Broken Bridge

You can see where the bridge is buckled here.  This is one of the main bridges on the road to our location.  For a while now we haven't been able to send large trucks over it, as it's been slipping and breaking.  So whenever we get a grocery supply truck to come,  of a fuel supply truck, we park it in town, unload it into several smaller vehicles, and then bring the supplies in.

This bridge is notorious for shredding tires, as you can see the light coming through there.



You can see here why it might be chewing up tires... ragged steel sticking up all over.  This bridge is not our property, but we have repaired it a few times.  We have to weld the plates down well, because over time, people steal parts of the bridge. 

In this case, erosion, and weakened steal, and theft, have weakened the bridge to the point where we've known it would buckle any day now.  The officials have been informed, and they in fact spent money and bought equipment to build a new bridge.  The equipment is sitting in a town a few hours away, waiting to be assembled.

You can see here the wood planks, which are a temporary fix for the bridge, although we have no idea how long before those planks go walkabout.

The bridge finally buckled this week as a large coffee truck went over it.  So now, we are cut off from supplies, as well as cut off from driving out.  We can't drive out to the local commercial airport, or the towns where we can get food and fuel.

So... today I am very thankful that we live where we do, because unlike a regional center, we can self-sustain for a few weeks while we wait for the bridge to get repaired.  We have supplies of food, and fuel, and we have a local aviation department.  So while a broken bridge is bad, it could be so much worse.

Pray with us that it gets repaired well, and finally (not another temporary fix up job).  We literally have been praying for months before crossing this bridge in hopes that it wouldn't buckle underneath us, before the officials in power replace the bridge.

It would be a nice blessing to have this one thing not to worry about.

And for those who swear we've talked about bridges before.  Yes, there are 2 main bridges to where we are, but immeasurable bridges throughout the country that affect our work.  This bridge I'm talking about here, is actually NOT the one we were praying about a few years back, that was another bridge.

Both bridges are on the same road into town. So, if one goes, they might have well both have gone, but I'm very thankful that we only have to worry about 1 bridge at a time right now.

Part of the experience of living here, is that you rarely drive off centre.  You never do so just for leisure as each time you drive, you take your life into your hands, in multiple ways.

So, each journey begins with prayer, ends with prayer.  You prepare yourself for vehicle break downs because abandoning your vehicle means losing your vehicle to theft and stripping.  You check that you have toilet paper, water, wrenches.  You call ahead and ask the local police if there is any known raskol activity on the roads you plan to be on.  You bring flashlights but hope not to be caught out after dark.  You pray every time you come across a bridge.  As we are fond of saying, it isn't the fall that'll get you, it's the abrupt ending at the bottom. (-;

On furlough we so enjoyed being able to jump into the car without much thought, drive 2 min down the road and have a place to eat, or get fuel!  It was a bit of a culture shock that my wife was able to drive in a car, alone.  It was liberating for sure, but still awkward at first.

So for those of you who get to drive around and don't spend even a moment thinking 'is there a bridge between me and my goal?  should I be driving alone?  Does someone know where I am planning to go and how long it'll take me to be there?'  Can you thank God for that freedom and maybe say a few seconds of prayer that our bridge get repaired?

Thanks!! We do appreciate it!

Important Penguins

Someone lent us the movie Poppers Penguins. We were also loaned the movie The Big Year. So, being Sunday, after we returned from church and had some family time, we turned on a movie.

Both movies had a very strong message about the important of family. Both movies were clean and PG. I typically expect some bad stuff that makes me cringe with my kids, and Penguins did have a brief moment like that, but for the most part I was pleased with the movies.

Is there a change in films in the U.S. right now? Are the films becoming more family centric, or do my friends simply lend me good movies?

As the Penguin movie ended the titles played with the song 'Ice Ice Baby'. That song was popular when I was 13 or so. Ironically the star of the film, Jim Carrey, once parodied that song on a t.v. show.

I had these thoughts:

- Jim Carrey doesn't look that old. But he was twice my age when I was a kid. Wow, I'm old.
- This song is over 20 years old... my kids have never heard it before... I told them it was sung by Vanilla Ice. My son said 'um.. what's a Vanilla ice.'.

By No means is Vanilla Ice representative of any kind of quality music of my era. And yet, in my kids minds now, they think 'the music dad listened to when he was our age is bad rap by someone called Vanilla Ice.'

I felt old. My kids were watching a man in a comedy that I watched in comedies when I was their age.

Today in church a testimony was given from the high school band trip. The message I heard was that the kids had left what is 'home' to them... to minister in Australia. High school boys who couldn't be bothered to do much more than grunt, suddenly became very talkative when speaking about what their parents do in PNG.

I'm 38 years old. My nephew just graduated high school. My daughter is nearly 13.

Behind me there are a lot of good memories, living in PNG is our current stage in life. It's lasted 5 years thus far, and with your prayers it'll last a while longer too.

My kids are experiencing life for the first time, hearing songs for the first time, seeing thoughts that strike me as having been expressed before, many times.

And I find that entirely encouraging.

There are some hardships right now. Our clinic is closing, the main bridge fell apart today-breaking our supply line, medication is costly, my wife's grandmother has passed on, we have financial need because of the airfare we bought to send her there..... and yet, God has blessed us with 2 kids who are looking at life and have so much potential... they are experiencing it all with wide open eyes. And we get to shape that a little bit more before their time with us is done.

So I can't really get too discouraged. I looked outside today at this beautiful place... and I've heard the testimonies this morning of people reading the Scripture for the first time in their language.

And I'm struck with one theme for the day. Focus on what is important.

(I'll flesh some of this out more throughout the week, to help you pray specifically, but today is Sunday, God's day, and I'm focussing on what is important.)

having a hard time believing

I know what it looks like, but no, I'm not in charge of the Jelly Belly factory... this is a hat they gave me on tour there while on furlough.

It's not relevant to this conversation other than it's a funny picture.

My whole life I've known what I'm good at.  I mean besides being super dashing in photographs. (-; But lately I've been discovering a few more things about myself and what I'm good at and how they can be used to help Bible translation. 

Last month I was helping out as Director for Regional Centres, they asked me back again for next month.
Last month I was asked to fill out a financial report to give contributors an explanation of how their money helped install VSATs across the country.  I did it, very nervous that I would mess it up, as a result they loved the report and have asked me to send more photos for a JAARS publication.

Both of those things I was totally convinced I'd be horrible at.

But the part I'm having a hard time believing is that I have a unique talent that is needed here.  Conducting job interviews.  I don't know how he picked up on it, but the Director asked me to put together a training so I can teach other managers how to conduct good job interviews so that they get good hires.

I really do not understand why he thinks I'd be a good choice to do that training... I kept protesting.
He kept saying 'you've done more interviews than many managers here.'  How would he know that? I asked him, he said 'how many have you done?' I'd done well over 30, and he said 'that's very unique experience here. can you help us out by teaching us how to do interviews.'  I was surprised to hear his story of how they do job placement in Australia and how they don't often conduct interviews for his work.

So I went to sleep last night thinking about this.  I still don't believe it's true.  I can't be one of the more seasoned interviewers. Can I? I'd hate to conduct training if I wasn't an expert, and I don't think I am.  He thinks I am.

And then I started to think about it.
I've looked back on my life and seen many ways that God prepared me to be here and help, many skills that have been honed over time.  But I'm really surprised that there is more.

