How Stuff Works here

So the other day I was out driving in the dark and I realized my reverse lights were FAR too weak to see the road at night. I needed a remedy.

A friend of mine heard me say this and said "well I jsut took two lights off my truck, one is broken, but if you can figure out how to mount it, it's yours."

So I figured, no worries.

First I needed to figure out how to make a bracket giving that a) I'm not a welder b)finding the exact parts you want here is not a matter of going to the right stores, it's always about scrounging and creativity. We do have stores, not many but some, but they are distant, or they don't have what you need, or both. With stores here it is always, "I need X... but I could also get by with modifying Y and Z together." Or you could wait and have stuff shipped from overseas. The tinkerer is the person who gets things working, even if it's not always pretty. In a way I take pride in the ugliness of some of my solutions.

So in the hardware rather limited supplies I found a galvanized elbow joint, 2 hose clamps, and a bolt w/nuts.

I then proceeded down to a field of junk with a friend who had a pipe cutter, and cut a length of pipe, brought it up, viced it, and then ran a manual threader on it to thread one end into the elbow joint. My other option was a $10.00 brass threaded pipe. This new option cost me 33 cents!

THEN I proceeded to mount the entire thing through the spare tire mount I have on the back of my truck, through a lug nut hole... so it's removable.

Then I ripped some cabling out of the back room where we keep piles of old electronic equipment, and spliced it off of my reverse tail light.

So now, when I put it in reverse, I can SEE the road.

Total cost to me $3.57
but it took me 3 hours to get all the parts together to make the bracket, and install it all, and a little bit of walking around to find all the right places. Sometimes tinkering is a blast, other times it's not, but one thing is for sure, it's always necessary.

Had I known how to weld, it would have taken me about 30 minutes and cost $0.00 but it wouldn't be removable!

Accomplishing Stuff

well this week has been a very busy week from the network perspective.
What have we done?
monday we proved we could separate the home from the corporate network
Tuesday we made vpn access from the outside world work.
Weds we made email/vpn work from anywhere in the world
Thursday (today) we were asked, if we could make the primary school, link to the high school but keep it a separate network. We've been working on this project for weeks, but alas, it was all working until we found that Active Directory did not work on a Windows server that was dual homed and had it's default gateway facing the opposite side.

So.. being that we had to use Isa2000 on this older server, we had to solve this issue today.

Only catch is, school started yesterday, and we've run out of time.

All was well until we came across this odd issue. So... we were looking at a major network reconfiguration, but we had 2 periods to do it in . 8:30-9:45 and 9:45-10:30.

Could we do it?

Well, it required we get a router which we didn't have, disable the second interface on a windows server, and rewire everything.

We don't have a router, so we used a spare firewall, netscreen 10.
Can you wipe out a firewall, rebuild it, configure it, and get it all working in under 45 minutes?

Well I'm here to say, that yes we can. And we weren't even fully staffed because my co-worker has a bandaged up wrist!!! (-;

It was a fire drill for sure, but it got the juices going.

Anyway, it's all working now, albeit we're using a fw simply as a router... but hey, beggars can't be choosers.

Ipili

(from an article in the local paper)

New Testament Bible in Ipili language

THE Ipili speaking people of Porgera, Enga province, will now be able to
read and understand the New Testament Bible in their local language.
The translated Bible was produced for the Gutnius Lutheran church by a team
of dedicated scholars led by Dr Terry Borchard, who was a missionary in
Porgera for many years.

The translation took almost 30 years with an estimated cost of more than
US$6 million (K15.7 million).
The translated Bible was launched in Porgera last Wednesday in a colourful
ceremony that attracted more than 3,000 believers, who turned up in great
enthusiasm.

Head bishop of the PNG Gutnius Lutheran church Reverend David Piso said the
translated Bible was a great gift to the people of Porgera, Paiela, Hewa and
Kopiago of the Southern Highlands province.
Bishop Piso urged the Christians to profoundly use the Bible at all times to
meditate upon, share with others and apply the Word of God in their everyday
life.

"It is not just good enough to launch the translated Bible in flash colours
but to make it become part of us in our Christian journey,"

Rev Piso said.
He told the people of Porgera that they were privileged to have two
resources on hand.

The physical one was the gold their district was well kown for, and the
spiritual was the Bible they had.

Rev Piso challenged them not to concentrate on the worldly gold but to give
more focus and priority to reading and knowing what the Lord spoke to them
through his word.

Hording as a Spiritual Gift?

A funny part of living here is hearing stories of what people packed that they heard they could not get in country.

I packed mini-dv tapes and printer ink. A lot of it. I bought it in bulk before we left so that it would cost less, and I brought a lot of it here.

Good thing too, because it's hard to come by and pricey. The funny thing is, I've used maybe 5 of the 30 tapes I've brought, and 3 of the ink cartridges I brought.

Now, 1.5 years later we're sort of laughing at our surplus of ink and tapes. We could easily have gone this long without such a huge supply. But we didn't know, we were rookies of course, novice, naive. Now SOCKS, I should have packed more SOCKS, I haven't adapted to the "barefoot" culture.

Anyway.. the point is, that 1 week ago someone put up an announcement,
"I'm leaving for home and need someone to help me print 200 copies of my newsletter in color."

well we had ink, so we said "sure come on over."

Then last night a translator put up another announcement,
"we need to videotape our Bible Dedication, but we have no blank mini-dv tapes... can anyone help us, we need at least 5 tapes, today!!"

What are the odds that anyone would have such a surplus of mini-dv tapes? I called them up and said "we live to serve, come on over."

God knew.

I don't recommend hording items as a practice, but it is interesting that the things we tended to over-stock actually came to some usefulness to the community here.

Folks around here tend to pull together in this way. Yes we have to be faithful to those who support us, and how we spend our money, and not all of us can afford to be financially generous, but as a whole, the believers living and serving together, we really do rely on each other to get by here.

It is nice to live like that, in a community, a neighborhood that pulls together.

Kokee

this morning a free-flying white cockatoo (I think, here we call it a kokee, and it looks like a white parrot) landed right outside my bedroom window, at 6:40am or so.

This bird can talk.

so I jolted awake to what I thought was a screaming child's voice yelling out "daddy daddy daddy!!!!!!"

my wife and I jolt awake... confused, who is screaming???? and finally my wife says "it's the kokee."

I tell you, I love birds, but I entertained thoughts of a kokee bbq for a few seconds there.

The weekend

the kids had a "water day" where their club they have formed met. It turned out to be the day I was supposed to exercise the fire truck, so I took a low pressure hose and sprayed the kids down a bit, they loved it.

Then on Sunday we went on a "gumi" ride down the river. It was a lot of fun seeing them ride inner tubes in 3 feet of water down the river for about an hour.

We passed through the jungle-y area seeing nationals living all around, waved and shouted hellos "apinun!"

it was a very fun time.

Theology for kids

a week or so ago my daughter asked "daddy why did God create accidents?" last night she asked "daddy why did God create punishment? He created everything right?" and right after my son asked "daddy, where did the first germ come from."

His idea was that when Eve bit the 'apple' that the rest of the fruit gathered germs, and that was the very first germ.

He had it all figured out in his head, because germs can cause death and sickness and before the sin, there mustn't have been germs, so after the sin, when the 'apple' was bit, there were germs left on it.

His reasoning was impressive, and I didn't have a quick answer, so we left it there.

But then it dawns on me, that these questions have a bit of a negative tinge to them.
So I say "kids we've been talking a lot about some of the sad things we know about God, let's talk about some of the glad things."

So I read to them in Revelation about the thrones, gold crowns, sea of glass, rainbows, jasper, emeralds... to excite their imagination.

And soon they were expounding on what they think heaven is like... so I say... with all excitement...

"and the great thing about all of that is.. .what? ... who gets to see it?"

expecting them to reply in unison "we do, believers in Christ do!"
but no..
instead they paused... thinking... and then a moment later my son says.

"dead people. dead people get to see it."

I had to laugh.
am I raising pessimists???

