Booking flights

Because so many people are going, we can't use our aviation department (they are booked)
we have been planning for months but could not get substitutes to cover for Kendal so we're a little left out in the cold.

IT's okay. Booking commercially is cheaper. But definitely more difficult.

There are times when you are hit in the face with the fact that you live in a third world country.

For example. I booked the flights for all four of us to go, on 2 legs via a web page.
The web page was poorly designed but saves us the 3 hour trip into town.

When it's all said and done... this is the result.
-The kids aren't booked on the flights we are.
-I call to get them on the flights
-They can book the kids on 1/2 of the flights.

I try to explain to them that my kids can't meet us half way. IT takes some effort to explain they are 8 and 9 and unable to fly across the country unsupervised.

Finally I get them to commit to letting my kids on, but I have to pay some sort of extra fee.

As my temper started to increase, as often it does when booking travel, I remember the go team when we came here years ago... and I remember Victoria M. saying...
"Most countries do not react well if you begin to get upset when dealing with them. Remain calm."

In America you ask for a supervisor, express your frustration politely, and expect results. Here, if you do that, you get no results.

So I remained calm, on the phone and very very thankful for that education I received years ago.

IF you can pray that we all get to the dedication and back... relatively together, I sure would appreciate that.


The enemy doesn't want us to go on this trip.

We've seen countless obstacles.

Even today AS I pressed "book" (the most crucial part of the 1 hour online process) the flights, the power went out, and then when it came back on, the wind blew so hard it knocked a curtain over my monitor...

Our friends are having a hard time getting their infant on the trip as well.

Praying that we get there, and that God is glorified. WE truly want this culture to be changed by the Gospel, and this is a part of that process.

The Dedication

This is going to be a saga.
It will encompass not 1 post but many posts.

Some friends of ours are dedicating a New Testament in a Gapapaiwa village.
To get there we need to take a car to an airport.
Take a plane to Moresby.
Hop a plane (hopefully same day) to Alotau.
From alotau my wife and kids will take a Cessna 216 fixed wing across to a landing strip and then a shuttle helicopter over to the village.

I, along with other husbands will be taking a boat. The Kwadima II. This boat ride will last 14+ hours over choppy seas.

The amount of detail in planning this trip is enormous as you can imagine. Add to that we really don't know where we're going to sleep until we arrive. It most likely will be on the floor of a village house.

This is by far the most stressful and detailed adventure we've had yet. Trying to get not all 4 of us there, but 2 families there in conjunction with a whole bunch of other people going to see this big dedication.

I have been commissioned to shoot video and help with any computer needs along the way as well. So it is not a vacation.

The end result, is that we hope to have a very nice video to show you all of what an Island location dedication looks like.

Fun Stuff

In living here, from time to time you run across a fun piece of English translation on an item in the store. For many of us it has become a game. Find a hard one, then email out the text and then the others try to guess what it could possibly be. Believe it or not, this is one of the more obvious.

4th of July

(me and a friend spinning steel wool... we were dubbed "men of steel" )

These pictures are what you see when you light steel wool on fire and then swing it in a circle from a chain.

(and then someone increases the exposure on their camera)

For the fourth several of the Americans bunged (came together and shared food) on the grass to celebrate. We sang the national anthem, we saluted the flag, we ate hot dogs and we had home made fireworks.

One of the guys from the auto-shop filled balloons with acetlyne gas and that made a nice BOOM.

I was able to launch a couple of flares from an old emergency kit.

Kids had glowing bracelets. It was like a normal 4th block party.

To make it happen, all you need to do is:
-remember when you're in town to look for sparklers
-remember to buy steel wool ahead of time
-special order "american hotdogs" months in advance
-find a place that sells yellow mustard
-make hot dog buns from scratch (Kendal's were tasty)

I think one thing that makes me appreciate our celebrations so much is that they aren't instantly put together. In order to make something "special" it does take anticipation and planning. And not everyone is a planner, so those of us who do plan tend to bring a little EXTRA for those who don't.

