Jury Rigs

I've blogged in the past about how ingenuity is a part of the job here. Some folks asked me to post more information and photos about some of the solutions.

"The Server Overheat Fix (or delay)"

problem: servers exist in a small enclosed room which is air conditioned. When the power fails the air conditioner fails. How do we keep the servers from overheating since they are on battery backups?

solution:
-take a pneumatic screen door ..actuator?... reverse it so that the door OPENS instead of closes
-put an electromagnetic latch on the door
-remove the door knob latch
-connect the electro-magnetic door latch to a thermostat
-connect the thermostat to a phone out dialer
-when the temp in the room reaches 30degrees Celsius, release the door, it opens, and call the CTS employee's phone (mine and a few others) to notify them.

Theory: the servers will have a LARGER room (our offices) to draw from which has a separate air conditioner (which will also be out) but the air will be cooler, and thus give us time to get here and down the servers.

The actuator:


The magnetic latch:


The cable to the thermostat:


The thermostat and dialer:




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"How do we get the Airport on the Network - FIX"

Problem:
The airport is off center and they need network connectivity. The land owners between here and there don't want to let us run cable, and copper wire theft is a major problem in this country.

Solution:
Give them wireless.

Problem:
we can't afford commercial grade wireless

Solution:
Use consumer 802.11(b/g), build a tower, put a high gain antenna on it, and do the same on the other side. Two netgear wireless routers, span the distance of about a mile as the crow files. Maybe a tad less.

(I have no photos of the antenna tower, but you can imagine it, and then add razor wire at the bottom)

New Problem:
there is a line of trees growing and will eventually block the signal.
(can't trim them down until we reach an agreement with land owners)

Issues to remember: a lot of lightning in this area, and if people CAN'T steal it, they will, so everything is located HIGH.

Solution:
Move the antenna 30' higher. (this is an ongoing project)

The server room wireless routers connected to the cable going EXTERNAL to the high gain antenna:



You might be able to tell, that this stuff is FUN. It's fun to conquer a problem and fun to come up with a solution. I thank God every day for the ingenuity he's blessed the people here with. Not a day goes by that I don't see something that makes me say "wow.. what will they think of next!?" It's a place where elbow grease and creativity are survival skills.

A Good Day

My definition of a good work day is a day where you solve more problems than you receive. It saps your energy when your list of things to do grows more than it shrinks. Some says it grows fast and other days it shrinks.

When you're in a lot of meetings the list grows because you are working to resolve issues as much as meeting to identify them.

Some of you will understand the I.T. mentality and not need to hear this bit. But for those that don't:

-Firefighting mode - is when you are hit with a lot of high priority, drop everything and solve this now... issues. You do not have enough time to work on projects and anything that CAN wait until later, MUST.

-Project mode - the fires are out, and you're able to work on the things that help improve things for everyone long term. This time usually requires concentration, and time.

-Helpdesk mode - time spent solving issues you can easily solve are adept at. This mode is the least challenging, but constitutes a lot of your time depending on your job description.

-Troubleshooting mode - something isn't working right, and you don't know why yet. You require a fully functioning brain, time, and google.

You'll notice the word "time" in each different mode. An IT person shifts between these modes all day long. TIME is the enemy. Uptime, downtime, lunchtime.

TIME.

You tend to lose energy when you've been battling time without prevailing.
Today though, thanks to the gifts of God, I prevailed.

With any new job I've taken there is an element of being in the "deep-end" of the pool so-to-speak. Being thrown in and hoping you can learn the idiosyncracies of any new system before an emergency comes up.

I've been battling and losing two major troubleshooting problems because they were both in areas I have little experience. Last week I was sure I'd never solve these issues.. this morning I was sure, I needed outside help... and moments ago, those issues are solved.

I'm pretty jazzed about it (for techs: I solved an SQL authentication issue and a windows netbios issue).

As I mentioned before, people here are getting tired right now. So dealing with problems is even more tiring.

Technical difficulties tax your energy. I'm motivated to help people resolve their issues as fast as I can because of that. I'm so relieved to have solved a problem that has exhausted two others and myself for weeks prior to today.

Someone out there was praying for me today.. a special blessing, a moment of clarity.. something.

so thanks.

New Noise

Moving to any new place requires adapting to new noises. Sometimes it means getting used to the creaks a house makes. Sometimes it means getting used to dogs barking all night long.

We've adapted to dogs barking, house creaks, the sound of scurrying lizards on the roof, birds chirping, cicadas blaring, geckos chirping, traffic driving, dinner bells dinging, river rushing.... all during the night as we sleep.

At first I thought "I'll never get to the point where I tune this out." I am a very light sleeper, the slightest unusual noise wakes me up. I prefer this, I like to remain vigilant and keep my eye open for issues around the house or with the kids. I've always been this way. When our children were babies, a cough or sneeze would wake me up from two closed doors down.

Which is why I'm amazed that we've adjusted to these noises and have been sleeping.

Until last night.
We got a new noise. Which I'm sure we'll eventually adapt to.

IT was hard to determine what it was at first but we landed on a bird's squawk.

At 3am, we darted awake to the sound of a loud car alarm... only slower.

And it was a bird.

Speaking of birds, a friend of mine would love bird watching here. If you are an avid bird fan this is the place! My wife saw a bird the size of an eagle, but brown on the white parts and white on the brown parts (if that makes sense) and the beak was something like a toucan's.

A large exotic looking bird. I wonder if he was the one making all the racket!

__________
please continue to pray, we appreciate your prayers.
There are a lot of families here saying their goodbyes and a lot of people with tearful eyes as they are going home finished. The end of the high school year often marks this large exodus.

Here we are, as the "new" arrivals. Several of us here are new. I am sitting in the place of a man who leave in 2 weeks, having taken his position. So there is definitely a sense for us of.... replacement and departure and loss. No place I've ever worked has had this kind of revolving personnel. The lifestyle here can be taxing, as can living under constant spiritual awareness.

There is no illusion here of safety, no illusion of financial security. Everyone is fully aware that they depend fully on God. It can be a struggle to constantly remind yourself of this, and for many that is a tiring struggle. For others, it is second nature.

Either way, our newness affords us the emotional detachment to not have to cry at every departure. So our prayer is that these families going on away would be guided by God, comforted, given rest, and kept safe. They have blessed us in so many ways in the little time we've been here and we pray that God would re-establish them where they are going and give them a vital new ministry.

This place needs to be surrounded in prayer right now as people are emotionally and physically exhausted from all the things they have to do to leave. The enemy wouldn't hesitate at the chance to use that leverage. We pray for their energy.

Please pray for ours too! Thank you!

Bits is Bits

it’s monday morning.
I’ve spent the last 2 hours trying to get skype up and running so I can call my family. It has kept crashing and I’m about to give up.

While this is going on I’m getting updates from my children who are running back and forth between my desk and the neighbors yard.
I’ll try to walk you through the comments I’m hearing as my headphone set continually rings with the sound of skype crashing.

“dad can we play with the [foam] airplane.”
time passes
“dad can we visit the neighbors”
time passes I’m growing more frustrated and less attentive to the world around me as I work on my issue

“dad the neighbor’s………….”
“honey… honey did you hear what our kids jsut said?…….”
“honey?”

time passes

“dad the neighbors jsut cut the head off a chicken…. and I learned……. still moves after…..”

time passes

“dad they’ve cut it into little parts…. and……”

time passes they’re running a good 40 yards each update…..

finally my world comes colliding back to reality when my daughter shoves a severed chicken foot in my face, blood and all.

“dad they cut up a chicken and I got to watch and they gave me this chicken foot as a present!”
“they gave me one too dad!” (son)

okay, I apparently was paying WAY too little attention here…. and now both my children have a severed chicken foot in their hands and the neighbors kids are smiling like it’s the best present they’ve ever given anyone and I pause…

I take off my headset….
I muster the best smile I can … trying to reflect their enthusiasm while hiding my frustration at my computer issue, and masking the slight shock that accompanies a severed chicken foot less than an inch from my nose and I say…

“wow! That’s great!”

they’ve run off javascript:void(0)
Publish Postagain and are probably concocting games to play with chicken feet. I think it’s time I turn off the computer and go see what they are up to.

Wara

Wara = water
ai wara = tears

There are three different types of water here.
-RAM water
-Tank water
-Filtered water

There is a pump at the top of the hill which is in the river, and pumps the water down into the houses. The pro is that this water is always available, the con is that it isn't the cleanest source of water, even though it is processed. Another con is that when the electricity goes out, so do the pumps... but if you live at the bottom of the hill that's a PRO because the water flows with gravity and when your tank water isn't pumping into your house, RAM water will flow into your house. (a con for those at the top of the hill as they lose water first).

RAM water is used for non-drinkable situations for most people.

TANK water is water from your tank at your house. The tanks here have pipes running into a large screened hole at the top. All gutters are fixed to the pipes, and so many houses have a complex maze of gutters and pipes into their tank. When it rains, the water landing on the roof flows into these tanks.

This water is the cleanest for drinking. The con is that during dry seasons, the water comes in short supply.