Cultural Humor

We have a photo board here, and I'm one of the resident jokesters.
On this photo board today I found a picture from 5 months ago, and a picture from today at 12:50.
The old photo was the river low, with a PMV crossing (a pickup truck with a ton of people riding in the back of, the PNG equivalent of a public motor vehicle). The new photo had the water that had risen about 3 feet or so.

So I mocked up a really bad photoshop photo of the pmv in the water up to their necks as a joke, put it on the photo board.

The subject was
"don't try to cross the river today"
so I replied,
"why, I saw a pmv do it moments ago" and put the picture up, as a joke and even put it was a joke.

So the ex-pats laughed.
THEN I get this email,
apparently the national employees here laughed hysterically at this photo thinking it real, and not knowing about photoshop. They laughed because PMV drivers have a reputation for being crazy and this photo proved it.

The ex-pat managing hardware wrote me "it took a bit of explaining for them to realize it was a joke photograph... good one."

I didn't mean to cause confusion, but I don't think I did. I wrote "do not try this" in big letters so they would know it a joke.

Still that's the first joke I've ever made that crossed boundaries... usually I can get the nationals OR the expats laughing, but rarely both at the same time.

Communicating

Today, ten minutes before closing, there comes a very polite little knock on the door. A Korean gentleman had been wandering around seeking help and one of the ladies directed him to me.

I had no idea what he wanted, his English was poor and my Korean doesn't exist.
After a few seconds I said,
"Yu save tok pisin?" (do you know tok pisin)
he did, so we spoke in tok pisin.

5 minutes later he was happy and gone.
He apparently was trying to sign up for network services home DSL, and didn't know how to say it in English, what he kept saying in English was "I want an email alias".
which wasn't true.

In tok Pisin
"me laikim yupela givim me sompela ..uhm... DSL i go long haus bilong mi "(I would like you to give me dsl to my house).


Using a third language to bridge the gap to computer related issues... who knew! oh yeah.. God knew.

pretty nifty.

a Little thing I like to call "stock take"

This pic is of where I live, back in 1968, it has changed a lot since then.

The departments here close for stock take every 6 months.
So, the situation is, for the next week (or so), you can't purchase computer parts, groceries, electrical supplies, hardware, or any other work that you need to get done. Imagine if Mayberry closed for a few days.

Normally that's fine, and it is fine, except that because of the rain we also can't escape off centre if we wanted to simply be... AWAY.

If any of you have experienced the living-up-on-the-hill don't-have-electricity, huddle in the rain storms... it's fun as a kid.

As a kid I was thinking about the thunder and lightning. As an adult, I'm thinking about how to keep the kids entertained over the weekend and not go stir crazy (-;

Still shooting marbles in the dark with my dad is a grand ol' memory.
Although, the power hasn't gone out, and if it did, we have generators, so... it might be a nice weekend of curling up by the fire, listening to the rain, watching the lightning and reading books.

Ever get in that mood... the ... rainy day mood. Well, this place has the rain... a LOT of rain... I've lived here 1.5 years now and I'm still amazed at how hard it rains.

God has created some marvelous things.

The Rain She Comes

well it looks like the hard-to-define "dry season" has ended here. For 3 days it has poured BUCKETS of rain, taking a break for an hour here or there for intense sunshine.

The river is rising, and the bridge seen above is not yet repaired. We've been bypassing the bridge with a ford, but the river is far too high now to pass. We were hoping the bridge would be repaired by now.

It looks repaired, but is still impassable. We hope the rain dies down again so work can progress. Until then, we're confined here and supplies will be very difficult to bring in to us. Without being able to cross, we have to carry supplies across. You'll notice trucks on both ends of the bridge here.

But the water fills our tanks, and we are thankful for that!

Eating Grasshopper

Yesterday I came home after helping a neighbor raise his antenna tower to find my son and daughter huddled on the lawn over a plastic cup.

It was Sunday.

"Dad, we caught a grasshopper and he's perfect for eatin!" -says my son.
both he and my daughter were excited about this.

The back story was that they came running into the house to get a cup from Kendal who said "go outside until your dad gets home because I'm not cooking up any grasshoppers!"

So they did. I saw the grasshopper and said "son, your catch, your kill" and handed him a knife.

I honestly thought at this point he'd chicken out. But no he says

"first you cut off the head, then pull off the legs, then the wings then you skin it and fry it up"

So I let him do that very thing, and he did too.
So I, thinking he'd still chicken out, followed suit, we went inside, skinned it, and then I fried it in a pan.

Cut it into 3 pieces and him, Syd and myself all ate grasshopper.
I'm not sure we did it right, but we did it Calvin's way.

You know people have told me they taste like peanuts... but to me honestly it tasted like grass.

I am not sure we prepared the meal the right way.

So now, if folks ask me what the most exotic thing I've eaten while over here is...
I'm not sure what it'd be, but grasshopper definitely ranks near the top.

Choir and Crash

My daughter has joined the P.C. singers and had her first choir concert the other night. It was very enjoyable watching her sing her heart out and, even though a proud dad, I went assuming things would sound slightly off key. They were really good! The song choice was fun, the kids had a lot of fun performing as did we watching. There was a lot of humor in the songs, and I appreciate the music teacher that came to teach the kids how to have fun while learning how to sing in choir.

Also the 9th grade health teacher sent me an email with 13 others asking us to mock up a car crash so that her first aid students could practice. So we all hammed it up, fake blood, stuff like that. It was a lot of fun. I thought that I might be over the stop as I put together a home-made device to make it look as if I had impaled my arm on a tree branch, but when I showed up, others had chicken bones sticking out of their knees, head injuries, etc. It was really quite grim, but excellent practice for the youth.

I do enjoy when a community can be creative together.

Heavy Load

a PNG Meri (woman) carrying firewood on her head. This is a large load but not an uncommon site.

Moving

I am here to fix computers. But that's not all I do. Recently I was given a project that few wanted, to show if I was capable of handling a large scale project. We need to move our programmers into a new building. Or rather a very old building.

Which means there needs to be construction, electrical, networking, air con, and telephone work done.

So managing the entire move is my side project for the past few, and next couple of months.

Construction begins Monday.
It is interesting because I'm learning a lot about how to interact with the different departments here and how the mechanics work.

But this morning I woke up thanking God because I realized, that with EVERY single job I've had since graduating college, I've been involved in a move or expansion. Typically I'm only handling the network side of the move, but there have been times when I was in charge of almost an entire move.

I was thinking "wow it seems like I've done this a lot" and sure enough, every job I've had, I did it.

I'm thankful to God because even this tiny forgotten part of my experience is being put to good use here.

Bit of Sadness

This week was a bad week for pets in our household.
On thursday my son's guinea pig died, but it wasn't too traumatic for him.
Today, (Sunday) someone broke the lock on rabbit cage and stole my daughter's bunny I think while we were at church.

My daughter said to me through tears, "Daddy why did the raskols steal him on Sunday?"

I said, "honey, sometimes the bad things or the bad people come and they want us to forget who God is, they want us to stop loving God by making us angry or sad. But we don't let them win, we love Him even more, because He loves us so much."

The kids are doing okay, never to miss an opportunity they are trying to parlay this loss into a new puppy. (-;

You get these moments in life, when you are living, and they come unexpectedly. We didn't have the heart to tell her that the rabbit was someone's dinner now. And I hope I said the right thing when she asked about Sunday.

Syd is fearful of earthquakes too, and we had a small one this week, she needed a little bit of comforting and then went back to sleep.

Sunday was a very interesting day as I looked back on it. In my mind raced a lot of Scripture about hope, joy, suffering, love, and I had a lot of thoughts regarding our situation and lives.

And this is what I came up with.
First, I am so very thankful to God for a very clear calling. Not everyone has that, not every 'missionary' has that. But this calling is so clear to us, that when the bad things happen, we aren't rocked onto our heals. We don't pray "God am I doing the right thing?" Our call, God's leading, gives us strength. We are convinced repeatedly that this is the right place for us.

Second, today we laughed, and we cried. We had a great family Sunday, we played charades and catch and soccer, and tears were shed over the loss of a bunny. That's living right there. A day where you are drawn closer together, laughing, crying, asking tough life questions, and glorifying God. ALL that and it was our day off !!! Imagine what God is doing on the weekdays!!!