Not long after college I was working at a large company, and was asked to be on the interview team.  From that time forward, I've always been part of if not the lead, interviewer in many technical interviews.  From company to company, I was the one creating a list of questions, asking them, putting the applicant at ease, and wheedling out information from them.  Such that I had several techniques that I would employ to do so.  When I got here, I had to do the same things, so I asked around, and learned and....

Maybe God was equipping me yet again.

I can not express how incredible this is.  7 years ago I was shown how God had been crafting my life to do this exact thing in this exact place at this exact time.  How I was uniquely suited to do this, and how God had been honing me for decades to do it.

That was 7 years ago.

I wasn't expecting that He'd continue to show me things.  I was expecting that was it.  I'm set, I know my purpose, I'm designed for it.

But the intimacy I feel with Christ because yesterday He told me 'your life isn't over yet, I'm still crafting you, and there are preparations in place for a time that hasn't come yet.'  Is mind blowing.

The other day, we started talking about implementing a new telephony system.  Cisco VOIP voice gateways.
What was one of the last things I touched when I worked for Cisco?
VOIP gateways.

mind blowing stuff.  It just keeps unfolding.  It's continual confirmation that this is what I'm supposed to be doing.

Cultural differences

Before this anecdote I should give some background. Australians use the term "mate" to mean friend. We spend a lot of time with Aussies.

Today I was playing a trivia computer game with my kids and the question came up:
"Name an animal people claim their mate sounds like when they snore"

My son said "what does that even mean? Mate ?"


It took me a moment while I was thinking a few simultaneous thoughts
1 I have had " the talk with my son. Did I leave something out?"
And
2 "oh the're being politically correct and said mate instead if spouse. "

But before I could explain to my son what it meant my daughter chimed in

My daughter replied "friend"

Which is when it hit me that was a perfectly valid answer to them as they have sleepovers with their friends all the time. So I stayed silent whilst my son answered

"donkey"



-Chad

in Praise

Today I find myself thoroughly impressed with a few things. First, I'm
impressed with my wife. In the midst of grieving she pulled herself
through a crazy travel adventure, spoke at her grandmother's memorial,
visited with family, underwent a long road trip, and was able to meet
with friends along the way. She's undergone crazy paperwork and
telephone hassles, a climate change, time change, been completely
uprooted. It takes one incredible woman to do something like that. I'm
constantly impressed by my wife.

I also am impressed with the people that support us. People were giving
my wife loving hugs, encouraging words, handing her money they didn't
have to spare because the Lord led them to, and commented on having read
about her adventure. I'm always humbled and amazed by people who care
so much for us to actually read our boring blog and emails, people who
give sacrificially. Thank you.

I'm impressed by our God. He knew this was going to happen, He knew it
would take a chunk of money to do it, and already He has people coming
along side and contributing to filling the hole back up.

I found all of this out today as I got to Skype with my wife for a few
minutes, and found out what a warm reception she's getting there. I
knew she'd be safe in your hands. Thank you, I needed boost of
encouragement today and you provided.

She Made It

Thank you for praying.

okay so kendal went out of communication when she left for Manilla.
I wasn't sure if she was going to make the flight transfer in Manilla (from POM to LAX)... but there was nothing I could do... which when I asked for prayer.

So I prayed, and left it to God, sat down with the kids to watch a movie... about 30 minutes into the movie, an idea popped into my head. I returned to my well worn seat in front of my computer.

I called Philippines airline and told them the situation, that my wife had luggage, and 1 hour to check in to a transfer flight. They told me it required a taxi ride to a new terminal!!! She was most likely not going to make it in an hour. But they told me 'tell your wife to do this (and several instructions) which involved her flagging down a Customer Service Representative.

I did not have a way to tell this to my wife.... I could hope that she might think of it, but in her emotional state, even though she's very smart, it might not come to her. So, I had another idea.

I tried calling the Manilla airport but the phone wouldn't go through. I'm told the Philippines have the worst phone system in the world.

Not to give up, I did some web searching and found an odd little website where someone had indexed email addresses and phone numbers.

So I wrote up an email, explaining the situation, and asking them to send a Customer Service Rep to the gate of her flight with a sign with her name on it.

I sent the email to several different addresses hoping that email would work, where telephones failed. (yes I'm geeky that way).

Then I set my alarm to the time the plane was scheduled to touch down... so I could wake up and pray her through each step.

I fell asleep praying, 'it's all up to God'.

I woke up around 1am, and prayed for each specific step, as she went off the gangway, etc... fell back asleep, and my phone never rang, indicating she made the flight.

I called her dad's cell phone 5 minutes ago and my wife answered it. She also had her luggage.

From her end she says this:

"I was stressing out the entire way from POM to Manilla, because the plane left late and arrived 25 minutes late. I knew I wasn't going to make it, but when I got out of the gate, there was an angel there holding a sign with my name on it. I would have never made it without this person. I had to clear security around 12 times, wait for my bag, take a taxi to the new terminal, but first had to convert my U.S. cash into Philippines cash to pay the taxi, then my angel helped me and escorted me into the gate and my bag was the very last bag to come off the track in LAX."

Is that not super exciting! .. she's safe, she's with cargo. We made the decision to not all go, if we had decided all to go, we'd all 4 be stranded in Manilla right now.

Praise God.... this has been one wacky story of travelling.

I feel like the computer geek in mission impossible, sitting with a phone headset at the computer, clearing the way every step. No one I've told this story to has EVER heard of Air Nuigini just letting someone on board. That miracle, coupled with the idea that came to me in the middle of vegging out with the kids... just popping into my head to get a customer rep... all of that was from God.

Thank you in your help getting my wife to LAX, as soon as she stepped off the plane, she was able to release the tension she had from the flight hysteria.... and I could hear in her voice she was already doing much better!!

Thanks to God.

What a CRAZY travel story.
Every single thing that could go wrong, went wrong, except the part where she didn't get to her destination. And.. she got there in under 35 hours. Many have travel stories like this, but this particular story shows us that God answers our prayers, He listens, He reacts, and He cares. He's a personal savior.

Emergency Travel

This story deserves several titles. It's 4:40am I'm a bit tired, so I can't decide. Should it be "Booking Emergency Travel in PNG" or should it be "When Credit Cards Fail You" or should it be "Why Even at 37, My Parents are Still my Heroes".

This story is somewhat typical of a couple living in Papua New Guinea, needing to book emergency travel, and what we need to go through to get it done, so I thought I might share it. And, our story has a little twist, but then, PNG is the 'land of the unexpected' so I suppose most stories from here do have a twist.

Friday evening I got an email from my parents stating that my wife should call her parents. It was bad news. It was one of those emails that we sometimes get living here that changes things, quickly. If you live here you come to call these emails the 3D emails. "Death, Divorce, Deadly disease" Kendal's grandmother who is very dear to her, was passing away.

The first hurdle was getting through to call. We don't do a lot of international calling, and it was a work day, so I had to reach my wife who was finishing up her last day of teaching pre-school…. ever, with the details of HOW to make the call. She'll be moving on to kindergarden next year. The end of the year is always emotional for her. On the same day I was finishing up a month long job, my kids were finishing school…. it was a day of finishes.

I got home to hear from my wife that her grandmother was not doing well, and the doctors said the outlook was not good. I came home to a wife who was emotionally a wreck. So we prayed, I held her, we talked.

We spent the remainder of the night looking at the possibility of her flying to the U.S. How much would it cost? What would the itinerary look like? Emails began flying around…. who would take up Kendal's other responsibilities…. is this even possible? I don't care how much of a planner you are, this is one thing you can only plan so far for. We had an emergency bag for such a thing which included different international cash, credit cards, travel docs, etc.