Some people do not feel the rain water is drinkable and they fill up filter systems. Typically this is 2 large 5 gallon buckets with a gravity flow filtration system inside.

We don't use a filtration system in the hopes that the rain water will help us with our immunity needs, and we only drink tank water.

The plumbing in houses here is all over the map. Depending on how complex you want your house to be you can have valves to put the toilet on ram, valves for the HOT water to be on ram, valves for everything to be on ram or switch to tank.

Looking at houses, one of the things you do is learn the water system. IT is usually a five minute session of "we tried to label it, this valve turns on ram I think..."

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Prayer requests:
-recently the headman of a village that some of our translator friends live in was attacked. He was a christian and was instrumental in helping our friends bring their translation to the people, but now he's in the hospital.

-some of our friends have fallen ill and have been medivac'd out of the country.

-more of our friends have grown very agitated at living here and have decided to leave for a long duration.

-in a week many people are going to be leaving here because it is high school graduation, there will be many tears and many sad people.

-it is coffee season here AND elections are near. This makes this a very active time and tempers amongst the nationals are high. IT isn't the safest time to travel so we are staying inside the center until things cool down. More events are likely to happen during this time, and people are a bit more cautious than usual.

What we're seeing, with eyes that God has allowed us to see with, is the enemy at work. Trying to slow down the translation work in any way he can.

PLEASE pray against the enemy here, pray for our health and protection, pray that we stay focussed on growing close to Christ, and let that relationship help us to flourish. Pray that our energy level stays up during this time of saying goodbyes.

We have so may praises to God... so many ways He has blessed us that far. Perhaps I'll outline a few in the next blog.

Suffice it to say, God is good, and He is faithful and He is alive!!!

High Frequency E-mail

This week on Thursday I participated in something I've never done before, a technology dedication ceremony. Several years ago one of the CTS employees got the idea of how to provide email to translators far in the bush who didn't have telephones or network connections. HF radio email. The concept wasn't new, but his deployment hadn't been done before. The only other people doing it were doing it commercially and the equipment was very expensive.

His vision began in 2002. He began to put together a system that consists of an HF radio (high frequency) attached to a modem, attached to a pc running server software that would fetch pop email from a main corporate lan server and compress it enough to send over the hf radio waves to the client in the bush, who had a radio a modem and a laptop all connected to a car battery which was charged daily by solar panels.

In order to get it done, he had to have antenna towers built, a parcel of land cleared, and had to solve many problems, not the least of which was, where to put it and HOW to put it.

The final result is all this equipment sitting in a steel shipping container in the middle of nowhere. Telephones ran a line to it, networking hooked up dsl so it could be networked, electrical ran power, and so on and so on.

The following is a pictorial of the dedication but more specifically the equipment.
(for higher res pics you can go to my photo gallery)

This picture shows the steel container and one of the three antenna towers.



This view shows the power and phone patch panel on the left and the server station in front.

Notice the setup. More detail in the next closeup. The radio system requires DC power so you'll notice the battery system which powers the radio and will maintain a charge for several days should the power go out.



In this closeup, you see the radio (center), a ups on the left, the power converters on the right, the dsl modem on the left, and the antenna cables coming in from the top. The copper bar behind the UPS is the grounding cable. Notice the small black bock between the radio and the UPS. This is a radio receiver and is part of a different project. In this country you have no FCC. So when requesting a new radio frequency (which we sorely need our traffic is so much) the government asks YOU to tell them which frequency is unused. So this receiver is attached to an antenna and is scanning the range we want 24 hours a day and logging any traffic found. After several months we will analyze the data and tell the government which frequency we want. The risk is, without doing this work, that we purchase a frequency that is being used elsewhere, because no one seems to record the used frequencies.. which also means someone could eventually be using the ones we have. (all the more reason to acquire more frequencies).

For jury rigging fans, notice in the very front is a webcam. It is pointed at the frequency of the radio. The server software is unable to interface with the radio to the point of telling us what frequency it is currently on, so every time the server receives an incoming connection, it snaps a pic with the webcam, and we can later compare if we need to check logs, the picture with the time stamp to see what frequency was used. If no incoming call, the radio scans channels until it receives one.

Also this room gets VERY warm. All this equipment has been functioning at over 50 degrees Celsius.

Another fun note, for a while now people have been receiving jolts when touching different parts of the shed. My cohort figured out why when he received a nice jolt, the antennas were not grounded properly (had a ground loop). SO, that copper tube bent behind the ups is his invention. He grounded it well through a bolt connected at the base, then grounded outside. He flattened the top and then attached all devices to it for grounding. The shocks went away. Remarkably he didn't know much about grounding but was inspired by his shock to investigate it, and found there are plenty of people here who know that kind of stuff and were able to help him. And finally, for the super geeks who noticed that black box inline with the coaxial cable (2 inches big) that is a lightning arrestor. We have lightning and thunder storms here sometimes weekly as we are in a valley and the atmosphere lends itself to heavy electrical activity.


The power and phone patch.


People touring the container before the dedication. This effort lasted many years, and many people were involved in bringing it about. Mentioned by name was the developer of the software who is a christian and has donated the server and all the clients. An impressive homegrown software called UUplus.



Another shot of the container and people gathering.


The crowd listening on.

Below, the man on the left is the one who came up with the vision and has been driving this project. He is from Sweden and has been here ten years. The couple are translators and they are sharing how the HFemail has affected them.

A brief synopsis of what they said, "We have a daughter staying here while we're in the village, and it has been such a blessing to be able to hear from her daily and write back the same day. Yes we have radio scheduled meetings but there are personal things you can't say over the radio with everyone listening. For a long time I had to read between the lines with my daughter to find out what was on her heart. Now with hf email, I can hear from her and reply in the same day. Also at another time, we had a family crisis and the hf email system really let us feel connected and we were able to resolve it, as far away as we were." The husband shared, "when you're translating, you don't always want your work all in one place. Hf email allowed us to transfer files back to here, so we could keep backups in case something were to happen. Also we've been able to communicate from here back to the village to our translator helpers as they continue the work from there while we're here doing work on this end."




A lot of what we do is about communication. Translation is really about communication, and systems such as this help that goal. Currently maintaining this system is our responsibility as CTS network engineers. So we have been trained on it (me and the other new guy) and it is quite a thing to inherit this child. It is also quite a nice perk to this work, that we can dedicate our results to the Lord.

I may have gone overboard with all the pictures, but this was a very special day for me, and I wanted to share it with you. For the technically minded, I hope it was a small glimpse into what is going on here, for others I hope you can sense the significance I feel. I may not be a translator myself, but being able to construct and maintain systems like this, and hear testimonies from translators about how it has improved their ministry, is very, very fulfilling. I offer up all the joy inside my heart from this as praise to God who brought it to happening. Who inspired the people who donated, who worked in giving the vision, and who brought the skills together to get it done.

Praise God, His kingdom endures forever!

Appointed Dentist

Yesterday I had the nicest dental appointment of my life. I arrive on time, they sat me immediately, and the Dentist said "you have good teeth." Only in a missionary country would you hear that I .. have good teeth.

My teeth are sub par for Los Gatos, CA standards. (-;
He had a few spare minutes so he gave me a cleaning too.
And while doing so, he told me his story. (One of his sons is my son's friend... great kid)

He had his own practice back in North Carolina, was perfectly happy with his job and his family and then God put a call to become a missionary on his heart. It was hard for him to find full time dental work because so many dentists did part time missions work that many places didn't need him. He had almost given up.

I'm watching the joy come from this man's face as he's been here only a few months like us, and he's enjoying this job, even though he no longer has his 10 assistants who prep patience for him, no longer has the latest greatest tools, he is obviously very happy here.

The dentist here was not an orthodontist but he took weekend courses during his furloughs, and did much more than his training provided but was wise enough not to get in over his head. He retired at 72 this last year and after 2 years of looking for a replacement said "okay God, I can't find anyone, I need you to."

About the same time both these guys gave up, the new dentist, said "God, I know no place is going to use my extra 3 years of orthodontics so I give that up to you, I don't know why I learned it, but I'll do whatever you want." And soon he got the email for this other dentist.

They began to talk on the phone since the retired dentist was now 2 months in the States, and at the end of the conversation he said "by the way, you don't happen to know any orthodontics do you?"

That was a huge confirmation for God and soon he was out here doing full time dentistry.

I really enjoyed the conversation (well, I really could only listen). Here was a man whom I had met, our sons had played together, and I only barely knew, but who had a very similar call on his heart to come out here.

I really enjoy hearing what God does in the lives of people. So many of the stories are similar and yet unique. Each one is fun to hear, and fun to share.

I'm still stunned that we have a dentist out here.

Lae of the Land

If there are things you are curious about, email me at owens@gimpel.tv and I will hopefully be able to respond to them in the blog.

One of the common requests has been for me to provide sort of an idea of the area and the environment.

First I'll write a description. Then I'll link to some photos, and finally I'll link to a video.

We are staying on a fenced in center which consists of homes, as well as all the necessary buildings required to provide the type of services and support we do. That includes schools, administrative offices, translator cubicles, guest houses, auto-shop, joinery, post office, grocery store, clinic, etc. It is very close to a functional small town.

