempt in places lacking tropical rains.. it's not a fire hazard here there's too much water)

well it was raining all day... and we were concerned because we had plans.
Some friends of ours host the annual 4th of July party.... we were really looking forward to it. All of the Americans (and any other nationality are invited) come together to potluck and socialize and then when it gets dark, come up with any and all fireworks we can.

Calvin and I had tested out a few ideas to launch our air rockets (made out of paper).

if it rained, no one would go outside for the fireworks...

but, the party was starting over at the WA centre at 5pm and the rain stopped, and the ground was dry enough.

We grilled burgers and after a bit my son and I began launching the rockets we had made out of paper and duct tape, which went well over 100 feet up.
The kids were really excited by it, the high schoolers, even the adults... everyone was rather impressed by our rocket invention we had made out of pvc, a sprinkler valve, and an air pump.

Eventually the sun started to set.
1 rocket landed on the roof, and the other 2 eventually blew to smithereens (65psi AIR launcher can do that to paper) We only got about 6 successful launches with the rockets.

SO... then we started launching glow sticks. Those big thick ones.

We wadded the rocket tube with styrofoam, and then dropped the glow stick down in,

By this time the crowd was cheering '3 .. 2...1...FIRE!!!' and the glow stick went flying up into the air aboud 70 feet or so, spinning as it went.

Then, they started up the fire pit for steel wool.

Kendal and I broke out the glow stick bracelets for the younger kids who didn't get to play with steel wool. It is our way of playing Aunt and Uncle when we can't be around our true nieces and nephews. It gives us that feeling of family we miss. Soon the whole place was swarming with around 50 glowing kids running around outside on the 4th of July... like it should be.

Families here for the first time, away from home, got to see how we do the 4th of July here in PNG, and they were amazed. They didn't know you could do that with steel wool, or how close a community this could be. The 4th for us is bigger than it would be back in the U.S. because it's the one chance a year we get to celebrate loudly, being from the U.S.A.

The steel wool looked SO cool.
But that wasn't all.
a friend nudged me, pulled out a few packets of pen flares... and we went over and started firing them 2 , 3 ,4 at a time.. big RED glowing flares with smoke trails launching into the air in arcs and making big BANGS! when being fired. Nothing is more exciting then the smell of black powder and a ringing in your ears!!!

We sang the national anthem, we ate red, white and blue cupcakes. And since it was an American get together we invited people from all nations.

It was a lot of fun... a LOT of fun.

God created man with the need to celebrate.... in fact early on in the Bible HE commands us to celebrate and makes laws about feasts and celebrations.

It felt really good to be able to be a part of it, and launch our rockets, and share our glow sticks... which over here you can imagine are really appreciated since they are really hard to come by.

Calvin got to fire a pen flare, and spin steel wool for the first time.
Sydney got to run around with a sparkler.
I think it was Calvin's best 4th EVER... because of that.

Our family has been reading through the Bible and recently we were in Exodus where God lines out the importance of a day of rest, and the importance of certain celebration feasts. I think from time to time, we work so hard we forget that our soul has a mandated need for celebration and rest.

Celebrating together. Looking around at all the young kids, and the young parents, here for the first time, thinking 'wow... here I am in PNG, forgetting my homesickness for a moment, appreciating a wonderful part of the culture of living here, making new friends and neighbors, feeling part of a community with one common purpose... to see the Word of God, change lives.'

That's the kind of moment that fuels people to keep on... keeping on.

Overheard Conversation

2011-07-05T15:29:00.000-07:00

my daughter comes running into the house shouting 'CAlvin, Calvin come quick!!!'
my son is barely waking up, sitting in bed.... and if you have a boy you realize this is not a 'come quick' situation.

He lies there, 'What?'
daughter: 'come quick you gotta come catch this huge grasshopper.'
son: 'huge?'
daughter: 'big enough to eat!'
my son gets up and runs outside on the way he says, 'wait? did you make this out of beads?'
daughter: 'nope! you can really eat it!'

and then they went outside.

Seeing change

2011-06-30T23:32:00.000-07:00

I try to keep this blog an even balance of 'life as a missionary in PNG' and 'seeing God's Word change lives.'

This post is one is both. (-;

I can't share the names or the long drawn out story, but here is my personal synopsis.

God chose and sent a policeman from the U.S. here to handle security issues. He has been developing relationships with people and one of the men he developed a relationship with recently came forward and said that his faith in God didn't allow him to ignore the crimes against the missionaries any longer.

A nearby village had for a while, been treating us like their own personal piggy bank. Stealing property whenever they had a financial need or a whim.