It was our great privilege to give glowy sticks to the younger kids who can't handle the sparklers... makes us feel like Uncle and Aunt again. We picked them in in Lae about 7 months ago when we found them and held on to them this long.

Jury Rig #21

The tape vault.

I love to jury rig stuff. I hate to put jury rigged stuff in production.
That said, a while back we had to get creative.
We back up our linguistic information (and other stuff) to tape.
This requires 5 x LTO3 tapes a weekend.
One day we dismounted the Djell Powervault 124t jukebox from the rack to dust it out as our server room gets a lot of dust in it.

Sure enough suddenly the left side of the vault wouldn't work any more.
These tape vaults store 8 tapes on the left side, 8 on the right.

We had no backup tape drives, and no way to do backups if we didn't get this working.

After poking and prodding around, one of us discovered (I think it was me, but it was a while ago, it may have been one of four guys) that the LEFT side of the jukebox was technically identical to the right side... except for the plastic face frame.

Well, a few loosened screws quickly swapped the faceplates, and then, we were able to fully use only 1 side of the jukebox (which defaulted to loading into the side that was broken).... with the jukebox fooled into thinking the broken side was simply not used, we were able to do backups that night.


Since then we have a stand alone drive for emergencies, AND we have a SAN so we store to DISK first then to tape.

So a nightmare scare like not being able to backup, shouldn't happen again.

The tension was that in order to get a new tape backup here, would take us, (if rushed) a month due to shipping issues. We could NOT go a month without backing up...

It's that kind of thinking that really excites me... finding out how to fix a problem with what little resources you have on hand.

I LOVE that, but again, I wouldn't want to support something that was pieced together all the time.. so we do go back and fix it. the Jury rig should only be an emergency and temporary solution.

Skype

I would like to tell you about another thing that excites me.

without going into details, for health reasons a mom was not able to return here to see her own daughter graduate high school. Not only that, this mom had put years of her time into the youth here and this graduating class all held a special place in her heart.

But she couldn't be here to see it happen.

A few of us got together, and were able to setup a Skype video conference so that not only could she attend the entire graduation, virtually, but she could address them as is the tradition here.

So.. imagine the scene. The meeting house is full of people the stage with the graduates, the big screen comes down, and projected on it, this woman that no one got a chance to say "bye" to because she has now left finish. All the people who wanted to see her couldn't and suddenly THERE SHE IS!

The place was full of happy tears, as she addressed the graduates, he voice filling the hall. It was a modern miracle of technology for us here.

It was only a short few years ago that we didn't have email.

And yes, setting up skype on a laptop and connecting it to a microphone and a projector really isn't technically that difficult. Making it work through your firewall, routing the traffic over an isolated satellite connection that isn't live yet, and monitoring traffic to make sure you get the best connection....

isn't super hard.

But it was one of those things that really touched and helped a huge percentage of the people here. Gave them a chance to say goodbye, helped make a horrible situation less horrible. Helped unite a mother with her daughter.

THAT is the kind of thing I'm here to do. Not technology for technology's sake, but technology to further the kingdom of God... to uplift and encourage, to support.

THAT was a magical night for many people, including me, and it was magical for all of you too who enable us to be here and make these things happen.

Thank you for that moment.

Digicel

(the beginning of construction for a new cell phone tower that will give signal to us and several residents in two nearby valleys).

Background to help with the significance of this:
-the telephone company is a huge cash cow for the government who owns and regulates it.
-until recently they have not licensed any telecommunications companies to come into this country, (this includes internet/satellite/cell phone)

They opened the door briefly and through it jumped Digicel which competes against the telephone company run B-mobile.

Further background:
land-rights is a very difficult proposition here. Culturally a man can sell you the rights to use an acre of his land for say, a cell phone tower (a tower is what your cell phone connects to and gets it's signal from). But those rights tend to need repaying whenever the land owner needs cash. Say he sells you the land, in 5-10 years his son is grown, inherits the land, and now wants his share, only now, it's more money.. and so on and so on. If they get unhappy, they tear down whatever you put on the land.