It was school break, so Kendal would only be dumping details like …. who finishes decorating cupcakes, what about our dinner guests coming, is there any food in the fridge, should Kendal go alone, should we all go?

The night was spent praying about it and talking about all the possibilities. If you've ever been in the throes of grief, trying to upheave your life you know what I'm talking about. It's hard to see all the loose ends, and focus on what you NEED to do. We knew she needed to be there by the way she reacted to the news.

So we deliberated, until too exhausted to think, and went to bed, vowing to decide before noon the next day.

We woke up rested, and checked in with family. Grandma had passed…. we made a decision. Kendal would go to the U.S. and Chad would stay behind with the kids.

This is culture note #1. This type of separation happens a lot, and it tears the heart right out of you, but practically, it's what needs to be done. I'll admit to being the one who wanted to scrap it all and all 4 of us go to the U.S. together, as a family to support Kendal and her family…. but reality sets in when you get to looking at the costs. I've seen families go through turmoil here. Having to decide all of these logistics really is torturous. I've seen people NOT go, couples split for weeks at a time, I've seen families leave kids behind and the parents go, I've seen every combination and there isn't any combination which doesn't cause pain and hardship. In the end you have to do what you feel led to do, and also be faithful to your financial supporters who put you here.

In this situation we were very thankful for the timing, school was out, the biggest obstacle was finances. We thought.

The decision made, Kendal was to go alone, tore at me inside, but it was made, and so it was time for me to begin handling as much as I could to offload my wife, so she could grieve, and handle that which I couldn't. Men, husbands, no matter how strong and intelligent your wife is (and mine is.. in spades) it's still hard to send them off in a situation like this alone. Men are designed to protect and support their wives. We are designed to stand in front of a bus for our family. I saw 2 busses coming and I wanted to stand in front of both. My wife gently guided me to standing in front of the 'stay home and care for the kids and worry about me leaving alone' bus instead of the 'come with me and comfort me' bus. Getting hit by 1 bus isn't nearly as painful to a husband as not being able to block ALL busses. Women may never fully understand that sentiment, but the men do. But.. I digress this isn't about me, it's about my wife and our family.

10am Saturday. I begin making calls.

Culture Note #2. Internationally calling is hard to do when the phones are not totally reliable. Praise God that Skype didn't fail us the entire day and I was able to patiently be on hold for most of 12 hours…. yes yes, I'm Praising GOD for being on hold. Because, it meant I didn't get disconnected… and it wasn't costing me any more than a fraction of a penny per minute.

After surfing the web for 2 hours we found an itinerary that required we leave at 3am. I booked it. As I pulled out our emergency credit card from inside our 'for emergencies' prepared bag from our lock box inside our locked cabinet, I realized 'this expired last month'.

Culture Note #3. Living in a place where you rarely use cash or credit cards, or look at your passport, often you need to check your expiration dates on things, because it takes weeks or months to renew them, if you even can from outside the U.S.

I had known it was coming, and I had a note on my desk 'renew credit card' which I had begun months ago, but life got a way from me the last 2 months and it was something I left undone because of the difficulty in renewing from outside the U.S. The Credit Card company was not approving the transaction.

Okay time to go to the backup plan. Use the Debit card. It means we won't get any Credit card miles, but it's an emergency. Only thing is, the debit card has been re-issued and is sitting in a safe at my sister's house, with a new number. My credit union was confused, and I was stuck there too. DENIED. Someone please let me pay CASH!!!! I have enough cash in the bank to cover this expense, but I can't move the money!

Okay plan 3. PAYPAL. I was able to book the return flights with Paypal, but the departure I couldn't book because by policy they won't book flights that are sooner than 3 days away.

Each booking and failure is costing me hours because I'm dealing in email and Skype. I've been on the phone for hours, and I still haven't gotten the booking for my wife to leave the country. But I have the booking for her to get back handled… barring some manipulation of the space time continuum I still need to GET here there in order to get her back.

BUT!!!!… all plans involve her leaving from LAE which is 3 hours away from here. And our car has not been running for months due to missing a part that has been taking forever to get here. And it's the weekend so the Auto Shop is closed and I can't rent a vehicle.

Culture Note #4. It takes months to get car parts. Plus living here is not a 24x7 thing. Places close at 5pm and when a place is closed, it's closed. I have enough friends that I could begin sounding the gong and adding stress to people's lives, pull them out of bed and ask for them to drop everything and help me. And they WOULD because the people here, are amazing people. But I didn't want to have to do that to them. Because it would involve disrupting more than a dozen people's holiday weekend plans. I'd have to get finance to open up, the Auto Shop to open up, a team of people in the capital city to wake up, plan rides, etc. I was hoping it wouldn't come to that. But if it did, I know they would help. I knew, that if I had to, there were swarms of people waiting to bend over backwards to help my wife. That's the kind of reputation she has, and the kind of people we live with. It's a benefit of being part of a missions organization versus going it alone, and it's a benefit of living with a tight community of believers.

So… before pulling that particular trigger I decided to call a good friend of mine. I met him over at the auto-shop, he pulled some strings, and within minutes we had rented a Ford Ranger, fueled it, and he agreed to travel with me at 3am to take my wife to the airport. He's my go to guy… I went to him, he came through.

But, we had an idea, what if someone else was already going?

Tech note #1. A Community Bulletin board is an awesome thing. (Maybe this should be tech note #2, because Skype is also awesome).

I posted on there 'is anyone leaving for LAE on Sunday morning?'. In the off chance they were. I got a call. Someone was. Only they weren't going at 3am, they were going at 8am, meaning my wife wouldn't make flight #1 on her itinerary.

Blast!

So.. waiting in the wings I have a co-driver. Which is much needed because the roads right now are awful and we'd be traveling them at the most unsafe time of day. Which means going slow… which is less secure.

Culture Note # 5: You're not supposed to drive at night in third world countries, but if you have to, go fast. Don't travel on roads that make you go really really slow in spots!

I also called a friend to see if I could access the community safe we keep our passports in. She not only said yes, she said 'I'll deliver it to you home!' Man, God puts incredible people in our lives!

When I got back home after making all these plans, I found that Kendal had also put out a request to our 'Kitchen Angel's' a team of people who gear up specifically for times when mom leaves, and can't be home to make bread and meals. I already had people signing up to bring me and the kids dinners! BONUS!

I checked email, the itinerary was cancelled, due to credit card problems. It's 4pm now. We have dinner guests arriving in 2 hours. The kind you can't cancel on because they arrived on a plane from the U.S. only a few hours ago. In 1 hour my daughter needs me to put on a tie and escort her to a Bible Study function she's been excited about for weeks. She made me a home made boutineer. I didn't want to break her heart…. so I had 1 hour to make this work.

It seemed like life was squeezing us into a few hours of total pressure. But the blessing was, Kendal was so busy she didn't have time to stop which I think… kept her going.

So I'm still on the phone at this time working out the new itinerary which can let Kendal go on the SAFER road trip, but I have no ideas left… none of our credit cards will work, I can't pay cash, I can't paypal. I pause. I try to cell call Kendal's dad, no answer. He's probably finally sleeping after driving straight through from Portland to LA when they got the news. In a clutch, I thought, I know!…I Skype call my parents. It's late in the U.S. but they claim they weren't sleeping. I chose to believe them. They give me THEIR credit card info, although I was absent minded enough NOT to get their billing address and info. This is important later.