But why have an auto-shop? The vehicles here take a lot of pounding, and the safety requirements of this country are strict, so we need to maintain the private as well as professional vehicles being used. Most every service available to those that live here on center are also available to people who live in elsewhere. We serve the community by having the clinic, and the autoshop and all of those things.

The closest village, is under a mile away. It is Ukarumpa village and the reason we call this place Ukarumpa is because we live so near. A village however doesn't have much more than gardens and huts.

The closest major town is Kainantu (aka K92) and it has a thrift store, a grocery store or two, a police station, and a few other items. The things that this town has, we don't need to replicate here on center. It is a ten minute drive with the current road conditions, but all travelling off center poses a certain amount of risk. Violent crime against whiteskins is practically unheard of, but since we are "rich" we become targets for a small percentage of folks who are less than honest.

The interesting thing is that if a crowd of nationals sees a "raskol" stealing from a whiteskin, they'll chase him out of town. So really when you are surrounded by people you are more safe than when you are travelling on roads alone. We therefore employ precautions when travelling.

These small towns offer little in the way of acquiring important items, but are interesting diversions. The two BIGGEST cities are LAE and Port Moresby. LAE is the closest at 3 hours away. A very tiring 3 hour drive dodging potholes and such.

LAE is a shipping port and has many more stores there and you can get many things you need. But because many people here prefer not to travel, or can not travel there we import items from LAE into our stores here.

The stores provide services for the people who live here, the people of the surrounding communities, provide jobs for nationals, and are pretty much self-financed because they do not keep a lot of useless inventory.

That is a very simple overview of how and why. You may say "I had no idea they had a hardware store." Yes we do. I can buy bailing wire, or a new doorknob/lock. But I can't buy anything specialized... the odds are what you want, you won't find, but what you need, you can find.

There is also an extensive network of lending/sharing amongst ourselves. I need Hair Gel, you have Hair Gel? GREAT! Part of the community here is a WANTED newsgroup where people post things they need. You often get many responses when you post a need there.

I hope that answers some questions.

What do the houses look like? I will post future pictures on this. At this time I'm not comfortable blogging about the inside of a house I do not own.

What does the center look like? Video.

Here is a MAP to go with that video. The map is the center on which we live, and the red line is the path I took in the video.

Techniculture

Disclaimer:
Don't read this assuming that the differences are bad. I rather enjoy the differences in our cultures thus far.
Also, please recognize that my current understanding of the PNG highlands culture is very limited and sometimes it takes many many years to fully understand these things.
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Since I know some folks are more technically minded than others I would like to take a moment to mention two cultural differences that have an impact on my job.

The first is the tendency of the Papua New Guinean to not want to offend by saying a straight "no" or by declaring that they do not have something. This affects my job when it comes to ordering equipment. When you send an email, or make a call inquiring as to whether or not a supplier can provide a part for a system or some such supplies a common occurrance is to be told that they will look into it and get back to you. After several days of getting what feels like "the run around", you realize that in fact the supplier doesn't have the part and simply doesn't want to offend you by telling you he can't help you.

This difference exaggerates the typical American need for instant gratification. When you call a vendor, you expect them to look up the part number and tell you within seconds how many they have and how soon they can get it to you. Here, it's more of a finesse between understanding that the culture is more relaxed and knowing the difference between the "yes we have it" wait and the "no we don't have it" longer wait. (-;

It is part of the adjustment here to understand that it takes some time to get parts. Foresight helps you avoid problems but when you're dealing with a small budget, foresight can also be costly as you do not want to overstock items that you may never use.

The second is the tendency to not directly ask for help. In the PNG highlands culture, if you become stumped on an issue, you shelf the issue and work on things you can, never asking for help. You wait until someone offers help to you. We have as many nationals working for our department as we do whiteskins. They are very smart, and know more about electronics than I'll ever know. They work according to how they were taught and don't always know how to think outside the box of their instructions. They can, and often do, but when they do get stumped, they do not have a natural inclination to come to us for help. I am not sure if shame is a factor in this or not. Some of the nationals who are more accustomed to the Americans will ask for help. The solution to this is that each day, I remind myself to take a break from the issues I'm dealing with, and stroll through the rest of the building offering help to anyone who wants it. It is at this time each day that I come across one or two small things that have been sitting and waiting.

Really, this is the fun part of my day. It is a distraction from the normal troubleshooting, and I turn it into a relationship building and teaching session. These guys are reading PC magazines from 5 years ago because their desire and capacity to learn this stuff is huge.

I thought some of you might be interested in how the culture affects my job. If I can think of examples more later, I will.

Community

Missionaries are bold people. Not everyone is bold the same way. With boldness come opinions. I've no shortage of those myself. Wisdom, in my experience, is knowing when and how to restrain yourself from sharing your opinions.

For years, I spouted my opinions to everyone and anyone. I quickly got a reputation amongst my family as people would often say to me "ah... that's jsut Chad." I was a teenager after all, I knew everything.

I had a list of things that were required for a Christ centered Utopia. How the world SHOULD be run.. according to Chad. That list ran miles long and it began its construction in my early teens and was promptly burned the day after I got married (-;

Marriage and having children quickly make you realize how much you have to learn in life. You shift from thinking your parents knew nothing as a teenager to realizing jsut how much they did now. I started shutting up and started observing and God taught me a lot of things. I abandoned my list for Utopia and began learning God's list for my life.

Which is why, I am stunned to be living in the place I am now. There are many things here from that list written so many years ago and forgotten about.

Things like:
-a lack of focus on material wealth
-a lack of focus on fashion as a status symbol(this one was added because I personally have no sense of fashion)

but the one that has really reached me strongly is
-a caring community


Where we lived, you could find caring communities if you looked. It was often a rare find, and once you found one you stayed in it. We found one back home, and we stayed for as long as we dared until God called us here.

After living in such a wonderful place as we did, with so many wonderful and caring friends, I was prepared to make living in a land of total strangers a sacrifice of worship.

But God loves to bless us, and He loves irony. The people here bond together over a common purpose. The fun I've been mentioning is a side effect of this bond.

What prompted this entry is that last night we attended a performance that was a rehash of a tradition they do with the graduating high school class here.

As a form of recognition and a way to encourage and honor the 11th and 12th graders, they do a "carol sing" like production by renovating a building, and serving a banquet. They perform a play that incorporates a lot of inside jokes for the youth, and then the next day, they do the same thing for us and say "this is what we've done for the youth."

The play consisted of gentle reminders of Biblical character building concepts, moral points, and good old fashioned clean fun.

There were parts that reminded me of home. A lot of parts that reminded me of home. But what stayed present in my mind the longest is how wonderful God is.

Here are people who have come here to work on Bible translation and literacy, and they have these other talents, some acting, some painting, construction, writing, directing, sound, whatever it is, and they put them to such a use as to almost create what amounts to a celebration and rite of passage for these young men and women who are very soon going to go out into the world to find what God has for them.

I'm always amazed at the talents of people, and to see people use every talent they have for God is praise inspiring.

And then, after all of that, God says to me "remember how you felt a truly Christ centered society would be?.... remember your opinions about a loving community? I've given you one...again."

I love God's style... I jsut love it.


-Chad
p.s. I put a brief png tour movie together on the website that you can download.
http://www.gimpel.tv/newsletter
(look on the left sidebar for the PNG tour video)

Blessings!!!!

Coaxial Relationships

For a while now I've been praying for the dam to burst regarding me and relationships with Papua New Guineans. I figured it had to be learning Tok Pisin and so I've tried to hurry that process up.

In my department, CTS, there are at least 10 Papua New Guinea employees. They know how to make antennas, work on radios, do part ordering, electronic repair, and all kinds of things.

The other day I wandered into the tea room and sat down amongst about 5 of them. One of them, named "H" asked me if I played American football. I told him in school I did, and we all got to talking sports. Out of that conversation I was able to learn their names (because until then I hadn't learned everyone's name) and they told me that the big sport here is Rugby, because it's popular in Australia. AND that in a few days, the BIG game was on. And that at tea time that's all they talk about, is rugby.

SO, I thought HEY!! I gotta figure out how to see this game.

Well I asked around, not many people have tv working here, because it is PAL tv and not NTSC and most of the tv's here won't work. BUT, I noticed the top of my house I'm renting has a t.v. antenna.

It isn't as simple as plugging in. I have to find a way to create a cable with the right connectors to connect to my t.v. which I bought used off a leaving missionary a while ago. So I decided to ask the antenna guy here about NTSC vs PAL television.

Apparently we have the equipment to make a cable, if I can supply a multi-system TV. I can not, but I might be able to find someone else.
When he asked me why I was making this cable (pal male to pal male) I responded "to see the rugby game"

At that, suddenly I had a ton of guys helping me. They all seemed to drop what they were doing to help me. They gathered around, and were chit chatting. One lady named "Mavis" came up to me and told me she knew my daughter and how nice my daughter was. It was like there was a crowd around me and I suddenly felt very bad for holding up actual production work with my simple questions.

Within 20 minutes we had a new cable and everyone was smiling and I had made some very quick new friends and am somehow now .. "in the club".