So Digicel installs these fortress like towers. Tall cement block walls topped in razor wire, with huge generators inside in case they cut the power source. Digicel knows what they're doing, and because they can negotiate the tricky cultural swamp of land rights, they have towers all over the country now.

Which means, instead of it costing me $3.00 p/minute to call home, it will cost me $0.33 cents p/minute to call home, for roadside emergencies, what have you.

AND.... digicel has implemented GPRS, which means, for those smartphone owners (not many of those around here) you can get email and map information now.


What does this mean?
It means that technology that the U.S. has enjoyed for nearly ten years now, has finally begun to arrive here! And that means communication is more affordable.

AND that also means translation data will flow.

Scenario A: the translator takes his laptop, goes to his village, spends 2 months recording audio data, and typing in books from the Gospel. He has no way to backup or email his data, so he takes his laptop back to our centre to store it on servers and send it back to the U.S. for processing. Only on the way, he's held up, and they steal his laptop. 2 months of work gone. This is a SAD scenario and has happened more than once. Or say not held up but the canoe tips over, his laptop falls to the bottom of the sea. This has happened.

enter GPRS or other technology that reaches the village:

Scenario B: they do their work, they email it off, it's stored instantly and safe. No work lost!!! YAY!

This is why I get excited about technology. Not because it means I can do new (well old to me) and exciting things, but because it has a real life application that furthers the spread of the Word.

Satellite

helping to put together our new VSAT (satellite internet) dish.



I was the only one who didn't need a ladder!

Geek details: 3.7 meter, C-band (goes through rain better than our old KU-band)


I'm pretty excited about this, because it reduces the cost of our internet usage by about 25% in the long run. Which means I can upload more pictures for the same price, or the same for less money!

Also it means that our internet connection won't go down during the (near daily) rain storms we have.

It has been a lot of work setting up routing and testing the connection and working with our new Hong Kong based ISP to get things set up how we like them, but after 1 month of tweeking and working, TODAY we saw the best performance we have yet.

(1.2mb down, 512down)

We're growingly happy with the new technology, and it's a huge win for everyone who lives and works here. We will hopefully go LIVE with it very soon.

Holiday in Madang

I find it difficult to explain many aspects of living here in a way that you can truly understand them if you haven't spent time here.

Needless to say, making this place your home requires sacrifices and tensions that build over time to the point where you do need to take your family and escape for a brief time.

One of those tensions is always being watched. People looking in your windows, watching your every move, almost as if you were the circus come to town. So we decided we needed a break.

We drove 5 hours across some nice, some not so nice roads to get to Madang. A dirty little town with some gorgeous beaches nearby. We stayed in guest house and accomplished the one thing I've wanted to do for a while now.

We got a boat and went to a secluded island, no one around for miles, to watch, stare, giggle. No one but us and white sand!

It was a perfect couple of days.
We had a wild parrot join us for lunch.
We had white sand and perfect water.
We saw poisonous creatures in the water and promptly exited the water.
We snorkeled and swam in perfectly clear and warm water.
We adventured and found parts of the country we'd never been too before.
We made sand castles.
We found a place with actual waves.

But most of all, we shed all the pressures and stresses of living here for a few days and rejuvinated ourselves and our family. Upon returning home we discovered how truly in need of a break we were.

Now school break is here, and the kids don't have school. Chad is back to work and Kendal is working and preparing her class room for the next school year.

Many of our friends have gone. Most forever, some for a year or so. Part of the emotional strain of this loss was lifted thanks to our short trip to Madang.

If anyone asks themselves "the place looks like paradise, why should they need a break?" I would simply reply "please come visit us and you will know." I gaurantee you that if you spent 3 weeks with us you would return home exhausted, (but excited)and knowing the answer to that question.