So this individual came forward and started secretly being an informant. VERY quickly through these relationships, crime against us came to a stop.

Soon his village found out he was a 'traitor' and excised him, beat him, cut him, kidnapped his children, and essentially ruined his life in every way.

But the man turned to God and forgave the people. He was given 2 opportunities, to demand financial compensation or to send them to jail, and he passed on both, opting to forgive, stating that God gave him the power to forgive them.

He was no longer effective as an informant, but God wanted to use him for something else.
Forgiveness.
From that reaction, a snowball began.

Easter morning, people began coming forward, confessing sins, crimes, and repenting.

We haven't had this long of a peace time here in years.
This weekend is a public 'tok sori' where the repentant men will come forward and make amends with those they stole from.

We don't talk much about security issues here. We find it worries people back home, and it is something that is part of life for us. But this is a new twist.

The longer version exposes the cultural intricacies and would make for very long reading, suffice it to say, that God took a man and used his faith and his heart to bring about change in the valley.

It is VERY rare for what happened to happen because of the cultural boundaries... but God blasted through them in a remarkable never-before-seen way.

He tends to do that.
This opportunity would have never happened if this man, this papua new guinean man, hadn't come into a relationship with Christ.

Fun product

2011-06-29T18:03:00.000-07:00

from time to time we find a fun product description that is humorous to read because of the poor English translation.

this is from a Bible translator friend of mine:

"why the work of Translation consultants is so important...."

I recently bought a flashlight to take to the village.

The following model really intrigued me: "Hand-pressing Flash Light, NO BATTERIES NO BULB, simply shake to recharge."

After buying this promising thing, I read the product information on the box. It literally reads (and I'm not making this up!):

"Product Charcteristics:

1. This product is a new science and technology product and made with high and new science and technology. It can illuminate only placing it in rhythm.

2. No need any power no environmental pollution. Low noise and health. Comparing with common torch. it can be several times on lift.

3. Con stantly using this health torch. It can benefit to your palm. arm and shoulder stretching and blood circulation. so as to let your hands relax and brain clever. hand and brain coor dinate and promote your brain memory and health composition."

The sad thing about it is that that writer's English is certainly better than my Chinese.

Paratext Workshop

2011-06-29T15:47:00.000-07:00

Paratext is a software that we use in translation work. It does all kinds of formatting and such. To truly know what we use it for you'd need to ask a translator.

These last 2 weeks our centre held a paratext training workshop.
4 weeks ago we were asked 'how can you guys help us with this?'.

We were faced with how to help the translators train future translators and current with this software, but having no man power to do it with. This time of year, we are very short on man power as people leave for furlough or finish, or vacation.

Well we did four things
1 - helped supply them with 60 netbooks so they had a platform to do the training on.
2 - setup a wireless network so they could access the internet for licensing
3 - thought up a creative way to help with little manpower and had 2 guys doing a lot of extra work, but doing it creatively
4 - prayed that God would provide the other needs they had.

God certainly did. They put out a 'help wanted' request for anyone with computer skills and they had 38 students with 20 helpers!!! That's awesome!

We're here to help with our computer skills. My department has an all time high of 8-10 people with computer skills. But, over the past 3 years, computer skilled people have been leaving the centre.

The high school lost 1,
the primary school lost 1
the translation department lost 3

which means the demands on people who have computer skills have gone up because the people have gone down. AND the use of technology has only increased in translating the Bible.
More and more people have more and more computer needs with less of us to meet them.

Which means we have a lot of work, and have to prioritize it properly.

Which means we have to say 'no' to a lot of things we'd prefer to say 'yes' to.

Which means there are needs not being met.

So to have this workshop something we had to say 'we can't help as much as we'd like to' to... a creative solution was to pray and send out that 'help wanted'... and people came.

God is good. We can't afford to think inside of the box, God's resources are endless.

I was so glad this workshop went well. Today is the last day.
I am sad that I wasn't able to participate as much as I would have liked to... but that's only because I enjoy training and learning!!

Please pray for more computer help.
I hear that next week we're getting a new programmer, and his name is Chad.
So there will be two Chad's working here in computers.

I'm hopeful he's a small guy, so I can get the nickname 'Big Chad'. (-;

50 Kina

2011-06-26T15:09:00.000-07:00

In the U.S. if you ask someone if they will lend you money, it's often a statement about your relationship in some way. You wouldn't ask a total stranger, and you wouldn't ask someone you disliked. It is the same way in PNG. But there is also a part of the culture here that diverges from culture in the U.S. which is called the 'askim'. It means pretty much what it sounds like. An ASKIM is when you request a favor. An askim can be a small favor or a big favor. However unlike U.S. culture, there is little to no shame associated with an askim.
For example. In the U.S. if you go to a buddy and say 'hey I'm a little strapped for cash right now, can I borrow 50 bucks until payday?' You most likely feel a tiny bit of shame in admitting your need. Perhaps you ask for something bigger or smaller. Still there is a sense of shame and then a sense of debt.