The rugby game is named "state of origin" and is between the "maroons" and the "blues". Some of the guys are fans of opposing teams, and they have flags on their workbenches, etc.

So now, that I have seen this reaction, I feel as if somehow building this cable together was a rite of passage and now they are excited to talk rugby with me.

All this time I thought Tok Pisin would be the thing to tell them I was interested in their culture, when really, apparently, it was an interest in rugby.

It's true what they have told us...
God will work His way, be willing to go in with a learning heart. If I had said "I can make this cable myself, without help" then I would have made a cable and not some new friends.

I'm not a rugby fan, and I'm not a tea drinker, but I'm willing to become both if it means making some new relationships!

Sporting Fun

Today was sports day. My son really got involved and was racing his heart out during the "family" time. The school here is a big draw for the community and the high school is really a focus right now.

It's nearing graduation, and they have:
-their talent show
-the marching band's annual show
-sport's day
-banquet (like a prom w/o dancing)
-graduation

These kids have been raised, some since birth, together. Leaving high school means leaving the country to go back to their homes for University/College. These kids are preparing to say goodbye to their closest friends, knowing that they will scatter all over the world.

Parents take a break to settle their kids into their new environment, and jobs shift around to cover their absence. June-January this place becomes a little less active, but before it does, April/May/June is VERY active.

Everyone in the community comes together to celebrate and have fun in track and field events. At the end of the high school competition they let everyone compete in rallies. Someone got the funny idea late to create a "team cardiac" and have me and 3 other out-of-shape guys run 4x100meter rally.

One of the other guys was the current network administrator. So I asked if he could run the leg before me, so while he was handing the baton to me, he was also symbolically handing off the baton to me.

How many people get THAT opportunity, to actually have the person you're replacing hand an ACTUAL baton to you in an ACTUAL race?

People got a huge kick out of it... they felt we were engaging in the community atmosphere and making it fun, which was our goal.

My son, raced in 2 races, completely unplanned. He loved it!

WHAT a fun Saturday. We've been getting more plugged into the community here as more people know us and we know more people.

The part that is amazing, and can really choke you up, is that people go hoarse cheering here because they cheer as loud and as long for the last person to cross the finish line as they do the first.

The community is VERY supportive and while somewhat embarrassed my participation was another step in showing people that we care about the community.

I have to say I'm mighty proud of my son today, completely unprompted he ran 2 races. I looked down and said "I didn't know he was racing in that?" He ran every chance he could.

What a great day spent with the community here, getting closer to people, showing them we care and that we want to belong. People are very supportive here, but there does tend to be among a few, some initial caution in making new relationships. They often ask "what do you do here, how long are you staying?" It is a hard time of year with friends leaving for furlough because of school break, and as a new couple, you understand that people may not want to become bosom buddies if you're only staying a few months.

On the other hand, the warm reception I received when here for only 3 weeks in 2004 contributed a lot to our return.

Pictures

here is a link to the new pictures I've posted today.
It SHOULD start a slideshow for you.

I like to change the photo size from 320x320 to 800x800 to get max size.
and click "show more info" to get the picture titles which help explain what they are.

Seeking Wisdom

(sorry 2 posts today)

For a long time I've tried to seek out the wisdom of people who know the environment of which I am a part. We find ourselves here in new and unusual situations that are complete foreign to us. And so, we seek out the wisdom of folks who have lived here longer. And we often seek out the wisdom of multiple people.

I take the leading of God as priority in all these situations, but often find that the wisdom of others will be in sync or at least share some common thread with what God has put on my heart.

So far, heeding those words have saved us from embarrassing situations and we continue to be able to forge relationships with Papua New Guineans as well as those from all other cultures who live on center.

It is important for us as support staff, to learn the way of life here, so that we can not only help others, but avoid making bad impressions along the way so that people are not receptive to our support. The best way I can put it is... until we learn the ropes, we're trying to remain non-abrasive.

So we cling to scripture such as :

Deut 1: 9 At that time I said to you, "You are too heavy a burden for me to carry alone. 10 The LORD your God has increased your numbers so that today you are as many as the stars in the sky. 11 May the LORD, the God of your fathers, increase you a thousand times and bless you as he has promised! 12 But how can I bear your problems and your burdens and your disputes all by myself? 13 Choose some wise, understanding and respected men from each of your tribes, and I will set them over you."

14 You answered me, "What you propose to do is good."

15 So I took the leading men of your tribes, wise and respected men, and appointed them to have authority over you—as commanders of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties and of tens and as tribal officials.

when trying to decide what action is best to take.
God has not led us astray here.

If you are praying:
-pray for continued safety and peace
-pray for a home... we would like to find a place to live where we do not have to move a lot. We need wisdom in choosing this.
-pray for wisdom and guidance.

thank you so much!

Understanding Blessings

It is very easy to concentrate on the positive here. You simply have to look around. I've been entering the phase of cultural adaptation that is typically described as "irritability". For no known reason I feel grumpy and discouraged randomly throughout the day. But I know this, and so I try to control that.

I take long breaths and look at the scenery.
I thank God for what I see.

There are so many blessings that this part of the journey is thus far, easily adjusted to.

This weekend we had a great time! The weekends here are so... restful and filling. The one thing I think we're starting to feel a bit of the pull on is preparing all meals. You have to plan your day so that you have the hour or two or three it takes to prepare you meal. Speaking of which, one of the easiest weekly meals we had as a family is now our hardest, as we continue to keep Sunday our pizza night! We made a GREAT bbq-chicken pizza last night. My wife did the dough, I did the sauce, we put chicken, olives, grilled onions, pineapple on top. OOH boy.. good stuff! But it took a few hours from start to finish. You don't buy grated cheese or sliced olives or any of those things that could shave even a few minutes off the process.

But still cooking is therapeutic, and when we do it together, it is more fun! Although Kendal does do most all the kitchen burden right now, I have to be honest.

Friday night, under the category of inventing your own fun, the high schoolers gave their annual talent night. My son fell asleep, buy my daughter was enthralled. They had gymnastics, lip syncing, piano, guitar, singing, drama, all kinds of performances and we laughed a lot.

Saturday I attended a horse management course in the morning. Yes they have about 24 horses here, privately owned, and they need people to tend for them while their owners are away. I thought it would be an awesome opportunity for my kids, but before they can approach the horses, I need to complete and pass a several week management course. I have some experience with horses, so I'm not worried about that. I'm simply shocked and amazed they keep horses here. Well "they" don't.

The organization I work for allows their employees to entertain their hobbies off center and will not be involved or subsidize it. So there are horses near here, but not OF or FROM here if that makes sense. I need to make that point because you may wonder what raising horses has to do with Bible Translation. It doesn't, it's jsut one of the blessings that comes with living where I do.

Most of the more "fun" things to do here, doesn't have so much to do with Bible Translation directly as it does with being a way that members here recreate. Please don't think that my organization has anything to do with it. They don't. They simply give us the freedom to let our weekends be our weekends. (although during emergencies many of us work on weekends).

Later that day the high school had a track and field tournament which we attended for a while.

Then in the evening, my wife had the opportunity to spend some time forging relationships with some women on center at a "gals night out."

Sunday was Mother's Day and we had brunch, I surprised Kendal with a book (Anne of Green Gables) that I had bought used off of a leaving member, and then went off center to a river and the kids and I played in the water for a bit while Kendal looked on lovingly. (-;

Overall, a very restful and fun weekend. I'm hearing that come June this place is a ghost town for 6 months because everyone with school aged children leave for break. We'll enjoy the fun weekends while they last.

But today is Monday. And work begins. Today as I walked to work, I prayed "God, today your work begins new. Please let me heed your wisdom, and serve you well. Thank you for the chance to work for you."

As I restore data from tapes, implement new services, and research new ideas, I can't believe that not only is God letting my work have a purpose, but He's made me a part of a bigger team, and... He has thrown in the side benefit of having this wonderful place to live in. God truly blesses us abundantly.

And then... as if I didn't have enough blessing from God through all of this, I get this email this morning. God really piles it on sometimes doesn't He?

Dear Chad,
Just to let you know that my daughter in [place], Fiji and I, in [place], New Ireland are now connecting. I rang you the other day about telephone to broadband connection. Thank you for your reassurance and help at that time.
In Him,
[name]
[position] Manager

One small phone conversation I had, linked a woman in New Ireland to her daughter in Fiji. THAT is why I am here. I can only imagine what other things God has planned. I remember after this conversation that I barely understood a word the woman was saying and I was trying to be helpful and when we hung up I thought "God how can I have possibly helped that woman, I couldn't very well understand her."

Mother's Day

Tonight is talent night at the meeting house. The high schoolers put on this annual talent show for the community, and it gives us something fun to do together on a Friday night.

We're looking forward to it, it'll be interesting to see what these young people are capable of.

Work has been interesting this week. No two days are the same, different challenges come to us daily. For example, yesterday someone came and mentioned their children are attending some online college courses, only parts of the website would not load here.

Well in order to track web usage, secure and limit usage, we use a proxy server. That proxy server is having a lot of problems with port 8008 and we can't get this site to work. So, we have two choices, poke a hole in the proxy and thus make things a bit less secure and harder to manage... OR .. get creative.