So we're thankful for the unexpected, sometimes sad, weekend.
We're thankful for the words of encouragement and the prayers we receive.

I think our biggest requests right now, are for the people living here to have a sense of security, and unity. I personally sense we are on the verge of something and the enemy knows it and has turned up the heat a bit. We need to pray and not tire.

This week

This week has been pretty quiet. A small little knock on our office door and I opened it to find a petite translator lady from Taiwan. She had limited English and I understood that her email in the village wasn't working. So we sat down and got it working. Later she said in her English

"you'll be here long term?"
I replied, "I'm here for a while, yes."
she clapped her hands.

that was a nice little encouragement, as she went out the door, the issue resolved.

Yesterday I was on the phone to a place called Wewak, which is very north. They had a computer crash and were unable to get email. After an hour of troubleshooting the problem was resolved and they were able to continue working. The gentleman I was working with was in his 60's and wrote a simple little note of thanks over email.

That was encouraging too.

It is nice to be able to from time to time, realize that fixing these things for people has significant value.

Land of the Unexpected

Today I expected to work from 8am to 5pm like usual. Last night the kids reminded me it was sports day, and could I come see them compete? Then at 9:30pm I got a call, "can you help move cargo across the river?"
So a friend lent me their truck. I arrived at 8am and was asked to come back in an hour.

A big truck was making its way from LAE (a port) with cargo sent via sea, to Ukarumpa, but couldn't make it over the broken down (and being repaired) bridge. So the call went out for guys to drive and load cargo and bring it back.

Since the bridge was out, the trip required crossing a river. FUN!

Then I got back from that, had a quick bite for lunch, realized it was raining and I had missed most of sport's day, and now I see at 4pm I need to show up for worship service practice.

Because we have no volunteers to run church, some people are volunteering last minute but unable to do the normal Saturday practice. (I run sound).
SO... 4pm today.

Ironically my manager leaves for a week today, and I was in the office all of 3 hours by the time it was all over.

Oh and now we have dinner at a friend's house planned, and tomorrow I have volunteer fire training. In the middle I need to construct a PVC puppet show stand, and finally I should be able to rest up in time to play my banjo for the preschoolers next week.

ALL of this I had not planned as of 8pm last night. It never gets too dull around here! The cool thing is, that all of this is helping someone else, and all of THAT is helping Bible Translation.

I REALLY enjoy how things change-up around here. Always some way to help. Once you get used to things changing frequently, it's a decent way to live.

Sydney's Essay

My daughter wanted me to post this, it is copied directly from her paper:

Our [organization] Involvment

Me and my family have been helping [org]. Do you want to know why? Sure, ok I'll tell you. Their is over a million people who can't read the bible. they want to but they don't have one. Imagine over a million people don't have a bible so they borrow English Bibles, but they don't understand, wouldn't that be silly? So, my parents help. My mom teaches preschool. Why preschool? because My mom Likes to.

How does it help? it helps so that when the kids grow up they can help too! My dad works at Computer tecnical servecise How does that help? it help so that translators can use their computer to help with diffrent Languages.

My brother and Me help by going to school. How does that help? so that the workers at School get money and don't loose their job, and so that my parents can work, and so that when we grow up (if we want) we can help [org] too!

So, that's my involvement in [organization].

Kuman NT Dedication

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej50P5cbMkQ

Click on the link to see the latest video. This is the one I've been promising. We drove 6 hours to Kundiawe to see the 3rd largest language group in this country receive God's Word.

The impact is a major one for a culture, some cultures recognize it at the beginning and throw big cultural shows, others have no idea how greatly their lives will be affected by God's truth.

I liken this dedication to that feeling you had in high school when you knew graduating was a big thing, but you really weren't quite sure how big the world was yet, how much life ahead of you there really was.

These people in this video know it's big, they jsut aren't sure how big and they seem almost cautious. It is interesting to watch. Enjoy.

Through Her Eyes

Sydney's 4th grade class was asked to present at chapel this morning. Each morning a different grade organizes a 30 minute chapel. The theme this time was "how our family helps Bible Translation".

Sydney wrote a paper in class about our family and how her mom and dad help in translation, but then was asked to write a sentence to read in front of chapel.

Her teacher asked me to borrow a video I had done of the dedication we went to (as a hobby), and so Syd said to me;

"Dad you didn't tell me you made a video for my chapel."
"huh?"
"Miss Kirkham said she was going to show a video you made. Dad, you should have told me."
"oh, well you've seen the video."
"you should have told me dad."
"I'm sorry Syd. I should have."

Apparently she held this chapel thing quite dear, I had no idea. Kendal told me "In Chapel she's talking about you. Not us, jsut you."
"why me?"
"I dunno."

Sometimes you jsut don't know what is going on in the kid's mind until it comes out in a surprise.

So one of the fabulous parts about living here is a 2 minute walk and I'm at her chapel, interrupting the work day for a whole 34 minutes is perfectly acceptable for reasons involving children.

This is what she said at the microphone, in her own words, I had no idea what she was going to say, she wrote it out and later handed it to me, so it's verbatim:

"My dad works at computer tecnical Servisces, so that translators can use their computers for studying about different Languages."

Of course it isn't 100% accurate but it reflects me in her view which is always a precious thing to see. I think she got it from when I was telling her that one way (amongst many) that computers are used here is that the translators can search other language projects and look for similar languages to help them construct an alphabet.

1 and a half years

Yesterday our P.O.C. group threw a "We've been here a year!" potluck. Although we have been here almost a year an a half, we were still invited.

After the eating and socializing, the organizer asked everyone to share:
10 things you miss
10 things you are thankful for.

Kendal suggested also "10 things you thought you'd miss but don't".

For example "I thought I'd miss Starbucks, but I don't." was hers.

I was surprised by this because I hadn't read the email that told us to prepare, so I had to think quickly on the spot about these things.

Always at the top of my mind of things I miss, is family and friends. Things like "hot dogs, movie theatres, pavement" these don't come to mind very quickly because they are trivial but always whenever someone starts thinking about things they miss, the family and friends comes to mind.

Seeing ya'll babies born. Seeing your children grown. Nieces and nephews. Deep conversations and fun times with you all. Hugs.

Stuff like that.
There's a place in me that gets sad when I look at photos, and I let myself go there rarely but I do go there to remember.

So that is what we did this weekend.

One thing I shared with the group was how thankful we are to be here. Our needs are met, and many of our wants. And then I encouraged them with some good encouragement we received.

At the 1 year stage, around that time, there is a "wall". An emotional barrier of some kind that you hit that says "I don't like it here any more, I want to go home." I was warned about the wall by several people. It is as if the honeymoon suddenly ends, and you come to grips with the reality of living in a different culture. You get tired of the adjustment, and you feel like giving up.

I didn't expect we'd hit that wall because we were loving this place so much.
Everything about this place made us very happy.

And then, without warning, about 5 months ago, we hit the wall.
I remember conversations that are best kept private between my wife and I where we were both utterly discouraged.
Lack of close friends, frustration with the culture here, a desire to contribute more, do more, missing family and friends, confusion about our kids' future. All these things.

It was all roses until that time.
But the thing was, we knew what it was. So we didn't even once talk about giving up or heading home. We talked about how much of it was valid and how much was an enemy attack. We prayed, we felt bad, and we jsut waited.

At the end of it, if I can call it a trial by fire, we simply seemed to understand more maturely. More deeply, the work that we have here.

I liken it to a ride at Disneyland.
As a kid, the ride is magic, you don't know how it works and it's fun.
As an adult you understand the mechanics, you don't see the magic, but you appreciate the work put into the ride and enjoy it.

Each way you enjoy it differently. One way you enjoy it, with your eyes open.
That's where we are now.

We are enjoying living here and serving here with our eyes much more open now.
Many people do not get through that wall, and they do go home.

We encountered that while trying to raise support to come here. There was trepidation that we might give up, the statistics show that it happens a large percentage of the time, and a growing percentage with each new generation.