I'm not saying whether or not the shame is right or wrong. I've noticed that this area of borrowing and lending seems to be one where cultures diverge quite often. I've had a few friends from the phillipines who have completely different views on borrowing and lending and if you're not expecting it, the differences in cultures can cause a huge clash.
Well, yesterday a knock came at my door and a man whom I know but would not call 'friend' necessarily asked, with no small talk, simply 'can I borrow 50 kina.' and then 'I'll pay you back on payday.'

It was the first time I was ever asked to borrow money. I've had other askims, some I've said yes to, some no. Often being white we're seen as rich, and so there is no shame in asking us for money and also no shame in not repaying the debt. So you need to be careful and wise.
It took me by suprise. I had no thought this person knew me well enough to ask me for such a large sum of money. I was flattered in a way that our relationship was at this point, but also slightly doubting that maybe I was being used. Quickly I reached for whatever wisdom I had and said 'let me go see if I have any cash.'. I went to my office to think, utter a quick word of prayer for wisdom and put the K50 in my pocket.
Then I returned.

I thought - if he were a white skin friend, I would not hesitate to lend the money. Does this make me a racist? No... their culture is different, I may not see this money back. If I lend it, I need to be prepared to not see it return. But what should I say to this man? If this is a relationship building moment, how should I respond? A flat no would communicate to him that I am not interested in friendship.

I went back outside to speak to him again.
'What is this for?' I asked.
He responded in Tok Pisin, his eyes glanced down, and didn't make contact with mine. A typical symptom of shame.
'My brother has beaten a women from a different village and now they are demanding compensation and he has come to me for help.' he replied.

Suddenly this entire transaction became a lot more sticky. Now what do I do? In lending him the money am I condoning this type of behavior? By not lending the money, if they can't come up with the compensation funds, there will be a fight that could lead to death.
I was thankful for the 4 years of living here thus far that gave me the cultural inside I've had, but I've heard missionaries say that after 20 years of living here you still don't understand all the complexities.

In my head was resonating this voice 'you have to earn the right to be heard.' He wasn't going to stand there and listen to a lecture about this from me if I didn't give him the money.
So I pulled out the 50 kina and as he reached for it I held it, his hand touching my hand we made eye contact and I said in tok pisin:
'I will lend you this money, but I do not like this behavior of your brother's. You can't go around beating women. You should not hurt women'.
He replied, "I know it's a bad thing.'

I continued, because in their culture, repetition adds strength to the point,
"This behavior, is very bad, you can't beat women it is a bad thing to do, you must talk to your brother and tell him he can not beat women. You tell him that I say, he can not hurt women any more and he must talk sorry to this woman."
And Andy replied, "I know, you are right, and I will talk very strong to my brother and explain to him that his bad behavior has put me into debt (dinau) with you and many others and I work hard for this money and he can't keep coming to me for this. I am going to talk very angrily with him."

At this point I had realized the situation and was glad I helped Andy. Andy was very upset with his brother. Andy was a good and hard worker, and his brother had done this bad thing and put him into a terrible situation where he HAD to honor his relationship and give his brother money, which meant he was working hard simply to fund his brothers woman beating.
Typically as a policy here, we do not aid or assist men who have beaten women. We don't admit them to our volunteer run clinic, we don't help them, we don't give them rides. IT seems heartless but we have to levy a very strict penalty for men who beat women.

Our policy as an organization is very strict regarding how we react to women beaters.
It's a sad commentary on the culture. There are many wonderful things about it, but the truth of the matter is that when the boys grow up without fathers, without God, they have no moral direction and do whatever they want to do. Thus spreads AIDS and thus spreads a great many sins of man. Living here you understand how important it is in a culture where men are the authority, that those men submit to GOD who is THE authority.
Anyway, so my prayer is that in lending the money, I wasn't condoning or contributing to anything other than peace and a chance to get the message into the right ears.

Fire Training

2011-06-20T16:36:00.000-07:00

that's the fire.

that's me in full breathing apparatus next to our fire chief (I'm the bigger guy) ready to go in an fight the fire burning inside

that's me busting a hole in the wall of the burning house we were training in.

that's a blurry me, busting in the door with a sledge hammer.