So I wrote a long letter to the christian university's webmaster asking for them to look into the problem and see if they could propose any interesting solutions for us.

We'll see what they say. Part of the wonderful fun of this job is that not only do they not FROWN on thinking outside of the box, but they require it. Resource limitation is king here. While we can't implement solutions that others behind us will have a hard time administering, we can implement solutions that would otherwise be frowned on by larger corporations.

This place functions greatly on hand written scripts running on several machines. There is one man who knows where they all are, and how they all work, and he leaves in a month.

I've been scurrying around trying to figure out these scripts, so that the whole place doesn't come crashing down when he leaves. Part of my challenge will be to centralize the scripts and standardize them somehow.

Get me.. standardizing... that's crazy. I don't standardize... I'm usually the maverick, it's a new role for me.

So Sunday is Mother's Day.
Happy Mother's Day to all you moms! Where would the world be without moms!

As I was trying to figure the logistics of getting food for a nice brunch, and hiding it from my wife (secrecy is hard here, people see you at the store and know your whole family), I got a nice email.

A couple here on center is throwing a big mother's day brunch as one of their traditions and as a way to raise funds for their tickets back home. So I bought 4 tickets and we're going to enjoy a lovely mother's day brunch OUT.

There are not really restaurants here, so ANY meal where my wife doesn't have to prepare it herself is a good gift! She's adapted quite well to the menu here, and we definitely haven't been starving. We've adjusted to different types of meals. I'm eating more noodles and tuna than I ever have.

Oh and we've started eating tinned ham. My son loves it! I admit, it's tasty in a breakfast burrito too. We buy 2 dozen tortillas on Tuesday from a Papua New Guinean woman who makes them weekly. Tuesday night we have taco night (assuming the store had cheese this month).

Getting supplies is becoming trickier. Food containers from Australia and America arrive at irregular intervals to the store here. Lately the road conditions, political conditions, and the fact that some trucks have broken down have made the flow of groceries varied. On a good month there is cheese in the cheese, and the "good" noodles and tuna on the shelves. On a very rare occasion there is Dr. Pepper in the fridge (or I have heard there is I've yet to see it.)

So grocery wise, whatever the store has dictates what we make for Mother's day.
My wife received her bread maker in our cargo this week, and so she's been baking up a storm. She made pretzels, papaya bread, bread, hawaiin sweet rolls, and more!

A pumpkin

My daughter likes to pick things. We have since implemented a rule "you have to ask before you pick things". She picks flowers, she picks leaves and plants.

Well the other day, she picked a pumpkin. Our neighbors pumpkin. Our Papua New Guinean neighbor's pumpkin.

Assuming they were growing it to sell at market, we decided my daughter could work for the 5 kina, and then apologize and return it.

So we walked over, and when we arrived everyone shouted "Sydney's here!" apparently all the neighbors parents and kids know her. It was an interesting study in how well my daughter has made friends and how well the Papua New Guineans communicate and remember names.

The mother refused the money, she said she wasn't going to sell it, it was for them to eat.

"mi no kros." (I'm not mad.)

She wouldn't take the money and was glad we offered. But still I feel badly that my daughter ruined something they were growing to eat. She did it innocently enough, not understanding but still, picking something without permission was breaking the rule.

And now, she's off scott free. Over here the nationals do give their children a little more slack than I'm used to seeing.

I will update you if this means in the future I owe this family a favor or not. I'm unsure on how that system works quite yet.

Haus Lotu

Lotu means worship. Haus Lotu is church (house of worship)

We typically attend the Tok Pisin Lotu. A church service conducted in Tok Pisin which is the common language of the nation.

For the past month, we've been attending, and listening, not knowing Tok Pisin (pidgin), and after listening really hard, your brain tires as you understand only bits and pieces.

For me, as time has progressed that point of my brain getting tired has extended longer and longer as I've understood more. Still unable to speak it, I'm understanding more.

It is one thing to sing praise songs in pidgin, another to understand what it means, and then quite another to get passed the interpretation and let it sink into your heart.

Today, the Holy Spirit was moving in the church service. The point of my brain getting tired never came, and we were led into a worship that was rejoicing. The sermon was touching, and I didn't fall behind too much.

But what I noticed was that there weren't many dry eyes in the haus as the sermon was about forgiveness. After being in as many church services as I have, since I was five, you can sense when the Spirit is really active during a particular service, and apparently you don't need to fully comprehend the language to sense this.

During the song "holy holy holy" I was deeply impressed with the words, "I want to see your face." My spirit greatly desires to see the holiness of God, and I was surprised when I found my eyes welling up with tears during this song. This one song was in English. Sometimes your spirit desires something and it surprises you when you discover, God is at work inside of you.

God is so Holy... no matter how much my sinful pride convinces me that I'm a good person, God is better. I desire to do nothing to glorify myself, because even were I to believe the lie that I am good enough to garner attention and praise, God is yet better than my false perceptions of myself.

The struggle inside every believer, is the desire to uplift himself vs uplift God. No matter how humble I may feel, there is some place inside me that still believes I deserve.... something.

I find that this selfishness, this false sense of value, is the source of most of my shortcomings. Daily I seek to remind myself that my value is in who God has turned me into by virtue of Jesus.

And so today, I declare that God is Holy!

And apparently the entire church did too, as men rose from their pews and walked forward and the time ran over praying for people who desperately needed God's help to forgive those grudges they've been holding on to.

It was a very moving service, and it was astounding to me that I was able to trek with it because of my limited Pidgin abilities. God must have poured out a little extra understanding this morning on everyone.

It is an awesome thing to see God move in your own life. To be so honored that He would instruct you personally. It is an incredible thing to see Him move through a community like wind through a field of wheat.

Interesting Data

Today is my son's 6th birthday.
Some friends have a guinea pig which is giving birth soon and so we've gone around and collected a cage, so that we can tell him today "you get to pick out a guinea pig!" as his present.

He's going to love it! He loves the guinea pigs he sees at friend's houses.

The cage is about 4' x 2' and has a mesh wire bottom to it. Apparently here, Guinea Pigs are outdoor pets and they feed off your lawn. You move the cage daily and occasionally give them treats of green beans. After a week you'll notice that your lawn is significantly shorted in all the places your pet has been.

We're considering letting our daughter pick out one too, making it female, so that we can start having our own little guinea pig babies, but we haven't decided.

Someone gave me a good idea, so I went and bought some wagon wheels and a rod, and had autoshop machine the rod so that I can mount wheels on the guinea pig cage so my son should easily be able to move the cage himself.

After all he's 6 now, and has new responsibilities that accompany his new freedoms. (-;

I'll post later about his reaction.

My kids are both pretty smart in their particular areas. My daughter reads as a 7th grader level and we're not sure what level my son does math, but it's at least a 2nd grader level because he can finish her math homework.

It is interesting to listen to them:
Syd - "hmmn. what is three hours after a half past seven."
Cal - "10:30, 10:30 10:30"
Syd - "ssh, I'm trying to think...."
Cal - "I told you it's 10:30."
Syd - "sshh! what is a half past seven."
Cal - "I'm jsut trying to help."

later

Cal - "the yellow dog r..."
Syd - "the yellow dog ran down the road."
Cal - "don't finish my reading for me..."
Syd - "I'm jsut trying to help."


God is doing an interesting thing out here. Today is a very momentous day for us as our cargo has arrived. We are awaiting the storage shipping area to notify us, but I can see our boxes in the store room. So finally I'll have my tools and other such useful items. Admittedly it's a bittersweet reunion, in that now we also have to find a place to store all this stuff we've lived without for nearly 4 months now.

But... YAY! that feeling of being stuck in the middle will soon be gone!

To get an idea of how masterfully God moves His people around, here are some interesting statistics:

For PNG:
As of 31 July 2006

Total overall languages where we have worked since 1956 337
Total languages being worked in now 185
Total New Testaments completed and dedicated 159
Total Number of Complete Bibles dedicated 1
Language personnel currently working in PNG 214
Language personnel currently on leave, loan, furlough 97
Total number of Language Specialist Personnel 311

Support personnel currently working in PNG 213
Support personnel currently on leave, loan, furlough 75
Total number of Support Personnel 288

Total number of Personnel in PNG at present 427
Total number of Personnel assigned to PNG 599

Number of Guest Helpers 42
Number seconded from other missions 17
Number of overseas countries represented (see below) 18
Total number of permanent PNG Employees 252

Nations here and how many:(aud=australian, aus=austrian)
AUD AUS BID CAN FIN GER JAP KOR Latvia MAL NED
54 1 21 27 22 9 10 12 2 2 21

NOR NZ POL SWE SWI
1 6 1 9 6

USA TWD
393 2

Time to Talk

This picture is of a new friend para-gliding over the valley. The collection of white buildings in the background is the center on which we live.