But we haven't yet, I believe we've pushed through that wall, with prayer, drawing close to God, and with the support of friends and family like you.

So now, 5 months later, I look back and am thankful we went through that. I'm thankful we can warn these friends of ours of what is coming, and hopefully prepare them like we were prepared.

God is amazing us daily still! We see his hand at work. I'll blog a story soon about some encouraging aspect of life here.

Until then.. this again was too wordy.. but was a long time in the writing.
God bless and thank you!

uplifting story

You know we're here supporting Bible translation, and you know we do that through our jobs as well as our side ministries and personal relationships.

One of our friends, a translator, told us this story.
But first some background.

Translators here go about their work in a few different ways. One of the ways is that they build a team of nationals who understand the language and are willing to work on Bible translation. These people are essential to the ex-pat understanding the language and the side-result is the relationships that form. Sometimes it takes a very long time to build such a team, and sometimes these teams can fall apart.

But our friend has a good team.
One man through this process has had his life changed by Christ.

Here's the story.
In a culture where wife-beating is acceptable on man's wife was giving birth and he did a remarkable thing. He stayed outside the house all weekend singing praises to God and praying for his wife and new baby boy. He was tender with her, devoted to her, encouraged her. That is a very very rare thing to see in this country and is evidence of Christ changing lives.

Slightly embarrassed at his own tenderness he told none of his friends about the birth or his actions, but raced to my friend and secretly told him. You can spend your life working to share Christ with a nation, a culture, a people, a person, and not get this kind of reaction even once in your life.

He said, "I've never felt close to God like that, God truly does answer prayer, I prayed that my wife would be okay, and that she would give me a son, and she did!"

What a great encouragement! What a remarkable testimony!
Kendal and I get excited to see the translators excited! There truly is a lot of passion that goes into this work.

Prayer Please

There is a translation workshop that has been going on. This is where the translators get together with the local language speaking people who are working with them (nationals) and work on getting books of the Bible translated.

In one area, there is a lot of trouble going on during this workshop. The specifics will be too much for this posting, but I'll stick with generalities.

Evil is still very prevalent in this place that's been working on the translation of the New Testament for 5 years now. The translators are coming under a lot of "hevis".. a lot of problems.

A national from the village had his head cut off. We haven't heard details or of it is true yet.

The man with the burned down house, over the last week has calmed down a bit, thanks to prayers for peace. In his own words:

"(1) Prea long mi
==>Reason: 5-pela man ol i bin pasim tok na kukim haus bilong mi.
==>So mi Joe ilaik take revenge anytime bihain long translation woksop.

Prayer Requests
(1) Pray for me
==>Reason: Five men all agreed together and burnt my house down.
==> So I, Joe, am about to take revenge anytime after this translation
workshop.

Just a clarification: [He] is not asking for prayer to help him take revenge.
He is asking for prayer that God would help him do what is right and not
take revenge, and that he would know how to respond to this offense.


I am always cautious what to share here because I do not want to paint the country in a bad light, or make it sound like what my family is doing is very dangerous. This is the experience of a translator couple we support in their village. This is going on far away from my family but still a reality as we support these people and pray for them.

Evil is strong here in many places, which is why we strive to bring God's Word as it transforms lives, cultures, nations. We've seen it happen, that when a New Testament gets translated, and people are taught to read it, that they change from violent and evil cultures into God fearing ones of peace. It is truly a miraculous thing to witness!

Pray finally, that whatever the outcome that the translation workshop continues to progress and that nothing stops it. Often times, if there is a problem with someone working there, then the workshop can become targeted as well.

Thank you.. and I know it's a long post, thanks for reading.

Good Enough

Last night, I fell asleep, it was nice. I was woken up by a beeping that indicated full power failure.
I got dressed, 11pm, and headed up to the network room.
Groggy headed, I shut down all the servers (when the power goes out I have 30 minutes to bring all the servers down before they reach critical temperatures), made a few calls to get the industrial guys to bring the generator online.
Soon power was back on, the fire drill was over, I brought the servers back online.
But then couldn't sleep until 2am because once the adrenaline gets flowing....

Power has been out for 3 days, the generator had been running all weekend and the fuel ran out.

Anyway today I helped some translators, and I don't know how this escaped my attention until now, they live on "Goodenough Island" and for some reason until today I had pronounced it "Good E Know"... for some reason it jumped out at me today and I laughed..

Energy

School started yesterday!!!!
Calvin is excited about 2nd grade.
Sydney is cautious about the teacher change, but said "I'm glad I'm going to school because when my kids ask me questions I need to know the answers."

Kendal started teaching again, I can see the smile on her face.
And we have had a bit of a quieter week than last week... well we had 1 interruption in the network... well two.. but still today was quiet.

I have been meaning to send out a newsletter soon, but I have not. If anyone has feedback as to what they'd like to see in a newsletter let me know.

If you have a chance, pray for energy for us, we need to get a little bit more of it.

War Memorial

Another thing we saw was the LAE war memorial. 2806 souls were buried here, all contributing to WWII efforts against the Japanese invasion of LAE. Most of them were Australian. It was a pretty and somber place in the middle of an otherwise busy and cluttered city.


And to conclude our tourism we went to the Rainforest Habitat maintained by a university outside of Lae. It was the closest thing to a zoo we've seen in a while. Imagine a very small zoo, with no one around. And then add to that the oddness of being in a manufactured rainforest, inside a rainforest country. It did have the benefit however, of having a lot of really beautiful bird species all in one location.

The kids enjoyed the parrots who mimicked laughter and said hello as well as other things in Tok Pisin. The equivalent here of "polly want a cracker" is "koki kaikai".

Pictured here are two tree kangaroos we watched for a bit.

Crikey!

This weekend we were driving and found this Crocodile Farm. I had heard of it, but hadn't been able to arrange a visit, so I stopped in, and asked them if they could give us an impromptu tour of the place. They were very obliging and so my family got a quick tour of the Croc farm.

The farm hosts 48,000 crocs they breed for the skin. 80% of the revenue is from selling the skins to the Australian market, 20% is from selling the meat. We love the meat. Imagine lobster texture with more of a chicken flavor. It's tasty.

Apparently the market for croc skins is booming and they're expanding. They showed us and told us specifics on how they raise and separate the crocs. But they do not let them reach full adulthood because of the laws regarding skin sizes, etc.

It was a tour certain to offend animal rights lovers. Going there we had no idea they bred them for the skins, honestly didn't know what to expect. Still, seeing that many crocodiles up close was a sight to behold.

LATER at the rainforest habitat we saw a full grown adult male croc, named Agro. HE WAS HUGE!!

Marketing

This weekend we went to LAE, a major city about 2.5 hours driving time away. It gave us a chance to recharge a bit, rest, and swim.

We went into a grocery store, and I have always been interested in their marketing ploys, and I think I've blogged a few.

For example, if you buy a jug of orange juice, it comes packaged with a "free cup".
Sometimes you buy tuna, and it comes with a box of matches.
Of interest to my son was a bottle of cooking oil, packaged with 3 lollipops. He took this to mean you're supposed to coat the lollipops in oil and was disgusted by that thought.

But the winner, and the reason I wish I had a camera on me at all times, was the box of cookies coupled with a free box of rubber bands.

I didn't get the connection, but what is worse was the brand name of the rubber bands.

In BIG RED letters on the side of these crackers was a box that read
"SWALLOW RUBBER BANDS".

First someone in a room said "you know what would REALLY sell these crackers... FREE rubber bands!"

but to have it say "Swallow Rubber Bands".. in the States that'd be a lawsuit waiting to happen. I mean, it was packaged with an edible item no less.

July 4

This is what steel wool looks like when you light it on fire and swing it.
We can't get fireworks here, so we silently swing steel wool. I've been trying to name this. "Steel slinging" or "Wool spinning" but it hasn't caught on yet.

I also have been whistling and smacking my hands together to simulate firework sounds, but that hasn't caught on either, although I did get a couple of chuckles.