Culture Note #5b One of the wonderfully hard parts about living here is that you need to rely on people. You rely on people for their support, their prayer, their encouragement. If you're new to relying on people, then the first time you have to do it, your pride will take a hit. But once you get through that individualism, you learn that God blesses you through people. You learn who those people are that you can turn to and rely on when the chips are down. And you learn as we have, that a whole heck of a lot of people love you. God blesses you through these relationships in a way so deep and meaningful because your livelihood is in their hands…. it's a blessing few others get to experience, and ironically it is one of the hardest things about becoming a missionary. It is also one of the best things about becoming a missionary, because it brings you closer and makes you more aware of God's working in your life… through people.

I book the flight with their credit info… the booking company asks me the billing address, I thankfully know my parent's mailing address and assume it was the same. The flight is booked. I jump into the shower, throw on a shirt and tie, escort my daughter to her thing, jet back home.

30 minutes until company arrives, and I have to do the grilling. Thankfully my son is well trained with a spatula and I put him in charge.
I find out during those 30 minutes the flight booking was rejected. NOT because of Credit card information, but because this company doesn't have a booking deal with Airlines PNG, our friendly 3rd World Country airline.

WHAT!?!?!?!?!

Okay Chad think.. think… I decide we can scrounge enough KINA cash to pay for this 1 leg of the flight. (We were asked the night before if we could lend a PNG friend our cash, and I had this odd instinct that I should say 'no'. Which is unlike me, but it was an intuition 10 hours before receiving the bad news.. Thanks God for that!) I redo the booking, I'm on hold for 57 minutes (PRAISE GOD AGAIN for HOLD!…am I crazy?). Our guests arrive, and understand COMPLETELY what we're going through. They do not feel slighted that I spend most of their visit with us, on hold.

Total failure, the booking isn't working, I take a break to eat a rushed dinner, and say hello to friends I've not seen for a year or more.

They leave, I jump back on the phone. I explain "I have to put my wife on a plane in 9 hours!'.

I rebook it all, sit on the phone, my final attempt, I'm exhausted, my wife is exhausted, we fall into bed around 12:30 midnight, praying to God, that this booking goes through.

I put a little prayer up to God 'God, I know you have it handled, I'm at my wit's end. I've been on the phone and computer for 13 hours. I'm not sure that my wife isn't going to wind up stranded… I need some details to go right today, I'm worried I'm sad, help me know what to do. I trust you… please help us." In the back of my head, I'm thinking if I wake up and it's all fallen apart, maybe we decide not to send Kendal at all. I think Kendal was worried about that eventuality too.

4:44am, I bolt awake, for no reason. I check my email.

DECLINED.

but then there's another email from my dad

"Got a call from our credit card company… the charge was blocked because you're in PNG"

Culture Note #6 Everyone who lives here knows what it means to have a credit card company think you are charging fraudulently because of where you live.

But then….
another email from my dad "It's okay, it went through! It's 8am here, we just got off the phone."
and then another email

BOOKING CONFIRMATION AND RECEIPT
Because I had to book with my parent's credit card, I had to give their number,… which the booking company could reach… during their timezone, which was daylight hours. The booking company couldn't reach me, they have no idea how to call PNG, during sleeping hours. It hits me… by being forced to book with my parent's info.. they were able to get a hold of a live person and work it out… clutch save dad!

!!!!!!
YES!
My wife was booked and paid for! Which means she shouldn't have to show an expired credit card that she doesn't really have to get to the U.S. !!!

It means I can cancel the car and co-driver I had scheduled, she can go with the friends already going, during daylight, be much more safe! It means that the trip is smoothed out before her as much as I possibly can do.

IT means God answered my prayer of worry for my wife. It means maybe she'll be okay without me, and God has her in His hands.

It means I can calm down. Only I'm not calm. I'm up at 4:44am writing this story, because I'm excited about what God did.

It took 14 hours of calling and booking. 4 different credit cards, Skype, digital, and several friends and family to pull off getting my wife in a car for 3 hours across dangerous highway, to a 3 legged flight of over 24 hours travel time.

She leaves in 2 hours.
PLEASE pray for her safety and that she gets through.
I know that if she can get to L.A. that her family will take care of the rest of the details. We don't know where she'll be staying or any of that, but she'll be with family and she'll be okay.

PLEASE pray for the kids here. They're very sad Grandma Shirley has left us, their sad mom is leaving for 2 weeks.

PLEASE pray that God will fill back in the money we had to spend.

and thank you… for your involvement in this story. I would tell this story to the friends we live with here, but it's nothing new. We all have lived through it. The only twist is that I let my credit card expire. Which in itself is a humbling thing because we're supposed to be the 'organized couple'. It goes to show you… not everyone has all their ducks in a row all the time. But it's okay, we serve a God who can realign any duck.

(-;

Hard Candy

-Chad



This place isn't just hard on rubber bands, it's hard on candy. This
picture is of a tootsie roll pop that I opened today after it was in my
shelf for 3 days. (took a while to get here from the store.) Hard candy
lasts a long time in my house, because it's a rare and special treat
that we savor and save. But this odd liquifying effect happens to most
hard candy here. The tootsie pop normally has a crunch... here, not so
much. With little effort you can pull the stick out of this making it a
Tootsie lump. It happens to Jolly Ranchers too, and other hard candy.

I don't understand why. Is it the humidity, the altitude? Do those of
you living at 5000 feet above sea level have this happen to your Tootsie
Pops? If not, can you try an experiment for me. Buy a box of rubber
bands and a bag of Tootsie pops. Open them both, and leave them in your
cupboard for a month (I figure it takes that long to ship sea
freight).... then let me know if they liquify.

If they don't then my theory will be accurate. I theorize that during
the customs process, they spray a chemical on all packages, that slowly
disintigrates them into puddles which eventually evaporate. This
explains why the books I ordered a year ago never arrived. (-;

training

This is the new training centre, where we train Papua New Guineans to do translate the Bible as well as many other things.  My team and I installed a fiber-optic backbone and wireless guest networking so that the netbooks and laptops used for the training could go online, while at the same time being secure and separate from our business network. (keeps our data safe from viruses, while still allowing visiting students to get online)  Just one of the thing we’ve accomplished since being here.

 

Banana Boats

This is a banana boat.

It’s a small fibre glass passenger boat, with about a 60hp outboard motor on it.  They are used to go between islands.  This particular picture is in Buka, where I have been to help with VSAT and ridden on one of these.  I’ve ridden more than a few of these in my time here, it’s as common a mode of travel as a bus in the U.S. might be.

 

But when you’re on water, there is danger.  Part of my job for the next few weeks is keeper of the water safety equipment.  You’d be really interested in some of these gadgets.  We have GPS’s we have emergency beacons, we have strobe lights, shark bags (these are bags meant to seal in your odors so sharks don’t sense you from afar and come hunting), all kinds of nifty gadgets for safety, packaged in nice bright orange.

 

I got an email that I’ll paraphrase for the sake of brevity.  My friend Peter and his wife decided to go out to a remote island to encourage local leaders to get involved in Bible translation.  The trip normally requires an overnight on an island, then a 3.5 hour boat ride to the island.  But, on this particular trip, they got lost at sea, and the boat safety equipment came in rather handy.

 

[quote] After a simple meal of bananas and fish roasted in the coals of a small camp fire we tried to sleep. Fortunately it was a clear night with no rain. Small crabs played with our feet and we dozed off from time to time. At 3:30 am we were alerted by the skipper that it was time to pack up and go. By 4:30 am the five boats were slowly pulling out into Queen Carolla Harbour and the convoy was assembled. We passed Kesa Point by the light of the moon, stars and a few small flashlights. As we met the open ocean I quickly realised it was very important to hold on tightly. One had to pay particular attention to the waves and seeing them in the dark was difficult.