We were asked to be the first to share about "how we got here" at evening church tonight. There is a group of new arrivals who are scheduled to speak over the next two weeks, and we were asked by virtue of having small children who might not be as fresh after an hour of sitting on a pew. We had ten minutes, and we shared in a very comfortable, and fun fashion about how God brought us here. It was enjoyable to listen to the testimonies of others, and to laugh at jokes that two years ago we would not have understood. There is a common bond that comes with going through similar experiences of cultural adaptation. So not knowing everyone yet, we still share a bond that brings us closer together and let's us laugh and cry together.

My son, earlier today on hearing that we were to speak, said "I would like to introduce myself on the microphone." My daughter said "I don't want to stand up there on the stage." She is not shy on a stage, last week she was in a school play, it is jsut that she is embarrassed to hear her name while people stare at her. SO, we decided she could stand, and then sit down. She was fine with that.

My son spent the hours before the evening service saying things like
"Mom if you're a grown-up can you change your name?"
-her "why?"
-son "I'm jsut wondering"
-her "do you want to change your name?"
-son "no."

So I got involved.
"Son, if you could change your name what would you change it to?"
-son "I don't know."
"You know your name is a special name, a good name, do you know why?"
-son "no."
"Because men who have had that name before had good characters and they did good things and made the name good. You have a good character and do good things, and so your name is good."

At this he smiled as if he had found a new appreciation for his name. At seeing his smile I thanked God that at least once in a while as a parent I say something wise. The words must've come from him.

"You know son, a name is either good or bad because of what the people who have that name do with their lives. If you do good things, and have a good character, then other people will like your name for many years to come."

He smiled really big and that was the end of that. He then proceeded to say

"Well tonight I'm going to introduce myself, I think I'll say : My name is Calvin and I am 5 years old and I have made 19 friends here, one of them is named Freddy, do you know him?"

my wife and I laughed but suddenly we feared giving him the microphone.
"Son, how about jsut your name and age."
son - "no, I want to say that I'm almost 6."
"son remember how we talked about bragging?"
son - "yes it's okay to brag if you're bragging about God."
"right, how is saying you have 19 friend bragging about God?"
he thought for a while....
son - "okay maybe I'll jsut say I'm Calvin and I'm 5."

So we walked up to the microphone, and I lifted him up and he whispered "I don't want to talk anymore!" So while I was holding him I said "This is my son...." and then lifted up my daughter to play along and said "and this is my daughter."

Folks clapped at that!

It was a good evening, good sharing, God was glorified in the testimonies and the energy in the room showed a true camaraderie and enthusiasm for the task set before us.

Aiyura Ridge Boys

What an incredible Saturday!

I started off by working a few hours, and around lunch time I wondered "what do people do here on the weekends?"

Around 12:30 we got an email to everyone "we're going hang gliding if you'd like to come, it would be good if you had a quad 4x4" So me and my son decided impromptu to jump on the 4x4 which I think today earned a name, and headed out.

We went off center, WAY off center. Outside the gates, down the road, then veer off the road, through bumpy, brushy jungle, then up a very rutted hill, and to the top of a hill, THEN across the ridge blazing a trail as we went. I very quickly realized this wasn't going to be a quick trip and perhaps we should have packed better.

Cutting through the brush, over rocks, through ditches, passed crazed dogs, and found a clearing. Two dirt bikes, 2 quads, and 3 para-gliders. We then were introduced to para-gliding by an Australian gentlemen. It was a gorgeous view! I could see the entire Aiyura valley, all over and it was excellent for getting my bearings and realizing where everything was. My feet are destined to stay firmly on solid ground, but we enjoyed watching them. I personally lost my daredevil gene the year I had children.

My son was having a blast riding the rough trails with me as I was with him. Then, they flew away! WOW! It was amazing, and the nationals thought so too as they gathered around. I took it upon myself to offer one of them a ride up the hill, which as a different more challenging narrow ridge trail. I went RIGHT down the mountain, and then, I had no idea if my little Polaris 325 would make it up the hill with 2 guys and a para-gliding pack on it.

IT did. It was steep, and rocky, hard to see through the tall kunai grass, and at times I had no weight on the front and had to throw my weight around to get it up, but we got up and we were pretty impressed. I even surprised myself because I have no quad driving experience and this was perhaps the toughest terrain (sans mud) that I could have taken it on.

Like I said, today I think it earned a name. It definitely became a tool today instead of a toy. I'm not one to name vehicles but I may make an exception in this case.

I was really needing some adventure and to soak in the beauty that is this place. It is incredible how gorgeous it is to look down over the valley and see all the villages and their distances from each other. I don't know about you, but the thing that inspires me most to worship the greatness of God is viewing His creation. As I looked down on the valley my heart was filled with how marvelous God is. I can remember a handful of truly wonderful worship experiences and they all involved me in the middle of God's majestic creation.

The Week

The kids are getting popular over here. We spent the weekend taking them to play dates last week, and right now we have some kids over here for play date today. After about the fifteenth rendition of chopsticks on the piano I'm heading to work (-;.

On Friday I was asked to install sql on a server down in Aviation but half way through the server crashed. SO.. I decided to schedule some time on a Saturday (today) to go into work and finish the job so that it didn't interrupt anyone's work.

We spent the first three days of the week in orientation to the center. They taught us all about how things here work and what department does what. It really is an impressive machine. How things stay afloat here with all the people coming and going is remarkable. It requires a lot of flexibility. They have people who came here to do one thing and are now doing 6 things or doing something completely different than what they were originally doing.

The good news is that you can branch out and do a lot of challenging new things. The bad news is that if you're not careful you can get stretched too thin. So we're being wise in our commitments thus far, but truly everyone here is very committed to the work of translation.

Thursday and Friday were normal work days. We got caught up on chores at home. My wife made pretzels, bread, cake and cookies that we later shared with others.

We found out a brand of tuna we don't like. Diana brand. It was kind of funny as we found another new couple who had a similar experience with the tuna as we did.

It is good to have the people back from POC so there are other NEW people who we can relate to as far as our adaptation process.

For me this week has been a long realization of how nothing is instant here.
I didn't recognize how much I had adapted to the instant gratification of the culture in the bay area, CA.

I couldn't go get a burrito at midnight. If I wanted a snack, it would take preparation.

I couldn't pick up and drive to the barber. I had to find someone who cut hair and make an appointment for 2 weeks from now. My hair will be very long by then.

There isn't a lot of immediacy here. If you want to get something done, you have to plan for it, and then wait.

I think that personally for a few days here I was getting a little tired of all the waiting. The process of detoxifying my personality from impatience is at times uncomfortable.

I like to get things done, now. I like to write a list of things to do, and knock them off several in a day. I dislike when that list grows more than it shrinks.

The process has been the last 5 days:
-fits of impatience.... "why can't they jsut!!!!..."
-sudden realization that you can't do something you used to
-calm acceptance
-quiet sighs

I've got to figure out how to remain driven when faced with a culture that doesn't achieve as quickly as I'm used to.

The pleasant upside is the environment is a lot less stressful. In a way this is my adjustment. My wife's adjustment is very much in the home for now. She will adjust more as she begins teaching later.

For me, inside the home is less adjustment.
Outside the home I have to figure out how to function without the constant threat of immediacy and high priority.

It's a change I'll welcome.

Mud Hike to the Village

pictures

Today we went on a leisurely hike to the Ukarumpa Village. The center we stay on is called "ukarumpa center" or SIL PNG center, because it is located near Ukarumpa village. So today, there was an organized hike and all four of us went on it with several others whom we got to know. The couple that led the hike are support workers here and have been since 1985.

The village is the closest village to our center and is over a bridge, across the river and up the hill a way. The hike was very muddy as it has recently rained a lot, and we all got our fair share of mud, especially my daughter who had to hike in a long skirt.

It was a blast. At first I thought I might not enjoy a simple walk, and while my feet do have blisters from loose fitting army boots, I had a great amount of fun. We walked right through the village, saw many Papua New Guineans, interacted, blew bubbles, talked for a bit, and were told of the history of the place.

We took pictures.

They'll show the bridge, we crossed, which was the "scariest" part of the hike according to the kids, but they did a GREAT job. At one time you could drive over this bridge, but as the river shifted and eroded the ground, the bridge gave way. The metal you see was originally used here during WWII for immediate landing strips. They would lay down this heavy metal on relatively flat areas and it would create places for the planes to land. After the war, the country had a lot of it left over. I think in total we walked a little over a mile and half (1.64 miles or 2.66 km)

We started at our house with GPS coords of: (for google earth fans)
Our House
S06 20.294
E145 53.186

the furthest point away was the top of the Ukarumpa Village:
S 06 19.572
E145 53.465

and then back.

My son made a new friend on the way, the son of one of the translator families. Short version of the story is that he was born with a cleft pallet and his parents couldn't nurse him, they left him in a bilum for ten weeks, unfed. They adopted him and nursed him to health. Calvin and him had a fun time on the hike.

We saw a church being built. Notice the picture of the pews. Across the road was the grave site of the former pastor.

We saw some pigs, apparently pigs are valuable because they help settle disputes and pay for costs. In areas where the seventh day adventists have populated, pigs aren't allowed so they use goats.

We walked through some coffee trees. That is the cash crop here. They'll make from 200 to 1000 kina from their coffee (which Starbucks now sells at $12.00 p/lb when they buy from here at under a dollar p/lb.) They use that money to pay for school fees, medical fees etc.