We thank God for you all and pray for you daily. Thank you for enabling us to be here... even if that means taking a moment to breath in new life so that we can continue on.

We are definitely not short-timers here. We are working in such a way that we can emotionally and physically be able to stay here for many years.

Wives and Women

I wanted to take a moment and talk about my wife. Living here is hard on women. I will avoid all the psychological discussions about security and safety and vulnerability and such. Those are for another time, but are very real issues for women living here. I would like to talk about the physical and practical day to day. Living here is hard on women. The modern conveniences that make running a household more efficient are lacking here.

If you are a housewife, then you learn that it is hard to plan meals around a grocery supply that is unpredictable.

If you are a single lady, then you need to learn that you can't travel alone at night and are quite dependent on men to move around the country. (well any ladies)

If you do both work and take care of your home (as my wife does) then you need to learn to rely on others to get through the day and keep your home in a working order. Those "others" are nationals whom we hire as part of our community service here, and it means cultural difference and contact.

What happens typically is that when a new couple arrives here they go through culture shock. The guy tends to love a lot of things here. It's beautiful, you can 4x4 and do things that get you dirty. You can go to work with holes in your socks and it's the norm. But for the ladies with kids, dirt and staying clean avoiding infection is a constant struggle. Our kid have permanent dirt under their toenails.

It may sound chauvinistic, but from one very simplistic perspective, this is paradise for a guy who likes to get dirty and do hard work, and a sacrifice for women who like a tidy home. Even small things like fixtures and the niceties that make a home a home are lacking. Curtain rods? No.. we have wooden dowels, and if you can find or fashion some.. brackets to hold those dowels.

There are some of the rare homes here where a lot of expense and effort have been put in to making it feel like "America". Carpet is rare, privacy is rare, clean walls and floors are rare, and you have to remember not to leave food out or the ants will get to them.

Mice, ants, rat, roaches, frogs, crickets, and other creepy crawlies live in bounty here.

So that's the setting.

And that is why there are ladies here who suffer more than others. Some ladies cope with these things, some thrive in it, and some suffer greatly and can't wait for a chance to leave it.

My wife is one of the ones that thrive in it. She copes with those things that annoy, but mostly she thrives.

This picture above is new, but quickly becoming one of my favorites. There is something about seeing your wife shine. Something spectacularly joy inspiring to seeing your wife happy and doing well.

My wife has had a bad few months of physical illness and pain, but to see her at work is amazing. She loves these kids so much. Her pre-school class is filled with both ex-pats and nationals.. learning together.

My wife works with a fantastic group of staff. This place truly is an excellent place to teach because the families are heavily invested in their kids, and because the teachers all truly want to be here. (how could they not, it takes so much effort to get here and live here.)

With that kind of environment, the kids thrive as well and turn out to be very decent adults.

I wanted to share this picture with you, and give you an idea (not-so-briefly) because in this environment, to see a man thriving isn't so exciting. Men thrive here. But to see a woman thriving, enjoying, producing fruit, and smiling like this.... fills my heart up with so much gladness I had to share it or bust.

I am aware that some people investigating moving here read my blog from time to time. So I'll add this for those of you considering coming here. The litmus test for me regarding your wife's mental health, is this; When you go on family vacation, does she prefer camping, or a hotel with room service? Everyone enjoys a hotel with room service, but I mean, does she truly enjoy camping? Each husband here needs to keep tabs on his wife, ask her how she is feeling, don't leave her alone a lot at night, make sure she is safe and happy. In a majority of cases people are perfectly happy and get along great. The little things tend do tend to build up, and so while the husband is enjoying life here he needs to remember to be attentive to his wife so that she too can enjoy life here.

(this pic was taken on Wacky Water Day, which Kendal so much enjoyed, and the boy smiling in the front of it loves her to death and is also our neighbor... he prayed for her back every night for a month... I had to smudge some of the details of the kids faces because I dislike posting kids images online unless they are mine)

Why I dig My Job

Why I dig my job.