 

The sea was rough with the wind coming directly from Nissan. The skipper used his skill and experience to dodge and weave a bit for the best ride and highest speed possible given the conditions. Fairly often though he got going a bit too fast and we were airborne at the top of a wave only to come crashing down into the teeth of the next one. One such wave came over the bow washing us good but fortunately nothing was carried overboard. Sometime in the first few hours we lost contact with the convoy and proceeded on as a two boat group.

 

[Peter pulled out the GPS, found the proper direction, informed the captain, who ran out of fuel, thus using the emergency 25 liters of fuel…]

 

We arrived on Nissan Island after being on the open ocean for over seven hours instead of the 3.5 hours it should have taken to make the crossing. We came ashore sun burned and sea-sick but overjoyed to be on dry land again. We found out later that the all the boats in our original convoy made it in safely that day – three boats several hours before us and then our two boat group by noon.[/quote]

 

 

Adventure always comes unexpectedly.

 

Dental

so I'm sitting reclined, while a dentist is drilling at one of my teeth,
listening to opera and I have this thought
"I am in the middle of PNG!"

God is an awesome God. He's so awesome that he puts it on the heart of
a dentist (a good one) from Korea to uproot his family and move to PNG
to do dentistry. And I get good dental care at a low low price, and my
kids do too, for as long as he's here.

You know that whole bit about considering the lilies of the field....
God provides. Dentistry is a luxury out here, I'm so thankful to have a
dentist here! If you're out there wondering 'wow they have to do
without so much' it's true, we do, but we get by and it's all because
God provides what we need when we need it.

Paratext

In June we’ll be hosting a training session here to teach what we call MTT (mother tongue translators) how to use the paratext software to do translation and formatting.  The terminology over the years has changed.  It used to be that the ex-pat who had the linguistic training came and discipled people from a village as he learned their language.  The ex-pat was called the ‘translator’ and the nationals the ‘helpers’.  Now the ex-pat is called ‘translator assistant’ and the nationals are called ‘mother tongue translators’.  As a result I never know exactly who is being spoken about when we say ‘translators’ because there are so many people over the years involved in the job.  The personal confusion for me is a result of terms changing over the years to try and reflect the nature of the work, and yet some people use the older terms and some the newer.  But under it all is a focus on the work of translating the Bible more than what we call the work.  It’s people sitting in hot rooms, in tropical environments, together, pouring over God’s Word and how to translate it into the local languages.  It’s computers working in hostile climates. 

 

Pray for the training workshop starting June 6^th. A little learning goes a long way.  We need to equip nationals to do as much of the work as they can.

 

I can't be a missionary

I've heard this story a lot. People who arrive here new start their
story out with 'I figured I'm an ________(fill in skill/job)____ no one
needs me as a missionary. But then I heard about PNG."

I gaurantee you, there is a 99% chance your skills would have a place
here serving Bible Translation.

We need managers.
Right now we need a short term technical writer/trainer who can come
into departments and right out policies and procedures from our 'oral'
tradition, and put them down on paper or in a Wiki.

Yeah, I know.. teachers, doctors, carpenters. The top 3. Pilots...

I thought years ago, 'they wouldn't even have a computer in the middle
of the jungle.' But then I saw a rack of Cisco switches in the highlands.

Butcher? We need you.
Travel Agent? We need you.
Software Developer? We need you.
Linguist? We need you.
Museum Curator? Well need is a strong word.... but we can use you!

(-;

2010-2012

Today I whipped up a little graphic, with the help of others, to show
exactly what has been the difference in communication here in the last
year plus.

in 2007, dial up was the only way in many locations to get to the
internet or email. Email is vastly more important when telephone
systems aren't reliable, and it helps to feel less isolated. This map
can show you why folks may feel isolated.

In 2010 we had GSM modem, so faster, but expensive per/mb.

So we began to get VSAT's to each of the regions.

here's a picture of the progress.

Sat night

It is the night before mothers day and I'm helping run a youth event. Activities revolve around making muffins and cards and gifts for our mothers.

What I see though are a lot of kids without their mothers around this mothers day. Some are away on medical leave. Others on business outside the country. Some are in the village.

And it hits me. Family transition is a constant reality for kids in this lifestyle. Everyone who comes here needs to bring a little extra love to share with the youth.

rubber melts

In the first picture, you'll see what happens to rubber and foam based products here. I do not know why it happens. Rubber bands, if left out of the box, will either melt, or become brittle. Perhaps it is the sun, but they aren't in direct sunlight. The earphones pictured here were brand new when I arrived. But only a month later, they looked like they were ten years old. The rubber based coating around the ears now flakes off and leaves black speckles all over. The pair my son is wearing here, I have 'repaired' . We use this headset to skype with family occasionally, and the rubber had all flaked off. After trying hard plastic against the ears, I decided to "fix" them. The white material is that stuff you use to line cupboards, I found some in the house when we moved in, and thought 'wow, that is soft and foamy too, why doesn't THAT disintegrate? ' Well, I wrapped the earphones with it, and taped it in place over a year ago, and it's been working fine. But it gives the visual effect of almost a lacey type doily. Ear doilies!!!

Anyway... point is... jury rig #115

the future of telephony

I am the only CCNA level trained network technician here in Ukarumpa.
(I'm not a CCNA, as I haven't passed the test yet, but I have the
capacity to pass the test).

Yesterday we had to make a decision to install a new telephone switch
and I think we decided to save money and go with a voip system called
Asterisk. If you've heard of it, you know what it is.

I pause for a moment to reflect on my time with Latitude Communications
(bought by Cisco), and then my time at Cisco. There God chose to teach
me about telecommunications, voip and networking. Why?

Could it be for such a time as this?

Currently I'm a network engineer, a windows server engineer, a linux
server engineer. I'm the acting Director of Regional Centres, and the
manager of the ITS department. That's 5 hats. 5 hats which are less
important than father and husband. Not to mention my part time hats
(like volunteer fire fighter, satellite troubleshooter, and helpdesk
supervisor)

In the near future, we will be migrating our POTS telephony system into
a voip system, which means... that another critical communications
system will be my responsibility. It means the network, which before we
came here, was historically unreliable, will be a single point of
failure for almost all of our communication here.

Which means... if a phone goes down, someone will come knocking on my
door to wake me up.
It means if the network goes down, I don't get a phone call like I used to.
It means... that the stress of my job just doubled if not tripled,
during emergency events.

I will need prayer. I don't do the job alone, I have a team of people
helping me. But we desperately need network engineers here.
I do not know how long my mental strength can hold out being the primary
person responsible for all forms of communication. I just do not know
that 1 man can shoulder that burden for an entire small town such as this.

we'll see.... I suppose, what God intends to do.

encouragement in time

I don't know about you, but the way my walk with the Lord has been has
followed a pattern. I understand a conviction on my heart to act and do
something that would not otherwise come from my normal selfish self. I
then pray and ask God for help. And do the thing. Often I face
discouragement, and then, after trusting and waiting, encouragement
comes. Usually in the nick of time.

For the past 2 weeks things have been looking a little grim.
My wife was unable to breath well,
Medical bills are going up,
Vehicle failures are tallying up,
Work seemed like I was stuck in a neverending line of things breaking
and not working.

And so we turned to God in prayer and asked you to pray.