A visiting financial missionary who came here years ago said that the PNG people are rich compared to folks in Africa. They don't have money, but the ground here is fertile so they can live off their gardens (albeit not much variety in their diet) and the way the clan system works, they always have space to build homes. They can harvest materials to build homes from their land, and so they have food, and a house and family, but no cash. Which in comparison makes them more rich than some people. Unfortunately, PNG two years ago was dropped from the status of being a "developing country". Infrastructure is the largest challenge here. (roads, buildings, etc). We recently met the U.S. ambassador to PNG who explained this.

One thing we learned was that the traditional house is a round house for the Highlands people here. But you'll notice in some of the pictures that there are rectangular houses. As western culture creeps in here slowly, building homes has taken on a more free-style, and people will make houses out of whatever they find. But typically, what looks like a disorganized mess to the untrained eye (like mine) is actually a clever design in some cases. They will take older grass and weave it with newer grass for their house walls and get a checkered pattern. Or sometimes spell words, or make designs.

It is very important that as you look around to not consider the people here as unintelligent. Rather the opposite, they are very smart, they learn fast, they are very capable, and resourceful. I've been amazed at how functional society is here. They may not be as savvy about medical issues and hygiene, but they are very intelligent people, and very friendly.

We had a great time on the hike. To be honest I thought "hike and fun sound like an oxymoron" but we really enjoyed it.


if you would like to look at the pictures in a slideshow format here is how you do it:
-goto the album of choice
-on the left under "Actions" is a link at the bottom titled "view slideshow" click that.
-set the delay as you'd like but put the size on the maximum "no limit"
-the slideshow will begin

We hope you enjoy reading/viewing our hike as much as we enjoyed going on it!

We continually thank God for the wonderful newness of it all. Our kids love it here, we are enjoying the different opportunities that have arisen thus far. We are very excited to see what God is going to do here, and relying on Him is a daily survival skill out here.

Thank you for your continued interest and support!

Settling

We are settling in. We've got a little bit of a groove going on.
We understand to run out and grab the laundry off the clothesline should the rain begin. We have trained the kids to walk home from school, which is very safe for them as during that time a lot of grown ups are on the road and they tend to keep an eye on the kids.

We've got the yard thing down, today Kendal spent lunch with the yard meris (the women who tend the garden/yard) and talked a bit with them.

We've had dinner at a few houses and have had folks over to play games etc.

The kids are loved by everyone. They are loved by the national neighbors, and by other missionaries on center. They have sort of adopted aunts and uncles here. You don't really call people "mister" and "misses" it's all aunt and uncle around here, everyone is family.

The freedoms that this place offers far outweigh the loss of liberty. Compared to city living, being in the hills is much more peaceful and liberating.

There are some lovely things about this place, and some not-as-lovely things. I'm neither declaring this place as a paradise, nor complaining. We really do enjoy it here, but in the interest of full disclosure, I'll share a few not-as-lovelies.

For example, I love that you need to learn to accept a certain amount of dirt here. Kids go shoeless and they will have mud in their toenails until they move back to America. (-; It's a way of life.

Your clothes will never completely be perfectly white and soft from fabric softener, but I love it, it's a more manly feeling to have sun-dried clothes. For years my we air dried my shirts because I like that (plus I fear shrinking) (-;.

The one thing I didn't expect was the constant feeling of your skin crawling. I'll get used to it. You know how if you find an ant or something on you, how you feel it moving, and then shake it off, but then for minutes later you still feel the creeping of it? It doesn't bother me, but I soon learned to not ignore that feeling because odds are, something is on you. (-;

The other day I felt a twinge on my leg and thought "ah it's in your head" and I brushed it to get rid of the feeling, and grabbed a spider instead. Not a large one, no worries.

And then there's the head bonking. I bonk my head almost daily here. They have door closers that jut out from the ceiling three feet from a door, to catch the door and cause it to snap back. Dust and rain are concerns and so doors don't stay open much, although we leave ours open all day and use the screen door, because the climate is such that you can leave windows open all day and the temp will be perfect.

A cool tropical breeze at the right moment.....ahhhhh.

So we're settling into a bit of a groove. We do a lot of reading, we have a lot of family time.

Tonight my daughter said, "so do you think we can arrange a family game time tonight?"

If the kids finish their supper and their chores, and homework and get ready for bed, there is usually a good half hour where we can play Uno or some such.

Things close between 4 and 5 here. You do need to plan ahead if you need something at the store. Which is part of the lower stress, there isn't a whole lot to do after 5pm besides socialize. No one really works after 5pm unless they are in one of the unique 24x7 positions (such as a hostel parent).

There aren't a lot of "can you do this on the way home."
you can't pick up fast food after 5pm, you can't do errands, get gas, or do practically anything. The place shuts down for getting stuff done.

That means you take breaks from work from time to time to get it done.
So far we're still in the honeymoon stage with food. We're experimenting and enjoying it. I'll let you know when the romance wears off.

Work-wise, I have a TON to learn. But I'm glad that almost daily I'm able to contribute some small thing to improve things here. We're told that the internet speed improvement is the number one best enhancement to living here on center. It has opened computer services up to a large number of new issues which thankfully, I have a lot of experience in having worked in large network areas.

Issues such as, how do they handle spam? How to they handle phishing, do they block cracking sites, how do we educate parents to watch their kids and what they try to view on the net, what do we block from the net?

There are all kinds of issues but we have a creative bunch and a good mix of resourcefulness and skills.

I can tell already it's going to be a good place to live, and an exciting place to work.

Licenses and lists

We went into Kainantu today, it's a town about ten minutes away now that they paved a large portion of the road. Lucky for us, the department of motor vehicles equivalent was open, and had film in the camera, and we walked away with our driver's licenses.

All you need is a U.S. license and 60kina.

Which is to say, they let you drive there with absolutely no experience driving on the LEFT side of the road and the RIGHT side of the car.

But we don't have a car yet so we don't have to worry about that too much.
Vehicle wise, every 6 months you need a safety inspection sticker, and every year you pay for registration which also includes insurance.

In June we hope to acquire a 1994 Isuzu Trooper when the current owners move.


Had a big win at work this week! There was an issue with the network, which currently is a flat network, and they had installed 2 dhcp servers on it. Machines were getting ip addresses from servers geographically located elsewhere and it was creating a problem. They wanted a way to block dhcp packets from one to the other but had no firewall in the middle and no routing. I was able to employ my cisco knowledge and write an access list (acl) and implement it on one of the ports of the switch. Soon the network was doing what it was supposed to, and I realized soon that one of the values I can add here is my networking knowledge (such that it is). God allowed me to be confirmed today as I finally did something right, and fixed a long standing problem here.

Part of the younger, new missionary role, as I see it, is to be passionate, and communicate excitement and vision. As is true anywhere, whenever you work in the same position for a while, you can easily fall into a certain way of thinking, and new blood usually brings in a vitality and challenges you to think new again. I've been on both ends of the spectrum, and right now I'm enjoying being the new guy, learning, respecting those who have come before me and what they have done, and then contributing helpfully where I can.

I have great idea on how this network can be secured and tuned better. One of the major problems they currently have with the network is viruses. I can already see how with very little cost, we can implement simple changes that would help reduce that problem significantly.

Rocky Start

Today was a very discouraging day in some respects, and encouraging in others.. As one of the two "new" guys here on center the desire is to improve support and instill trust in the members here that the network will be reliable and online so that they can do their work and communicate with each other.

My first week here we were told there would be a power outage due to construction and that we should take advantage of that time to doe some maintenance.

We did a solid 9 hours of work, and the servers were looking better, although we were nervous that we didn't have more than 2 work days to plan for the large project (which normally took a month's time back in the corporate world). Both of us new guys, being detail oriented felt that there were a LOT of unknowns going into this project and we would try our best to get the work done.

After 9 hours, we were satisfied that it wasn't our best work, but it was the best we could do given the circumstances of our situation, namely, that we couldn't run to a store and pick up parts that we needed, nor did we have an extraordinary time to plan.

It was time to turn on the servers.

THIS is when things went bad. We knew, if things would fail, it would be now.

The disk array would not power on. This disk array held all of the exchange information (newsgroups, email, etc) and all of the corporate data.

To set the scene, CTS does not support workstation backups, everyone is encouraged to put their data onto the network device. So when it is down, they can't work. But it gets backed up twice nightly. Plus, the entire center's communication takes place via email and newsgroups. Hardly any events can happen without an announcement on the boards.

The short version of the story is that we couldn't fix the problem and there was no one around to help us, and so now, the network is down.

One thing I had not anticipated was the utter feeling of letting everyone down. At best all of my neighbors and everyone I serve, are inconvenienced but understanding, at worst, they are all angry and confused because there is no way to notify everyone since we don't have the knowledge on how to post on the web site the announcement.

So, everyone knows it's down, by now they know it's our doing, and they don't know when it'll come back online.

I have had outages before, some costing the customer millions of dollars, but I have never felt so closely attached to an outage as I do now. My first impression could not have been worse if I personally took a hammer to each person's modem. And yet, it isn't the dent in my reputation that stings so much as the fact that I have let down all my neighbors when I was trying to lift them up.