This 4th the Americans got together and lit sparklers, spun steel wool, played music and barbecued. We tried to forget that the beef doesn't really taste like beef and that the hot dogs have a really tough skin. But after being here long enough, it's easy to do, you get used to things and it isn't until you have a visitor over that you remember how it was when you first arrived.

It was fun to have friends visiting around this time of year. This picture might be of me and my first time Slingin' Steel.

Here's how you do it:
(I write this out because my attempt last year failed miserably, I sought the guidance of high schoolers this year)

Take two pieces of steel wool, poke a long wire through them and bend it back.
Tie the wire to a piece of rope about as long as one of your arms.
Quickly dip the tip of the wool into kerosene or mineral spirits, then ignite (in a campfire is safest)

Go to a big open area as the wool spits.
Begin spinning slowly, so that the wool will ignite and not burn out, then spin faster and faster unti lit starts spitting, then as fast as you can.
The faster you spin the sooner it burns out, so finding the right spin speed for the effect is really where all the work is.

Enjoy.

Kamie

(I apologize for the quality of this pic, it is my only photo of the younger Kamie)

pronounced "Commy Yay"

I met this boy in October 2004 when I visited his village during a 3 week visit to PNG. He was a close friend of the translator family whose village house we stayed in for 3 nights. During those 3 nights, Kamie and I played games, laughed, and had fun. He was my first Papua New Guinean friend even though we didn't understand each other's language.

Four years pass.

My family goes through training, raising partnership, applications, moving, and arriving in PNG. More training, more moving, and finally settle into our work here. Then the news comes that in June 2008 we will be dedicating the Kuman New Testament. This N.T. is in Kamie's language. The translator family that I visited 4 years ago, had completed a major work, and there was to be a celebration. I hoped to go, and I hoped Kamie was there.

He was, I found him, and we spoke, I was amazed at how much he'd grown, but even more, at the smile on his face. For Papua New Guineans, having a smile like that is a rare thing and later, I was left to wonder if the Word of God was one of the reasons for that smile on his face. I should have asked him about that, I missed my chance.

Life sometimes comes full circle, and it was good to see him grown to, about 17 years old we think.



Life for a Papua New Guinean is hard, and smiling is not their default facial expression. But Kamie had a smile that wouldn't stop, and even though we were celebrating 18+ years of Bible Translation work (it took that long for this N.T.), I realize that simply by living the translator family had an affect on the people around them. Sharing God's truth, living as an example, caring for others. Kamie's smile symbolized to me how simply being here is affecting the world for God's glory.

Tired

The last few months have been sort of a marathon for us. Our bodies and minds are tired. Emotionally we are tired. It seems that issues here weigh heavily on the heart and emotions can really tire you out, at the same time, cause you not to sleep.

If you could pray for energy and guidance.

We were hoping for a spiritual re-vitalization at the recent Bible Dedication, but found that instead, the emotional impact of seeing people receive the Word was overwhelming. The physical impact of the journey plus that emotional impact, plus the fact that we didn't get much sleep, left the experience less than energizing.

Right now, our bodies and emotions are taxed and we need rest.
We also need God to be declared in a big way right now for us. We need Him to show us exactly where Kendal should be serving this school year and how. Right now it's a bit of a mystery, in flux, as are many things with the school, and that is also another drain on emotions and plans.

If you could pray, pray for these things for us. Thank you.

Gumi Ride

a year ago my son and I went on a gumi ride down the river near our place.
A gumi is an inner tube, or anything rubber really.
On said ride, we bottomed out, capsized, got separated, it was quite the adventure.
About a month ago the kids wanted to go on another gumi ride... I wasn't up for it, so... I came up with a different solution which they loved!!!

this video is 3:40 long.

Dedication 1

In an effort to be brief, I'm splitting the Dedication trip up into several posts.

We went to our very first NT Bible Dedication ceremony this weekend. WE didn't know what to expect and we've heard wild stories about dancing and singing and feathers and paint. The Kuman culture seemed a tad different, they enjoyed long speeches and they sang and smiled and gathered and clapped.

The ceremony ran a tad over 3 hours, lots of speeches and sermons, and then was followed by the arrival and opening of the Bibles. People lined up to get theirs. Afterward our group split into smaller church visitation groups, and we went to have dinner in the local homes. Then it was back on the bus for a 5hr30m trek across the highlands where we stopped to get some "bilas" (decoration) for the trip home.

Emotionally seeing this Bible in their hands, and realizing how many people God worked through to bring this book to fruition over 20 years hit like a load of bricks... I got choked up and my eyes welled up a bit.

I was explaining to my children how the people back at home were part of the team that did this book and even though it was started 20 years ago, we as a family were helping for the last year and a half. We played a game of him naming names and me explaining how they helped. Some of you were named, and I could see the light bulbs going off in my kids' heads as they realized how many people it takes to make something like that happen.

I can not fathom not having the Bible in my language. It is something I had since I was born. I was read to in the womb from the Bible. I simply can not fathom how these people will be impacted. God is wonderful and HE deserves all the praise for this work.

Tri-lingual conversation

My Korean neighbors recommended their yard man to me for a 1 day job which required a lot of bush knife work.

So I hired him, he did good work.
She came to visit and my wife and I are still trying to figure out the purpose of the visit because of the language barrier.

Her English was broken, my Korean doesn't exist, so we lapsed from broken English into broken Tok Pisin and had a conversation.

I believe we ended on good terms and everyone happy, but at first it seemed like we had a real conflict, until I realized she was being a good neighbour and simply checking up on things.

I was thankful for that third language that we had in common.

Excitement

This Friday we get to leave for our first ever Bible Dedication!
This is a huge celebration thrown by the people receiving the Bible in their language. This dedication is the fruit of over 15 years of work by the translator couple and the same amount of time from all the support staff.

We hope to sing praises, celebrate, and join with the Kuman people in their excitement about receiving this New Testament. I hope to have pictures and video later. It'll be a 2-3 day event!


Prayer.
A hevi is a burden... something bad that has happened to people that puts them in a position of needing help. Anything that weighs heavily on your spirit.

It seems to me that there has been an increase in 'hevis' this month. People getting sick, people burning the candle at both ends and losing patience, conflicts, broken bones and pulled tendons, financial woes, lack of visas, vehicle failures, moving stress... all of it.

I do not know if it truly is an increase or if I'm simply having more open eyes to it than usual, but either way the response is prayer.

God has been protecting us and comforting us, but friends all around are having these hevis, as are we.

PLEASE pray. Someone said to me "it seems like the enemy is gaining ground on us, and I don't know why."

We are wrestling here, and we need more prayer. It doesn't feel as if we (the center) have enough prayer cover and I do not know why that is, but I'm asking you all to pray for the entire center her, for an overall withdrawal of the enemy, of these hevis.

It would take all day to list all the issues and concerns that are hard on people here right now. So if you can blanket us in prayer we would greatly appreciate it.

Thank you!
And thanks to God who provides!

MuMu

a Mumu is a PNG traditional feast. It is similar to a LUAU in how they prepare the food. A hole is dug in the ground, hot rocks are placed in it, then the food wrapped in banana leaves and the modern version ...tinfoil. Then placed in the ground, with hot rocks on top.

Fresh garden vegetables and some meat, cook in coconut juice.

Typically it is a celebrational event, and this one was for some friends leaving. Our haus meri and friend threw it, invited us, but the rain was so bad, we hosted it at our house.

The food was very tasty. Typically mumu food is bland, as is most PNG food to an American. But this food was very tasty. Potatoes, kaukau, taro, corn, kumu, sausages, all very good.

To make the event more festive, I pulled out my banjo and that sort of broke the ice and the crowd got to talking.

We called it a "good ol' down home, country MuMu"

Kit House

One option for translators to live in the village is to build a kit house. Some go for this option, and it is quite the undertaking.

First you have to get all the parts there
then you have to put them together

Kit house sound easy?

take a look at this picture and tell me... how big the manual must be!?

Right now we have several construction people in the villages helping translators build houses.

Houses in which they'll stay to get accustomed to the people the language, and begin translation work.

You never call, you never....call

had an emergency down in the hf-radio site... an hf radio fried a whosit (electronic doodad).. think it's called a relay.