Turning absolutely useless and archaic technology BACK into production. This requires inspiration, creativity, and a willingness to look totally stupid. Wow I just described myself.

Problem: We needed to convert RJ45 ethernet to Fibre (multimode ST) and then go 100 meters then convert it back.


We had a box full of media converters that did just this, however some of them are labelled "may be bad" or "we think it's failing". And we couldn't get any 2 pair to work without extensive testing. Finally we made a pair work, but it meant we lost all of our spares, which in a place with bad power like this, we couldn't afford.

So we went digging through a box of old parts. I saw two technicians grab and toss these little thinnet to fibre converters. It was old, and useless and why haven't we thrown them away yet?

And I had this thought "why are we discarding these, we might be able to use them."

So I connected two together. On one end Fibre, thinnet male/female in the middle, and rj45 on the other end.

WOW, it's a really crazy piece of equipment. And I made 2 of them.. one for each end.

AND... because it's old junk, we've got a ton of it, which means plenty of spares, which means we don't have to buy more, which means we save money.

WOW!
that's completely and totally nuts from a geek point of view, and I love it.


Sadly, some testing proved that these little units eventually gave us some data corruption, but it was really fun laughing while we were doing this. I'm glad we didn't put it into production, there is a certain level of professionalism I wish to maintain.

South America in Gingerbread

my daughter did this for social studies, 4th grade

Valiant Foe

alternate title "So Long, Gofair."

We are battling mice in our house. We have battled rats, and roaches, and now are on the battlefront of mice vs men.

I earned the name "deadeye" when sitting at the table, I flicked my shoe into my hand and shot it across the room to slay my first victim.

"Aw, he's kind of cute?" says my wife. "it's a shame we had to kill him."

Not long after, while we sat talking, another mouse would come running out. I didn't lift a finger to harm him. Finally my wife says

"Honey, you should really do something about that mouse."
"Are ya sure? You seemed so saddened that I killed the last one."
"no, I won't be sad, what makes me upset is the thought that that little guy could crawl across my feet."

So I slayed the next one with a mouse trap.

Then they got smarter. One attacked my daughter by climbing up the drain in the tub while she was filling the bath. We caught that one. Accidentally let it go while showing it to a friend. That's when I learned two valuable lessons:

1 - mice can Jump up to 5 feet.
2 - don't show your friend a mouse who can jump five feet in a crowded meeting hall.

After the panic settled and we were back home. Soon another mouse came, and this one was smarter than the trap. He'd get the bait and run.

So we introduced "glue traps" in 1 night I caught 2 mice. Who knew we had 2?

And then, just as I thought all was silent... "Honey, there's a mouse trapped in our bedroom."

And sure enough, the battle continues. Only this one was the papa of all the other mice because he was smarter, faster, bigger. Like all good sequels should be.

He was locked in our bedroom and had begun gnawing a hole in the wall to get out. I deployed the glue trap, but it was partially used as one of our friends accidentally stepped in it.
Here is my journal

Day 1 - the mouse appears in the kitchen, ignores the trap

Day 2 - the mouse appears in the hallway, no success

Day 3 - the mouse went into the bedroom and startled my wife, she trapped him in there, I am surprised he can't find a way out. I saw him, bold little guy, tossed a Nike at him, he's fast too. I must remember this encounter

Day 4 - Deploying the glue trap last night was no help, perhaps he smells the stench of death from his comrades. I will attempt a vigil.

Day 5 - I'm sitting waiting for him, it's been nearly 30 minutes, Nike in hand. There he is........... He climbed UP the power cord to my reading light, onto my nightstand, ran across my pillow, to my wife's (thank goodness she didn't see this) leapt to the curtain, swung across into the window sill and got stuck by the screen. I moved quickly, swatting smacking and closing the window to lock him in. Failure. I am convinced his only reason for climbing the drapes was to meet me eye to eye. Oh he is a worthy foe. I am deploying my last new glue trap.