One of the side-jobs I do besides computers, is volunteer with our fire-team. We train once a month on Saturdays.

WE learned a LOT during this training. Also I think we learned that what I'm best at, is knocking holes in walls and busting down doors.

as you would imagine, being INSIDE a burning building with breathing apparatus and fire gear on.. is HOT.. but that GEAR (donated) really does work. The last fire I fought without gear, I couldn't get close enough to help so I worked the outside more. But we're geared up now to where we can go inside... but training taught us, the only reason we would, is if there was someone inside.

At that point, being big and able to carry people is a bonus. I also learned that without a sledge hammer, these walls are constructed such that by sheer mass and force I can knock a hole in one and get out.

Pray we never have do, but we're thankful that we're more skilled and ready if we did have to.

we did it

2011-06-17T00:47:00.000-07:00

SWEET and praise God.

it was a very productive week...
we swapped satellites and ISPs,
and it all got done today... the power stayed on.

Thanks God for keeping the rain off our sensitive digital test equipment, and for getting my co-workers back safe and on time.

hey folks,
we doubled our internet speed today!!! ... and... kept it as the same cost.... AND reduced our latency quite a bit.

BIG WIN TODAY!!!
thanks God.

Too much on Friday

2011-06-16T15:07:00.001-07:00

please say a quick prayer for me today.

-I'm alone in the network room, usually we have 3 guys
-I have to handle the backup changeover - tapes (no big deal)
-We had been given a warning a week ago that 1/2 of our power will go out which is fine, since we have double backups.
-I was told yesterday that we will be re-aiming our SAT dish this afternoon (might take a few hours if done right)
-I JUST got the message that the other 1/2 of our power is going out today... which means I have to bring down all of our servers now, which often takes a few hours.
-My daughter graduates 6th grade tonight, so I have all these extra little tasks to do.

In other words, at the checking of my email this morning, I realized I have far too much work to do today than is humanly possible, and the ramifications of that, is that the center may be without internet for the weekend, OR I miss my daughter's graduation.. OR I work the weekend.

If I work the weekend, I will have to cancel on the other things I have volunteered to help with.

SO, please pray.
PRAY that my co-workers return today, and that they have a safe trip and get here early.

There is hope we can pull it all off today if they get here.
I of course won't be missing my daughter's graduation ceremony, but I may not be able to stick around for the celebration which I'd like to be at.

This is how it goes... some things are totally unpredictable and you have to cope.
OFten times when I arrive at work in the morning I find my day plunged into total chaos...

and 99% of those times, it's on a Friday, which is why I always try to be extra energetic and early on Fridays. Don't ask me why it's always Friday.

Time

2011-06-14T23:37:00.000-07:00

tomorrow several 'newbies' go on furlough.
You typically are here 2-3 years before your first furlough.

I've been here long enough to have seen new people come, go on furlough and come back.

That blows my mind. Time passes so fast here, possibly due to the lack of season change... that I lose track of who is no longer a 'newbie'.

In fact the guy I keep calling 'the new guy' has been here almost a year now.

GEESH.

Time she flies.

Pray for my co-workers in Madang, they are trying to install a new wireless link.

ALSO for this friday (2 days from now) as we will be repointing our sat dish and hopefully improving our bandwidth!!!

One, Two, TREE

2011-06-13T17:37:00.000-07:00

On friday we got to watch both our kids perform in a choir concert. They sang some wonderfully fun songs with a real heart-wrencher at the end. They sang 'We are the future, give us hope, teach us the way, show us Christ.' Of course it was more lyrical at the time. It was a nice moment to be a parent.

On Saturday we got to see Sydney perform her trumpet in a middle school band. WOW this band is good. Much better than some high school bands I've heard. The bands here are simply excellent. They did some fun songs and I never had to take my advil! (-;

On Sunday night a tree fell in our back yard, narrowly missing the house. The windows in the picture is our bedroom window. Had the tree fallen 1 foot more to the right it may have caused the window to break and rain broken glass on my wife's head.

It wasn't windy or raining, the tree wasn't rotten or dying. It was perfectly healthy. Later investigation showed that there were tons of ants around the base. Apparently the wood ants ate away at the root system enough to cause the tree to lose connnection and it fell over because it had no roots connected. It was a great shade tree for our yard, and we're sad to see it go. That's 2 trees fallen in 4 years here. And both times, no damage to any structures, we're so thankful.

So I spent monday (a holiday for us, the Queen's bday) cutting and hauling the tree out.... then the kids and I went to the river.

Where we found our dog loves the water now... he used to hate it. HE had fun with the kids in the Bae' river... it was a good day of hard work and clean fun.