While down there, in this big metal box, I went to call out... to see if I had fixed it... and the phone didn't work.

I opened up the phone... plenty of cockroach evidence behind.

they ate the glue off the ribbon cable that connects the dialer with the phone circuit.

Pushing the numbers wasn't working.

so.. I wiped it clean.. re-attached the cable... bingo.

That right there is a $20.00 phone (cheapy cheapy) saved from being used for parts.

Also... today,
a friend/customer/co-worker came in and said "I need a female to female 3.5mm stereo adaptor"

wouldn't you know it, we were all out.
So I began to search our inventory trying to figure out how to do this. They were trying to rig up a system to show the AIDS awareness video and have sound.

Well, I found one part, that if you added it in conjunction to like 5 other parts, it might work... and then I had this.. "out of the box" moment.

And gave him an odd little end.
"try this"
he looked at it.. and looked and said "aah I getcha..." the translator working next to him said "wow that's really missionary 'out of the box' thinking... I like it!"

later today someone else said "wow that's really thinking out of the box"

so I guess today... was my out-of-the-box day.
OOTB.

Blessings!

My Son's Prayer

For the last year I've watched my son, 6 years old, become a boy of prayer.
He has never rushed through prayer when it was time (meals, bedtime) and always has put thought into it, and almost always prays for others more than himself.

The other day we were talking about many subjects but one is about the missing lunches at school. Someone has been stealing packed lunches, and several kids have taken to playing detective trying to figure out who it is. Calvin was a victim of a similar theft.

While we were talking, I brought up how one time Calvin's shoes went missing, or if he leaves a ball out it'll be taken, and we talked about loving our enemies.

We talked about how when we dedicate ourselves and even our stuff to God's work, that when people take it, they're making an enemy out of God's people, and thus God.
(exodus 23:22)

So if these people are technically our enemies, and when they take stuff we get mad, how can we love them when we really want them to come to harm?

(matt 5:43-45)

Then I said, "well, if they die as enemies to God, they will not ever have a chance to know God, they will go to Hell. Do you want anyone to go there?" (I was a bit cautious about the word Hell as we have not brought this up too much to the kids yet.)

both of them replied "no"

"Then I think, we can love our enemies best by praying that they find Christ as their Savior, if that means getting caught... or if that means reading a Bible they stole, whatever it means, God knows what He's doing, even if sometimes things make us sad."

Well... as I said these things to him, I was convicted myself, and even further when Calvin led us in prayer for them.

BUT THEN..
the next day, teachers came to me and said
"today your son led a prayer, and many children and teachers were around, and he prayed for the souls of the raskols who steal things, that they would find Jesus. It was incredibly moving to us adults."

This was a room with people in it who have suffered loss at the hands of raskols here. It is a reality anywhere you live that you will have people who oppose you. And my son was sitting there not knowing the ramifications of his actions, and how he was touching people's hearts.

Now.. you tell me...
did God send us here so that our kids could minister or what? I mean seriously... at age 6 he's impacted a room simply through his remarkable desire to pray to God.

I'm constantly blessed (and challenged) by my kids... and I do thank God for them daily.

Fried Eggs and Crash

I came into work this morning to this (edited) email:

Dear Chad,

I am writing to let you know that the NAS back-up device that you set-up for [training course] has failed. We are no longer able to power up the device. There was a huge power surge just outside the [building] last week and one power line went up in flames. However, no other electronic equipment was damaged so we don't feel that this was the cause of the problem, particularly since the UPS that the NAS was plugged into is still working fine. [Man] and I did take the covers off the NAS, and we found that a gecko had layed eggs inside. There were about 4 eggs and one small baby gecko carcass which was nicely fried. We assume that this has more to do with the malfunction. We hope that CTS is able to repair the problem, however, since we have [important information] and language data backed up on the device. I have packaged it to come to [you] on the next flight. Please advise.

Blessings,
[Lady in charge]

You chuckle at first. I heard tale of a mouse downing a server back at Sun Microsystems so you can't completely upset at the Jungle.

I suppose it was a nice... warm place. Too bad no one ever taught the geckos about the dangers of electricity.

Before and After

It is important for us that you count yourself as part of "we". As we work on computers or run sound for services,teach children or host bible study or whatever it is we do, YOU are part of WE.

As I lift the volume on someone speaking, I'm supporting them communicating their message to the room.

As you pray and financially support us, as you write us, we are supported, you lift us up.

But as I press keys and turn knobs, I usually see an instant result. For many of the translators there is not an instant result. Their work is hard.

Today during our morning of prayer, where the community gets together for 3-4 hours of prayer, we heard a few stories.

I will highlight 2 shortly.

One translator couple early in their project, (which can be over 20 years) had a run in with bees. The wife got stung as a child and never had a reaction, but in the village 20 years ago, she stepped on a bee, and went into an allergic reaction. She watched as the poison spread up her leg and she swelled, went numb, and was told she couldn't stay.

Years after that occurrence they delivered the first translated book of the Gospel to their language group. The people were less than enthused, no one was interested. It was greatly discouraging to them (this is where support staff play an important part, in encouraging, and helping.. outside of their normal job). Years later, they returned with a finished translation of Luke. A church service began and the time for testimonies was called, all the nationals gave head nods to the husband as if to say "time to read from your new Bible!" Now normally this church didn't have youth in it, but this time the church was packed with young and old alike. So he stood up, and passed out the Luke in their language. As he read people began to laugh, women were shaking heads in agreement. There was such an overwhelming response because people were happy to be reading the world. There was laughter and joy and excitement.

In the same way the first bee sting she received didn't have an effect, neither did the first translation they did. However the second one, slowly built until it changed a community, infecting it with God's joy!

It's a ministry of endurance.

The second story is a 15 year before and after.

When this one couple got to their assignment (we'll call him Mark), the husband and his friend needed a guide to get to a village. NO one was interested in guiding them, not for pay, not for anything. No one was excited about the prospect of getting the Word, or a landing strip. It was utterly discouraging. SO.. the two men, left their wives to try and go into the jungle alone without a guide. Tom and Mark asked "at least, point us in the right direction?" And they went out into the bush. Two days of rain, getting totally lost, and dehydrated, they wandered around in the jungle. They finally found a stream and followed it to a river, which they had to hide from a crocodile, and arrived in bad condition, at the village they were aiming at. For two days these men were lost in the jungle.

Imagine the discouragement and sense of failure during this time. You've trained for years, raised partners and support, and stepped out.. and the people... aren't glad you came, to top it off, you nearly die out in the jungle, lost.

But God prevailed. 15 years later, the New Testament was delivered to a people who not only were excited for it, but could now read, had dictionaries, and it completely changed the entire village and surrounding areas. As discouraging as it was for Mark that first trip, was how encouraging it was for their final trip. The change in the heart of the people because of God's Word was overwhelming.

This is God's work, WE (you, me, and the translators and everyone involved) are honored to be involved in it.

Thanks for being we with us.

My kind of ants!

we have Beef Ants.

We don't really know what they are called, so we call them Beef Ants. Other folks call them sugar ants because they are so small and like sugar.

Except for our house. In our house, the ants are weird. They huddle around a speck of meat but will completely ignore the sugary spills.

No dropped morsel of meat goes uneaten in our house!

Drinking it in

I'm not the brightest banana in the bunch. Never have been as smart as my family members, friends, co-workers nor students. One thing I have never forgotten is that hard work, and a learning attitude go further than an education sometimes.

I have a college degree, and I don't claim to be stupid. I can reason and think clearly enough for any man. But I do not have the... super brain that many of the people around me have.

I'm very curious and I LOVE asking questions and learning new things.

Which is why, living here, is like a kid in a candy store. I ask questions from Bible scholars, I ask questions from car mechanics, aviation mechanics, pilots, children's home parents, directors, electronic technicians, telephone managers... everyone.

This place hires and attracts nerds, geeks, and otherwise very intelligent people.

So when I ask a question, hearing the answer is often like drinking from a fire hose.

I love it. I love the wealth of information available here. I love the talents God blessed people with ... all pooled together for a common cause.