In the last 24 hours:
-Someone wrote us to say 'how can we help?' - this is a huge encouragement
-I was able to sell a piece of electronics I've had for a year, which
covered the cost of a new car battery.
-We got a surprise financial gift that helped cover the cost of the new
crankshaft pully.
-This morning Madang and Buka both came online with internet service
(again after a lightning strike) (projects long in the making)

God really sends encouragement in the nick of time doesn't He?
yesterday was a day of pulling my hair out, having FAR too much work to
do, unable to keep up with the demand.
Couple that with the news that my position here is going to become about
ten times more critically important than it was a day ago...

and the stress was building up quickly.
But today, God encouraged us with little things, and it is a reminder
that He's with us... not giving us more than we can bear.

Good day for connectivity

It's 10am. That's tea time here.
at 7am I got the news that our Wireless Internet connection in Madang
came online!
Since that time I've been negotiating 2 telephones and speaking VSAT
geekery to get the new BUC in Buka online.

It is online now!

So... before the tea time whistle blew, we had 2 remote locations on
reliable internet connection.

This is a good day.

Rising Price of Meds

As you may know, our son is taking regular medication to avoid damaging his heart.  He has been diagnosed with Rheumatic Fever and as a precaution to avoiding rheumatic heart disease, takes several medications.  On top of that he takes inhalers to keep his pulsox and peak flow up as low oxygen in his blood was why he was medivac'd last year.  A medivac is a very pricey thing, and we do appreciate all of you who helped us recuperate from that financial hardship.

We have been informed by our local clinic that their are new laws regarding medications which limits our availability to important medication for our son as well as increases the cost of getting them. 

One such medication is his Seretide Inhaler.  This costs us $67 per month.  But we were informed yesterday that this one medication (of his multiple medications ... poor kid has to take a lot of pills in a day)... will increase to $110 per month.

That is an additional $516 USD per year, or $43 USD per month.  That is a solitary medication.  We're still waiting to see how my wife's goes up, and the other of my son's go up. 

We would appreciate prayer specifically, what I would love to see is a miracle of one type or the other, or to have God do something totally outside my vantage point and wow us.

Two things can happen,
-Someone new joining us for financial support and partnership for each new medication increase.  This would be miraculous because you almost never gain new financial partners while in the field. 
or
-Somehow the price of medication dropping or staying the same.  I do not know how that will happen, but with God it's possible.

Would you join us in praying in this manner? 
Right now our medication budget is second only to our grocery budget.  Each time the medication goes up, we decrease what we eat.  We have made several sacrifices in this area lately, and are doing everything we can to be good stewards.  It would be so encouraging to see God work through your prayers.

thank you for praying.

Land Disputes

In the Highlands here, land disputes are common. I will describe a
typical one in a moment. From a manager's point of view, land disputes
are the bane of our existence.

Either you want to put something, say a telephone pole or a ditch, to
run cable... on someone's land... and it's a huge hassle.
OR, an employee mysteriously does not show up to work for days on end.

Land disputes can get very violent, very quickly.

A few days ago one of my friends and co-workers asked to go help his
mother, and then was gone mysteriously for three days. His work left
unfinished, and I began to worry. I knew he was going to aid in a land
dispute and when he didn't come back as scheduled I began to pray. My
wife began to pray, my friend began to pray. Because people end up dead.

Sparing too many details, here's a typical scenario.

A man buys land from another man and builds a home there and lives
there. Then the landowner dies, and having married a new wife or having
a young of-age son now, suddenly the new landowners want their piece of
the pie. It wasn't enough to buy the land you live on two decades ago,
because now there are new landowners who don't get any of that previous
money. So they come by and demand money for some reason. Sometimes
claiming you no longer own the land, sometimes claiming you've always
been renting and now owe back rent. Whatever the reason, the new land
inheritors want money. The land occupiers then have to somehow prove
they don't owe it, pay, or things get violent.

What often happens is one party says 'PAY US a LOT OF MONEY!' the other
party says 'NO!' and then they either haggle, or fight. This is a cycle
that unless someone gets smart and documents who owns what, and then
that is enforced.... will repeat itself every time someone dies.

I've seen it happen repeatedly.
Knowing this, I understood that when my employee didn't come back to
work, he could be dead somewhere, or in hiding after having been in a
fight, or... perfectly fine but in a village with no phone or radio to
notify me.

As a manager you have to make a hard call between understanding the
culture, and being left in the lurch by an employee who doesn't show up
to work for several days. It's a hard position to be in. I choose to
err on the side of grace, as do many managers.

Which bites you later. There is the possibility that after several such
instances of applied grace, nothing is documented. Which means at the
tenth instance of this happening, and the employee is let go, there is
no record as to why. So it's no surprise if the employee decides to
turn around and sue for wrongful termination.

So... if you apply grace and forgive, and don't document the instance
because it goes on their employment record as a blemish... then... boom,
later things could really come back to haunt you.

Double whammy.
Being a manager of people in a foreign culture is such a difficult
minefield to negotiate. Especially when you're not using the same
standards as corporate America. The bottom line for us isn't profit,
it's Bible translation, and we invest in changed lives, not amount of
books published. So how do you label yourself successful? What
measurements do you use? And how does that temper your decisions?

Is there any wonder we need a lot of prayer and God's guidance?

-chad

2011 Report

This is what we did together in 2011 in PNG.
You'll notice there are still some black areas.... pray that we can get
language projects started in those areas before 2025.

Also, the reality is that in some of the green areas, while people do
have some Scripture, they still need it to impact their lives. So we
need not only to increase literacy, but also to employ creative methods
(like MegaVoice) to get people to HEAR the Word, and have it change
their lives.

Just because a Bible gets completed, doesn't mean the people are changed
forever. It's a long task of discipleship that happens over decades...
the Bible is the beginning of conveying God's truth. We are praying
against the enemy's hold on this country and praying for revival in
these Green Areas.

Some of them have had incredible and encouraging revival, others are
still resisting. Pray.

Megavoice

the BUC stops here

This is a BUC. It stands for 'block up converter'. It is responsible
for the TRANSMIT side of our internet connection. So .... it does the
'sending'.

This one is 10 watts. The ones we deploy in our remote locations is 5
watts. Today, I upgraded this 10w to a 20watt, and then sent this
10watt to Buka, PNG to replace their 5watt. I will be taking the 5w BUC
and shipping it back to our nationals capital Port Moresby, to help with
another regional centre.

Why all this BUC shuffling?
Because the BUC in Buka was cooking. Kookie!?

It was getting so hot, you could fry an egg on it, because it wasn't big
enough to handle the task.

So conduits are being dug, power lines are being laid, grounding poles
being installed, and the task of carrying this 11kilo package to Buka
falls to.... the next person to get on a plane.

Sadly, that is a mom traveling alone with her baby.... but you take
whatever couriers you can get here. I hate to burden her more, but
she's willing because it means her center will have good upload speed.

How much does a BUC cost?
It costs K18,000 ($9,000 USD). Wow, say you. That's a lot of money
for an internet connection 1/20th the speed of my current DSL which
costs me around $40 p/month.

Yes... yes it is. It's a lot of work too, but the cable guys haven't
gotten around to installing the DSL lines out in the jungle yet, so this
is a sort of work around. (-;

If you're ever in the Jungles of PNG and you look up and way up in the
air draped from branch to branch is some coaxial cable, or maybe some
cat 6 ethernet cable..... you can feel free to think from yourself that
Chad has gone over the deep end, and become the networking equivalent of
Tarzan... swinging from tree to tree, decidely trying to wire the entire
country up any way he can.