Day 6 - it's 3am. I hear a squeak. Alas, he has been captured. But he does not leave us silently. He strikes one last blow. In order to remove him I have to turn on the light, which will wake my wife. Oh he is clever. I am all too sorry that at this hour I am unable to think clearly and I have fallen for his trap.

Day 6 - 7am. The mouse was taken alive and moved to a holding cell. The threat is over. I'm still apologizing to my wife for waking her. This mouse was good. I give him a hero's death and let him fall on his own sword. I provide a deli sandwiche toothpick for him, and leave him with a salute.

What did I do today?

Gonna get geeky here.
Before I do. A truck from about 5 hours away came in, full of heavy steel and such for us to install our new satellite dish!!! It took 6 men to unload all of the items together.

Okay geekiness.
What you see above is (from left to right) an ibook g3 installing Ubuntu 9.04 linux, an XO running OLPC (ubuntu linux) and an ACER aspire one netbook running Ubunto 9.4

One of the things we are doing here is trying to get our applications to run on linux on a low power type of laptop.

The ibook is an old one and I'm jsut messing around with that.
The XO is for a translator, and while slow, these are low power and as indestructible as a laptop that size can get. And the Netbook was jsut because Windows XP ran WAY to slow on the ATOM processor.

Today I've been formatting, unlocking, file copying, and pretty much hacking away at linux distributions to get them on all these three machines.

The end result?
2 little SDHC cards that fit in your pocket, handed to a translator who can use them to boot his little XO in the village running off of a car battery.

THAT is amazing to me. A tiny little SD card (the memory inside your digital camera) has the power to turn that little green and white thing, into a tool used to translate the Bible.

sometimes, technology can be really really cool, and at the same time, really practical.

I can assure you, if you've ever asked yourself "but why? Why do these things?" Out here, there are practical applications, because power is hard to come by out in the bush.

Technology in the 3rd World

this pic should give you an idea.

Today We Pour

We have been anticipating a new 3.7 meter satellite dish for our center. This will enable us to have utilize the C band instead of our current KU band internet connection.

Currently our internet connection is 2mb dl 512mb up KU which is blocked by rain and clouds and VERY costly. When it rains hard (every other day or so) we lose internet for a few minutes... downloads drop, etc. Having a download manager and uninterruptible power supply (UPS)is essential.

The concrete pad for the new dish pours today. Which means, I'll have fibre to run, and routing to configure, but once it is done, our network will be more reliable and eventually more affordable!

Technology is an interesting thing when applying it in this context. Maybe I'll blog soon about how low power computing is revolutionizing the way we do things.

This pic I took is of a neighboring dish that we used to get ideas from how to run conduit.

In preparation for this new dish we had to cut down 2 trees, both of which were about to fall over on a building anyway.

It is amazing to me that 2 years ago, this place had no internet connection faster than dial up. And now we will have 2 dishes.

We recently spoke to one of the cell phone providers in the country who is interested in mounting a Tower near here AND providing GPRS/EDGE technology (at about 80cents p/mb). If their business base for GPRS gets high enough they will consider going 3g after their initial equipment purchase is paid off. So we might see 3g cell technology in the next 3-5 years!

What this means is that our translators can stop carrying around radios and modems and heavy, costly equipment and start using netbooks, XO's and cellular modems.

It really is exciting to be a geek sometimes.

Anyway.. so while we were on our way to check out this new dish, we were alerted that there was some tribal fighting on the way. I was driving. Sure enough we see a bunch of men huddled on the road ahead. I stopped, prepared to drive backwards, but they were jsut guys helping another person out of the mud. Although each of them had either a bow and arrow or a machete, none of them were fighting at the time.

After 2 years of living here, seeing a man walking with a bow and arrow, or a bush knife (machete), doesn't strike me as unusual. I wonder if it'll be odd to see people walking around WITHOUT knives in the U.S. (-;

Birthday

Turning 8 requires:
inviting all 15 boys from your 2nd grade class for a water birthday party
15 boys
100 water balloons
24 hotdogs
24 home made hot dog buns
15 water guns or ketchup bottles
8 different water games
1 ice cream cake
1 pinata made from an Oats container

2 hours of fun.
-------------

It was enjoyable, even though work, to get this party to go well. Kendal and I are a good party team, and today, Sydney joined the ranks with helping out as well. It was a blast.