I love passionate responses, I like to see where God has inspired people to act and serve. I jsut generally enjoy the people.

I guess I pretty much enjoy people everywhere. I enjoy the people back at home too, conversations we've had, watching people in ministry. Generally I've been blessed by being surrounded by quality people.

Thanks for being a quality person.

Making myself Laugh

today I found out that my department repairs eyeglasses.
So I went in to some of my national friends' office and said

"Husat i wokim aiglas?" (who works on eyeglasses?)
they asked what the problem, was, and without thinking in English I removed my glasses and said,

"I've got a screw loose."
well, I cracked myself up as soon as I heard myself say it, and took a moment to laugh.. and then realized, they had no idea of the idiom, nor why I was laughing.

"I've been accused of that for years."

I heard another ex-pat explaining the term to them as I left, absent-mindedly forgetting to interpret myself.

Sound advice

one of my ministries here is running sunday morning sound every other month.
each Saturday we spend 2 hours rehearsing, but it seems each Sunday there is a new hurdle to overcome.

Equipment fails on us randomly. Most of our sound equipment is in need of replacement but there is no budget for it. It gets heavily used by the English service and the Tok Pisin service, as well as all events, and town meetings.

A few people have the skill to repair, and some of it has been repaired many times.

This morning, a mysterious hum overpowered the speaker at the podium. I was turning knobs, pushing buttons trying to isolate the source of the sound.

One man whom I hadn't yet met, came to give me advice, which I listened to but it wasn't entirely accurate. The amount of adrenaline that hits when you realize there is a sound problem and you desire to resolve it before the sermon begins, is large.

I couldn't find it.

So I stopped,
"God, help me find this problem, please send me some help"

I opened my eyes, and there was a friend, "hey, you need some help?" He felt like he should do something. He recommended replacing a mic cable. Which of course was the right solution.

I had it narrowed down to either the mic or the cable but was unable to leave the sound desk while the lady up front was praying, to swap the cable.

My friend, Tim, was able to, had the sense to come and offer help, and then he did, and the hum went away and there was no longer a distraction to people hearing the message.

I was amazed at the immediate answer to prayer. I opened my eyes and there he was.

God is great.

Running sound for me is a lesson in humility. I enjoy a certain amount of technical expertise in computers and rarely is there a problem I can't solve.

Sound, is replete with problems, and rarely am I able to solve them on my own, and... it is a very public thing. If there is a hum, everyone is looking to me to resolve it.

I was reminded this morning to rely on God in EVERYTHING.

If you happen to be reading this and have access to old but functional sound equipment that you're able to donate, by all means, please email me.

Two weeks ago, we lost two mic stands. An over zealous sound helper tightened a stand too tight, and snapped the bolt, another one is too loose, and slowly drooped during the praise band's song.

you can find my email address at
www.gimpel/tv/newsletter

thank you
and praise God, HE does answer prayer.

Bits of Saturday

Bits

Redefining Fresh:

most of the food we get here at the store says "best if used by" a date that ocurred months ago. Typically, if it's only a few months old, it's called "FRESH"


Mildew:

today I spent an hour cleaning out my closet and removing the three pair of leather shoes I brought. They were covered with a thick layer of mildew. Even though it doesn't seem that humid here, it is still the tropics.


Calvin laugh, he's so literal:

I woke up this morning and walked into the kitchen and ask my wife how she felt as the previous evening she had a headache:

Kendal:"my head no longer hurts."
Chad: "how about the rest of you (jokingly)"
Kendal: "fine"
Calvin: "Well my head is fine, but my foot hurts a little."
Chad: "Sorry to hear it buddy, but I wasn't asking you."
Calvin: "uh huh you did."
Chad: "No I was talking to mommy."
Calvin: "yes, you were and then you said "how about the rest of us"

He got me there.



Sydney laugh:

Calvin went down the road to play, riding his bike. HE was to call and let us know when he was coming home so that one of us could meet him on the road. IT's the first time he's rode the bike since his stitches.

phone rings:
kendal: "I'm going to go down the road to meet CAlvin.. unless Sydney wants to go."
Syd: "go where?"
Kendal: "to meet Calvin"
Syd: "I already met him."

that got me, I laughed pretty hard after that.


Today was half filled with chores, small things, practicing worship for church tomorrow, putting together a bookshelf for Calvin, cleaning closet etc.

Then I took Syd down to the river for an hour, jsut to have some Daddy Daughter time. We made a makeshift sand castle, played in the water, etc.

Throughout the day I'm checking in at work to make sure things are good, and thus far they are. I am enjoying the hassle free weekend, last weekend was pretty busy.

Capsicum

This weekend had a few more firsts for me.
I nearly had a sandwich with capsicum.
What is that? It's the British/Australian name for Bell Peppers.
That's a good one to know since bell peppers don't agree with me.

I'm constantly learning new words and phrases. Or learning new meanings for old words and phrases. Sometimes someone will blush when I say an innocent word in my American English. Other times, someone will say something that strikes me as rude. Sometimes it's a new application of a less used word.

But most of the time, I'm hearing words I don't understand but inside the context they make sense.

It makes conversation interesting, I enjoy the vocabulary expanding interaction.

The other first was that for the first time since I arrived, the power situation was such that we shut down all non-essential servers for the duration of the weekend, so that the technicians wouldn't have to live in the network room.

I liked that. We shut down the servers, so that we could have a weekend. WOW, how anti-silicon valley is that culture? I love it!

After spending much of Saturday battling the power failures, we said, "shut it all down!" and we did.

And we rested on Sunday and did not work. Today, Monday we came in, and turned it all back on, after they had repaired the generator...we hope.

I come from a line of work that says ... "always be up, always be online, 'five nines uptime!!!' (that means 99.999% uptime which means you can't have servers down for long).

I come from a world of pagers and cell phones, of all nighters and priority ones.
I come from a world of catastrophic failures and emergency phone calls.
In 1998 I slept with my pager on my chest in vibrate mode, so as not to wake up my wife when it went off.
In 2006, I made over 10% of my salary in after hour emergencies, that were billed to customers.
In 2007, there was talk of me not working during the day, and simply being on call for emergencies.

But, in 2008, I came to work for God. And He said, "remember the Sabbath and keep it holy." And He rested.

And so we rest. Even as I type this I feel my blood pressure lower than it's ever been. It's been a hard weekend, lots of work... but....

If you look for them, there are blessings. All around me things are difficult and down right hard for folks, but if you see them, there are reasons to be pretty excited about the blessings God gives.

I'm not saying life here is easier, but the stresses come in different forms then they used to, and for that, I'm thankful. I worked 24x7 for 5 years. I turned the car around while we were heading to family vacation, I've missed birthday parties, I left get togethers, and I woke up countless midnights to work. I do not miss that.

We have emergencies here, but I really appreciate the mentality that says, "we can get along without when we need to." And people do.

I believe it is because we have faith in God who provides.

I'm once again thankful for all of you who sustain us here.
For your gifts, for your prayers, for your emails and thoughts.

POWER

Today, Friday, was a normal day. Do a few network patches at the school, double check backups, tweak a few servers.

But then at 3pm, the power went out.

Our server room is powered by a room full of batteries connected to an inverter. We used to use Deep Charge but they were hard to come by.

ANYWAY....
when the power goes out, the servers run on battery power. BUT, the air conditioning doesn't run.

Very quickly our little room of servers begins to heat up, and when that happens the hardware begins to fail.

Typically turning on the generated is automatic after 5 minutes.

So the power goes out..
we wait 5 minutes... no generator
we wait 10..
we keep our eye on the thermometer readout...
it's growing.
We call the electricians "hey what's going on, we're going to have to start shutting down."

today the answer came (welcome to life here) "We can't get a hold of [the guy who knows how to start the generator]"

My guess was he was watching his kids compete at the annual sport's day...
So I ask a co-worker with a radio, "can you call him on the radio?"

"he doesn't have it on him."

So.. a guy nearby him with a radio hears the call, taps his shoulder.. OKAY now he heads to the generator room.