So... I suppose the BUC doesn't really stop does it... it keeps going on
and on....

oh fun note.
you see that dust and cobweb collection on the BUC? That is what I've
dubbed 'BUC wheat'. (-;

Do you KNOW what this MEANS!?

What you see here is new network equipment.
the bottom switch is a Cisco SF series 100mb with 4 GB uplinks.
On top of that are 2 cisco 8 port Gigabit smart switches
and on top of that is a Dlink 2553 wireless access point.

What does that mean?
It means several things:
-Someone contributed to a project to fund getting a remote regional centre online.
-I ordered the equipment, which was shipped to supporters in the U.S. who shipped it to my dept.  It came by boat and by plane.
-I trained a co-worker in networking so that if something happens to me, he can do this, and this is his setup.
-We have multi-ssid WPA2 enterprise going over 2 vlans to support translation AND guests of translators who come.

It represents financial contribution, teamwork to get it here, training to get it configured, shipping to get it relocated, and technical support to get it installed.

Soon our friends in Wewak will have a wireless guest network so that they can share their VSAT internet connection with those who come to help translate.

How much money was spent?
Not much, around $500 in equipment and around $200 in shipping.
How much time did it take?
I ordered this equipment over 2 months ago.  We talked about the project and the plan for weeks prior to that.

It seems like something you might drop into your local electronics store for doesn't it?

The next time you drop into an electronics store, and buy something and are gone inside of an hour.   Think about me, and the people in PNG who wait months and months to accomplish what took you an hour.  Then rejoice!!! Because it only took you an hour!  If you have the heart to, spend a few seconds throwing a prayer this way, for the duration of our equipment.  That it might have supernatural life span and work in harsh environments for many many years and not need replacing.

thanks!

Kindle Books What they don't tell you

so I don't own a kindle.
I've been testing out the effectiveness of one by installing a kindle app on my phone.

What they do not tell you about the kindle, is that you end up reading more than usual... and thus spending more than usual.

I've always had a rule, if someone recommends a book to me, earnestly, I read it.
My reading style and pace is such that I often have 3 books going at once. A fiction, a biography, and a non-fiction, non-biography typically. This way I can choose which book to read depending on my mood.

At this pace, I finished a book about every 2 months. Often times reading myself to sleep at night.

But lately, I've been reading more like a book every 4 days. Why? Because it's in my pocket all the time, it's super available. I whip it out whenever I'm waiting, and read the book. I don't play iphone games or apps, I read the book. I don't text message, I read the book.

And so, a 400 page book is done in 4 days or less.

At $10 a pop, that's costly.

Yes I know kindle has a lending library free to prime members (I am one thanks to family), but that library isn't available to kindle APP, only KINDLE devices. OF course I'm now convinced a Kindle is good, but I prefer they make a much much smaller one the size of a cell phone... oh hey!!!

am I missing something?

I know there are free books, huge archives of classics. Oddly, many of those books hold no appeal for me, again, non-fiction and biographies .... not a huge archive of these that are contemporary.

Anyway, I can't go on buy a new book even at $5 per, that's still over $20 a month.
Ironically, the kindle is attractive where I live in PNG because we don't have to pay shipping.
But suddenly, we see these paperbacks at sometimes CHEAPER than the kindle price.... and it might soon be more affordable to pay for books to be shipped... which is ironic.

So... if anyone out there ever wonders what the perfect gift for us out here is...

Amazon gift certs!

... if I've missed something about the kindle, let me know, I'm looking for a way to read more often, and yet spend much less. Can you believe I'm actually deciding to fast from reading pay books for a month?

power

this is what a solar inverter system using car batteries

Time to Pour

This is what it looks like to have a fresh concrete foundation for a
VSAT in the village. This picture is the installation stages of our
VSAT in Aitape West.

Currently we're working on installing VSAT in Alotau and Port Moresby
because it brings with it, affordability and reliability.

Mud and VSAT

Ukarumpa, Eastern Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea, April 13 - 2012

 
This photo was taken as my friend (a Bible translator) was traveling from his village.  He was gone for 22 days, leaving the centre here where I work, to go to his village.  The trek in total, took him 14 days of transit time.  This is not rare.  Often times a husband will leave his wife and children at home because traveling to remote village allocations can be very difficult with children in tow.

During this trip however, he was able to typeset the Easter STory from Luke in 9 languages. They finished advisor checking the book of Acts.

This remote location, is one of the places where we have installed VSAT internet satellite connectivity.  So, once my friend Ben makes the trip alone, he's able to stay in touch with family over the internet.  Also he's able to exchange information and make backups of his data, so that he doesn't risk losing all his work when he makes a trek like this.

from Ben's wife Mandy

"Not only are we not able to use our airstrip (just outside of Aitape) due to it not being maintained, the rains have made the dirt roads into a mess of squooshy mud. Pictured above are the two cars that met half way to get Ben and the rest of the team out of the village at the big mud hole at the mountain. They spent 3 hours getting the white truck unstuck."

So you can see how, in a world where getting from point A to point B is almost ALWAYS an adventure, that having reliable communication is important. When your wife is at home waiting to hear from you, it's good to know that at point B you can at the very least send an email. Personally for me, knowing that somewhere past this huge mud hole is a place with reliable and semi-fast internet connectivity... is mind boggling.

To me it is like finding a swimming pool in the middle of the desert.

Can Lice be from God?

Yes.
Tip #239 for people prepping to come to PNG. Bring a lice comb.

Lice are my cockroach. Let me explain. My wife, when we first got
here, strong as she is, was always creeped out when a roach would appear
and run around. Now she shoos them away without even being bothered.
Weevils in the flour? No worries, sift the flower and they come out.
Bugs in the food? We've learned to pick them out.

5 years in a place with creepy crawlies helps you get a rather healthy
resistance to being 'grossed out'.

But lice for me, was always the one that really got me. I used to treat
it like the plague. That has changed.

A lot of people (like me) have never had lice, nor had to deal with it.
But part of working and living alongside people with different grooming
habits, is that your children (and thus you) can contract lice.

Today we found it in my son. Which means we have to comb everyone's
hair with a special comb, clean all the linens, rinse the hair in a
special oil and wrap it in plastic wrap, then take special showers.
It's an ordeal, and on a Sunday when you have a cold and you're trying
to get to church... it's just one more stress.

But I began to think of it as a blessing from God. I'm not the type of
over spiritualize everything, but hear me out. My wife had long
beautiful hair (now it's shorter but still beautiful) and has plenty of
experience since high school with lice. When in college her dorm had a
lice outbreak, she knew how to deal with it. She had that experience,
that training. And so, when we have had our lice outbreaks in the home
here, she (as both a teacher, and a patient) knew exactly how to deal
with the lice, and wasn't creeped out. She simply began the long and
methodical process of ridding the house of lice.

A lot of people not used to how to deal with lice, have to go through
this process multiple times because missing a small set of eggs could be
enough to cause another upcropping. But my wonderful wife, having been
prepared by God in her life for such moments, has always been able to
rid our family of the lice.

And I sat there admiring my wife and thinking 'wow, she's great! And to
think God prepared her in this way to help our family'. Because until
lately, this was my achilles heel. Rats, mice, roaches, snakes, I'm
fine with all the creepy crawlies, but lice... I didn't know how to deal
with lice. She just... starts right in.. we need to do this, then this,
then this.... and before long the lice are gone.

Every now and then, you see a glimmer of the truth of God's preparation
for you. I see it most often in skills. How does she know how to do
this? God prepared her earlier in life. We can easily overlook the
fact that having these skills is more confirmation that God was
preparing us for a long time to be here.