God is on the throne. He is in command. I will learn my lessons from this set back, and proceed forth with more humility than I had before.

Well, it is now Sunday night. The systems are up and running after a good effort this weekend and the fact that our manager returned and was very helpful. What I was not expecting was that the community here would not only be understanding but would be sympathetic that we had to work the whole weekend.

I have been told that people here to not easily get upset at things like this. I was very encouraged to know that outside my door weren't hundreds of neighbors wanting my head on a pike, but instead they were gracious. I have a lot learn about living in a community like this, but it definitely is not what I was expecting. Perhaps I'm gunshy. I am used to a manager coming down hard, asking a ton of questions, and customers being irate. Here, people seemed gracious, sympathetic, and apologetic that we had to work the weekend, and our manager prayed we would have peace and told us not to worry about the situation.

Wow.


Crashes happen, it's part of the job, it's how you handle yourself during them, and how you recover from them that define your capabilities in this job.
WE had no way to recover.... we had no information on how the backups worked, and we didn't have the passwords to the servers we needed.

Saturday we worked a 13 hour day, and gave up. Sunday a manager returned from out of town and helped us and we worked 4 hours on a sunday.
During the entire weekend the network was down.

Here is the amazing part.
-the first reaction of everyone was to pray. We prayed when the server crashed, we prayed each time we went to fix something. I've never worked in that environment before.

-I was expecting that everyone would be mad, but instead people came by with cookies, and after the ordeal was over, people were emailing us thanking us for working the weekend, apologetic that we had to work sunday and saturday, and thanking us for the hard work....

I am honestly stunned.
We are receiving praise for having worked through the problem, which could easily have been avoided. I'm not sure that everyone realizes it could have been avoided.

But I am simply amazed at the way people are reacting to this. There is a lot of grace here. Honestly it is not like working in any place I have ever worked before. I have yet to be chewed out, repromanded, or asked to determine root cause. I haven't been called into meetings on how this can be avoided in the future, and I don't have a swarm of managers hounding me.

In fact what I do have is people asking me what my favorite "treat" is to thank me, and my manager telling them it's "chocolate" (he doesn't know me well enough to know I am not the largest chocolate fan but still the sentiment is appreciated).

It makes me feel very loved, sort of how I feel when I consider that Christ loved us knowing full well our sin. The people here have welcomed us, not shamed us or belittled us.

THAT is perhaps the biggest culture shock I've felt yet.

Don't get me wrong, I'm fairly certain people are perturbed. You can't please everyone all the time, but I'm very delighted to see that the majority of responses have been more positive than negative, which, to a man used to the negativity, it is a delightful change of pace.

Friday

Tomorrow I (chad) will be working most of the Saturday on server issues. They are doing construction here on a new music building and need the power shut off. We are using that opportunity to bring down a rack of servers and do maintenance on them.

One of the pieces of maintenance is to blow the dust out of the machine. Dust is a large problem here for the longevity of electronic equipment. It seems odd to me because it rains here so much, but there is dust everywhere and it builds up quickly.

That is only one of the many things we'll be doing tomorrow. When I say "we" I mean me and the other "new guy" who started about 2 months ago. The experienced guys are off center this weekend, so it'll be a real trial by fire.

But, we're not freshman, we know what we're doing. It seemed a little funny to me that they turned over the keys so quickly to the new guy, but then again in a few weeks the two of us will be alone for quite a while as the experienced people head home for break.

So if you think about it, pray that things go well, as new guys, we strongly desire to serve people and do our best here so that everyone gains a level of trust in us. They have had the same support personnel for so long that we'll have our work cut out for us in building relationships.

God is great this is such a fun and adventurous job. I'll blog more on that later!

Friday

Tomorrow I (chad) will be working most of the Saturday on server issues. They are doing construction here on a new music building and need the power shut off. We are using that opportunity to bring down a rack of servers and do maintenance on them.

One of the pieces of maintenance is to blow the dust out of the machine. Dust is a large problem here for the longevity of electronic equipment. It seems odd to me because it rains here so much, but there is dust everywhere and it builds up quickly.

That is only one of the many things we'll be doing tomorrow. When I say "we" I mean me and the other "new guy" who started about 2 months ago. The experienced guys are off center this weekend, so it'll be a real trial by fire.

But, we're not freshman, we know what we're doing. It seemed a little funny to me that they turned over the keys so quickly to the new guy, but then again in a few weeks the two of us will be alone for quite a while as the experienced people head home for break.

So if you think about it, pray that things go well, as new guys, we strongly desire to serve people and do our best here so that everyone gains a level of trust in us. They have had the same support personnel for so long that we'll have our work cut out for us in building relationships.

God is great this is such a fun and adventurous job. I'll blog more on that later!

Rattic

My apologies to the animal lovers out there, or to the squeamish. Don't read this posting.

One of the things we were warned about was creepy crawlies. For the most part you can keep them at bay here in the main center. Using roach bait, rat poison and traps, and ant spray you can keep much of the critters from showing themselves very often.

We do have a gecko that lives in our walls, that makes little chirping noises often. But he eats bugs so we like him.

And from time to time, we hear the pitter patter of rats in the attic. I'm told they come and go and it isn't a huge thing, but to keep it under control with traps.

So I set a trap up there a week ago.

I'm a very light sleeper. The entrance to the attic is in our bedroom.

So last night around midnight I was awakened by a SNAP..THUD..SCREAM... FLOP... and silence.

I had caught a RAT!

This morning I went to check the trap, ready to discard my prey, when I found he had escaped. There was a puddle of blood around the trap, no bigger than a silver dollar, and a blood streak off towards a whole in the attic screen.

In my head I imagined an injured rat, crawling to freedom, and years later, as a limping old rat with a cane, telling his great grandchildren about the time he escaped the TRAP!

EASTER!

We have celebrated Easter!
here are some pictures.


We celebrated by attending a Good Friday service and on Sunday morning, a Pidgin service. We took communion there. Then we had an easter egg hunt, and lunch with friends!

Oddly enough, it didn't feel odd not wearing a tie on easter. (-;

Christ is Risen!

We spent a lot of time talking to the kids about the Easter story, and it is such an encouraging thing when your kids respond to you understanding more than you had anticipated. In fact they knew the story so well, we added another level of detail, including the names of the high priest, of the roman authority, etc, to make the story still seem new.

There is something incredible about talking to your children when you realize they truly understand something. And to understand the things of the Lord is above all.

They know that Christ is RISEN!

Happy EASTER!

Chopping...

We had communion this morning and attended a service that was a very good study laying a foundation explaining why Christ had to bear what he bore.

Afterwards we all went home, and from the beautiful veranda in back I began to tell the kids the story of Christ on good friday. They had heard it before but I tell it different each time.

Today I took the perspective of wood. They sat on wooden chairs, and wood comes from trees, and the cross was made of wood.

As we spoke, I saw a few men with axes approach the grove of bamboo trees beyond the fence in our back yard. They were many meters away, but I knew they intended to cut down a tree.

The owner of the house specifically mentioned to refuse to allow people to do this. So I watched and they left.

After the story was over, and after we ate lunch, they returned.. with the axe.

It is at these moments that I truly desire to understand Tok Pisin better. It's my own fault, I bucked convention and came here prior to attending POC which is where most folks learn the language well.

Today I had to fend off a strawberry salesman, with very limited pidgin, and also I had to talk some men out of chopping down the bamboo trees that are jsut beyond our back yard.

My pidgin is so bad, but I got the idea across.... DON'T CUT THOSE DOWN!
After much debating, they said something I didn't understand, but hand motions indicated he wanted to chop down one, I kept saying no... no...
and he left after tearing down a single branch...
now that I look at it, it very well might have been he was after sugar cane. I can't tell.

That's twice today I had to tell a national he couldn't do something. And to be honest I'm not exactly sure what they're trying to do. It is a challenge to figure out the right thing to do, but I'm confident that we'll learn the language and figure things out soon.

Good Friday

Good friday is a national holiday here. Today I went into town to get my driver's license but they were closed because it was the day BEFORE a holiday and they left early. (-;

So we walked through a thrift shop and I again was looked at and laughed at. I'm feeling a lot less "white" and more like a GIANT than anything here. It's sort of fun, sort of comical. I am used to folks acknowledging my size I'm jsut not used to them giggling. I saw a few people do that "hey... come here, LOOK AT THIS GUY!" thing to their friends.

I bought my second newspaper to learn what is going on in the country, and finally we found a place that would sell a Pidgin Bible.

SO.. here it is, fresh from Kainantu (the nearest town)

Jon 3:16
"God i gat wanpela Pikinini tasol i stap. Tasol God i laikim tumas olgeta manmeri bilong graun, olsem na em i givin dispela wanpela Pikinini long ol. Em i mekim olsem bilong olgeta manmeri i bilip long em ol i no ken lus. Nogat. Bai ol i kisim laip i stap gut oltaim oltaim."

i sounds like "ee"
o sounds like "oh"
a sounds like "ah"
ai sounds like "I"

For more you can go to www.tokpisin.org