Uh oh.. problem in the fuel line... he begins to work.
The call comes back "20 minutes to an hour before it's up"

So.. we... the network guys, at 3:15pm begin shutting down servers, which at this point, are basically heaters with strong fans.

Services go down, but people don't mind because they're houses are out of power too.

We finally get down to the bare minimum... open all the windows and doors, and the servers stabilize and begin to drop in temperature.

For those that are aware of the "watchdog reset"... ours kick off around 31 degrees celcius. The inside of the servers got to 29 degrees celcius.

That's 2 degrees... PHEW.. we made it.

If we let them get too hot... parts melt and break and it costs us money.

So it's not frantic but it is a little bit of... hustle.. bringing things down so they don't break.

Well it's all back up now. This happens a few times a year, and when it does... the computer/network geek appreciates three things in a major way:

-Air conditioning - and those who can maintain it
-Electricity - and those who can maintain it
-CB/HF radio - and those who can operate them

Keeping this room running safely was truly a team effort, and if there is one great thing to say about this place, it's that people pull together during a crisis, be it ever so minor.

Coffee Festival

Kendal and I drove to Goroka a few weeks ago to pick up some friends from the airport. In the interest of killing time and seeing some local culture, we attended the Coffee Festival.

Unfortunately we didn't spend a lot of time there. The crowds were huge! We parked, but were wary of leaving the car, because it doesn't take long for someone to open it and take the belongings inside.

So we went for a quick 5 minute visit. We snapped this photo with permission above of some of the ladies in the area, resting between their dances and performances, which we didn't get to see in person, because a few moments later...

I heard "pait pait" which means "fight fight", and turned to see maybe 200-300 people running right towards us. I was completely unsure if they were running TOWARDS the fight or away, but I had prepared for this eventuality.

Fights in town can break out quickly, and can turn into riots. The best thing to do is to get in doors quickly. Stores will let white skins in during fights to protect us as visitors to their country. I have never been in one, but typically the interest is not in harming us as we are guests and typically treated nicely.

But here we were, in the middle of a field, near a thatch wall. Not seeing an exit, I very quickly surrounded Kendal with my body, back to the crowd, and moved us up against a nearby wall where the odds of any fallout were diminished.

Well the crowd very quickly dispersed, nothing happened at all. It was odd to see that many people herding right at us, and then stopping, and laughing. AT first I thought it was a massive practical joke, but that wasn't a realistic thought. The laughter made me uncomfortable. I thought it was a "hey let's play a prank on the white skins!!" but later found that laughter is a nervous reaction to embarrassment. They were most likely embarrassed of running and panicking.

We quickly left the field, having our fill of the environment for the day. We didn't feel it prudent to stay in the wake of that, not knowing the situation.

This highlights an interesting part of living here.

Even if you are 100% fluent in the language, (which I am not) you are never fully aware of all the forces at play in any given situation. Trying to stay up on the political, social, and religious news of the day is busy work. You can never be sure when you walk into a town, if you're walking into the middle of a tense situation.

It's best to always be alert, and always trust in God for your protection, we pray a LOT when we go into towns.

A thought struck me, I wonder if that was what it was like to visit a town in the old west... riding into town... not knowing what has recently transpired.

Hmmn.

DHCP

obtain your ip address automatically? Nope.

For weeks, I've been instructed to draw personal boundaries better. Don't let people call me on the weekend about work. So this Sunday, was family day, we even had a visitor, I had turned on the oven for our traditional pizza that my wife made.

The phone rings "the entire network is down in finance department."
I looked at my equipment everything was giving me the okay sign
"can you be more specific?"
they were unable to, and I realized this would be a few hours, so I said, "well it is Sunday, so I'll look into it first thing Monday morning."

I was proud of myself for drawing the limits. The last 3 weekends I've had to run up to the network room for some emergency, and this time, I was proud I drew the limit.

Only, Monday I came in and in fact the network WAS down!
It wasn't the network so much as DHCP, which means, no one was able to get an ip address.

Departments began phoning in like mad "I can't get to anything on the network."

Other people in the dept, came in early trying to troubleshoot. The problem was resolved 5 minutes after I arrived.

I don't say this to brag, because I honestly feel all the skill I have is because God has given it to me, and I'm the first to recognize where I am weakest.

I thank God that somehow, one of my talents seems to be quickly finding the root of a problem and solving it, under pressure.

I honestly do not know how it happens, a thought pops into my head, then another, and I always pause to pray for guidance during moments like this.

The clinic was unable to sell it's drugs, the finance unable to transact, the director's unable to check email... everything was coming to a halt, electronically. The phone was ringing like mad.

I thought it ironic that THIS weekend was the time I chose to be more assertive in my personal space.

This place has challenged me in new ways. Many ways. So I tend to celebrate when I achieve successes. You really should take the time to celebrate successes, in the form of worship and thanks to God.

THANKS GOD, we solved that ONE!!!!

Trials develop character, and successes revitalize.

Harry Harry

act now, while supplies last. We went into a store that I hadn't been until since 2004, and right there, in the middle was the same sewing machine I had seen 4 years ago, it hadn't sold yet, and it hadn't come down in price. It seems that often the "last" of something is not marked down to sell, also, I've seen that they do not price to sell items, if it doesn't sell, they don't seem to mind too much.

Mud Men

while we were on our 24 hour holiday, we sat and had dinner. Soon the "mud men" came creeping into the restaurant slowly and earily, almost like moving statues. It was interesting to watch but I didn't know why they were there.

Until at the end, a man came in selling little mud men figurines. I'm sure there is more of a cultural story here, but I haven't desired to delve into it yet.

Time for New Glasses

last night Sydney woke up around 11:30pm.
"daddy, my pillow keeps making a clicking noise and I can't sleep"
"Sydney, your pillow is clicking?"
"yeah"

she is prone to waking up, sleep talking, and then going back to bed.

"Well, can you figure out what the problem is? Go back to bed sweetie."

She leaves, I figure that's the end, but then a few minutes later I see two eyes poking around the doorway.

So I get up, shuffle in there
"don't turn on the light daddy it'll hurt my eyes."

I pick up the pillow to listen to it, hear no clicking but she says,
"daddy there is something under it"

I look down in the dark and see 8 legs. The biggest spider I've ever seen, right under her pillow!! A big hair tarantula, which is odd because we don't see tarantulas up here.

I turn on the light, ready to catch the spider...
wait.. it's no spider, it's her toy plastic jumbo jacks. 8 legs, nope, 2 plastic jack pieces.. funny how they click when they touch.

My daughter looks at me and says "oh."

yeah.. OH.. daddy needs night vision or new glasses.

Changes...for the better

Inherently there is resistance to change. Changing things requires work.

Recently, our department has become somewhat unpopular to some because we've asked people to make changes to their email settings. Nobody likes it when email doesn't work. Things should simply work.

Months ago, I had a vision. I had a plan and I sold people on it. The plan was for email to simply work. Wherever you go, it worked. It worked securely, it worked quickly and it didn't require any changes or forms.

People here are on the go, they go on trips, they go to villages, they go around the country and out of the country and until today, when they would go, it would be a small mountain of paper work accompanied by the hassle of changing email settings, and possibly losing email.

Today, after months of work, puzzle solving, trying to figure out how to get around different requirements, I was able to announce that as a team, we have made email... WORK from Anywhere.

The announcement has been out for ten minutes, and already the praises are flooding in. People going to Australia to have babies are happy, people going to the village are happy, people going on medivac's who don't have time to fill out the forms are happy.

It's a happy day. And I'm glad we were able to make lives easier, even if it meant, for the last month, people have been upset about the changes... now that they see why I think they will glad they did.


ALSO,..
today we did a short computer orientation for the new arrivals here. This is something that wasn't previously done, but was an idea me and another guy had to reduce the amount of confusion that people have when they come here, and thus reduce the amount of unnecessary work our dept. sees.

It felt good to see the fruit of some of the labor. The last few months have been tough because a lot of things have been not working right, breaking, etc. Hey, that's why I'm here!

Still, it's really nice to have a success that everyone can enjoy from time to time.

The short version: - After a lot of work, trials and failures, I was able to make things better.