And so yes, today I saw lice as a blessing from God. As confirmation
that we're here in full compliance with His plan. It is a good feeling
when you get to see that. Those moments when you say 'wow, I was able
to accomplish this, because God prepared me.'

crashing fixed

a while back we decided to upgrade our primarily file server to Windows
2008 Server R2. As soon as we did, it started crashing, randomly, once
a week. Suddenly the file and printer shares went offline.

Each week we'd try something new and wait.
Then we virtualized it. In preparation to rebuild it... then we
questioned 'maybe virtualizing it made it worse'

We tried everything, not excluding writing back to friends in the U.S.
for ideas.

Randomly throughout the week, ALL our printers and ALL our files would
go offline. 5TB worth. And the only fix was a total reboot.

In my head I was building the unix file server already. We were at our
wits' end on this issue. Having read every forum, every article, every
bit of data we could to find the issue. No error logs, no errors, no
symptom other than file sharing going offline and the service crashing.

And then.... we were able to isolate the problem. After the crashes
increased, we were able to run perf mon tools and found that right
around the time of each crash, someone had accessed the same folder on
the same drive.

We scanned the folder and found 4.5million tiny files in that folder.
Sometime, over 6 years ago, someone had run a program that fragmented
files into millions of tiny little files. No idea why this was done or
what was supposed to be achieved by it.

So delete the files right?

How? If we access the files through windows, file sharing crashed, AND
they were totally un-deletable.

the only way we could effectively delete them was from the command line
prompt.

It took more than a full day to run the scan, and delete all the
files... but it did. And as soon as they were all gone... the server
was happy again and has been for weeks.

I'm not bashing Windows.... but I am saying... command line still has
it's place.

Why do I mention this?
Because often in the world of computing, answers come immediately. One
of the skill sets necessary to excel in mission tech is patience and
longevity. We had been working this particular problem for weeks.

Another example of this is the VSAT that recently came online. I've
been working that since October of last year.

Patience as defined in my context. A computer guy moved to a third
world country. Someone who valued speed and quick resolution... getting
things done... moved to a world that does not value speed. Patience as
defined by me is... the ability to not get angry when something that
should take minutes to accomplish, takes months. To not let it drive
your blood pressure up, to not let it eat at you, and to never utter the
phrase 'this would be SO MUCH FASTER where I come from!".

My God is teaching me patience, He has been for 5 years, if not my whole
life.

I have also recently learned another survival technique for living here.
HAVE something in your life, where at least once a day you can have success.
For some that's cooking. No matter how many things at work break....
when they go home, they know they can cook a decent meal.

Find something you can do daily, to be successful at, otherwise the
daily failures will overwhelm you.
For me that thing is repair.
If I can fix something... a broken toy, or a burned out light bulb....
just one thing, then I feel I've somehow stemmed the onrush of broken
things coming at me... and at least fixed 1 thing today.

-chad

Communication

Here's a practical example of why I am here in PNG. I firmly believe
that increased communication (including through technology) will speed
up the work of reaching people with the life changing message of Christ.

Two days ago someone posted on our internal forum "I need a usb cable"
it was a specific type of cable, hard to find. He needed it for work,
he is a helicopter pilot.

I happen to be in town (3 hours away) and Town offers 3g cell phone
service. On my cell phone I got the email/rss feed from the forum that
stated he needed one.

So I popped into the store in town that might carry it, they had
nothing. But then later while perusing a shelf I found 2 cables that
would meet his need. One for $80 and one for $10. I bought the $10 one
and texted him, he got it, and was relieved.

Had I not been in town, he would have most likely had to order the cable
from Australia and wait 3 weeks, or drive into town himself, thus taking
time off work (3 hours 1 way means you miss a day of work).

This quick cell phone communication via email, allowed us to accomplish
something rather quickly. THAT is one of the very practical ways we can
speed up this 25 year process.

Sophisticated Burger

We took Kendal to town this week for her birthday. Around town I
snapped a few photos.
This burger is so sophisticated it is SOFIsticated! Seeing this way of
spelling the word is another fun example of 'lost in translation'. We
see it a lot as products from China come here, or as Tok Pisin tries be
English. But this instance led me to doubt the menu when my wife
ordered the 'pie' of the day because it was chicken curry on rice so I
thought it meant 'pic' of the day. I warned her 'I don't think it's a
pie' and she said 'so I'll be surprised!' For her birthday they served
her a chicken and curry dish in a bowl, and placed a wafer over the top,
thus making it a 'pie'. So...fisticated.

dmv

went into the DMV to renew our licenses. There is something very
cultural about lines. Or as they are called here 'Queues'. IF you walk
into a building in your home country, you have a sense of how to find
the line you need to be in, and who is not in that line or who is in the
line. Here it's very hard. There were 3 windows and people standing
all around. Not wanting to be rude and cut, I stood in the back until
many men ushered me forward. I stood at the window waiting for 15
minutes, but when the person came to help, the same people who ushered
me forward, pushed to the front and slid their forms in front of me.
That is how it is done here, it seems very rude to an American, but it's
push and shove and get in first. Often times when I encounter this I
opt to return when there is no line because this culture often gives
preference to me, because I'm large and white. In order to fully
assimilate I think I need to throw elbows and push as well but I haven't
gotten to a point where I'm willing to do that because it still feels
'rude' to me. So in that respect I haven't gone fully 'native'. (to use
a phrase).

All in one

We took Kendal to town this week for her birthday. Around town I
snapped a few photos.

I got a kick out of this one as it is a Universal Remote, but it's WAY
better than 'all in one'. it's 1 in 1.

Cost of Living 2

We took Kendal to town this week for her birthday. Around town I
snapped a few photos.
This 'ice chest' is often called an 'esky' by the Aussies and thus the
PNGians because a popular brand of cooler is 'esky'. Coolers are like
sodas. Different places call them different things.

For only $150 U.S. you too can own your own Coleman Esky. (-; We use
these to buy meat in town and transport the 3 hours back to our home
without spoiling. Thankfully we bought our small one (featured here)
when we first got here and it cost less than half of this.

nacho

This rare find of Nacho Cheese excited Calvin who remembers his furlough
'nacho dog'. He pleaded with us to buy the cheese, but it struck me as
not only unhealthy but very costly. So we passed.

Scones

Australians call cookies, 'biscuits' and biscuits 'scones'. So they
don't eat 'biscuits and gravy' and they in fact don't eat 'scones and
gravy' but when they hear we ate 'biscuits and gravy' they imagine
cookies and gravy. This picture is fun because of the spelling in PNG
for 'scone' and also the 'flour is power' motto. Which may be true as
when we spent time in the village Kendal taught ladies how to bake
bread. A skill they can use to feed their family AND turn into a small
business as other folks enjoy bread but don't all have the knowledge of
how to cook it.

Cost of living 1

We took Kendal to town this week for her birthday. Around town I
snapped a few photos.
this plastic bin, similiar to the ones we bought on furlough for $5.00 a
piece on sale..... Costs $22.00 here.

Ice Cream

We took Kendal to town this week for her birthday. Around town I
snapped a few photos. This one seems to be a great example of why
people need the Bible in their own language. It's humorous to us, but
strikes me as rather symbolic of the issue. They understood the
boysenberry was an ice cream flavor... but the meaning was just a little
bit missed in the spelling of it. In the same way often times we read
the PNGians Scripture in English or Tok Pisin and they get partial
meaning, but the crux of it gets missed unless it is in their heart
language.

Number 1

this market claims it is Number 1, but we rarely shop there.