It was a fun ending to a tough week. Kendal's back is hurting again, news is she compacted one of her vertebrae, so she'll go in cycles as it expands again. Hurting bad, then not hurting, then hurting bad, for a while until it is completely healed.

Email servers were giving us a LOT of problems this week, and I worked several long nights and early mornings and even weekend days along with others trying to get things back online.

But now, the party is over,cleaned up and we are relaxing.

This picture above is Calvin using a soaker gun I got in the U.S. over 5 years ago and brought with us here for some silly reason. He couldn't find his and I had mine loaded and waiting in the wings... he REALLY enjoyed making this photo.

Tv and Stock Take

This week is stock take across the entire centre.
The above picture is a new stock take system we rolled out this year that enables laptops to wirelessly connect to their database for stock take. Over the year it has cut down on the length of time it takes to do stock take, which also cuts down on how long the store is closed.

In a few minutes I'll be speaking in front of the High School assembly on a few topics related to network use. I have 15 minutes to cover 3 topics.

Later today, a video crew is coming. They flew here from the U.S. to cover the aviation department but will be picking up some footage of our computer department as well. I most likely will never see the footage, but we may be used for future information and recruitment.

So all in all, a busy day.

Pooch porch or doggy deck?

Our Dog is very social, he whimpers outside this window during family movie night. So I built him this doggie deck so he can come up and join us, and often he does... people find it interesting, almost zoo like to walk into our living room.

Girl fort out of mini bamboo

Jury rig I found telephone batt. 3aa

New toy at work

for a long time we've labored to keep our storage needs branch wide, to 330gb as that was our old JBOD (just a bunch of disks) configuration.

This month we got this new toy, a 14TB SAN. The sad thing is that because we're low on staff, I won't have a lot of time to be configuring this bad boy until things lighten up. The good thing is that once it's up, the integrity of our data will increase dramatically.

In other words...
now that we have more space, people won't have to keep chapters of the Bible on their laptop hard drives, which tend to get stolen.

Now the data can reside in one place and be backed up. This is something we've been pushing for for 2 years now.

I have found it is difficult to change the mindset of people who have not worked in professional environments. The idea of having central data tends to scare people until you add words like RAID, BACKUP, CRISIS RECOVERY... and then they calm down.

There is still very much the mentality of "give me a knife and a laptop and I'll go into the jungle and get stuff done!" I love that mentality... I love those people!

But what I try to do is when they get back, pry the data from their hands, and put it in a nice safe place (-;

Little Things

Yesterday we were able to spend a lot of time in prayer.
In the midst of all the troubles around us, it was SO wonderful to be able to spend some time saying out loud to each other the things God HAS done for us.

God is so magnificent in the way He orchestrates things. Little things all around have been happening to encourage us and to remind us that God is in fact working.

This week, has been a short work week due to the long Easter weekend (yes here we get 4 days for EASTER not ..spring...) and during that time we were able to accomplish a major email migration (still on exchange but now Exchange 2007)...

Tomorrow I'll be playing guard for a yard sale. My main job is to stand around and look menacing.

I love all these little odd jobs that come up. It keeps life interesting.

Easter 2009

This Easter we celebrated with a house full of friends. We are taking care of the 16 year old daughter of some friends for a little while longer so she was with us. We had 2 other families over for an Easter ham lunch.

Easter found us all in a state of emotional heaviness. Not only has a lot been happening to people here where we live, and to us, but to friends and family back in our home country as well. We've received emails and phone calls detailing some of the sadness that you all are experiencing. Not the least of which was the news that my uncle had passed away this week. I had spent a lot of time with him as a young man and the news was very saddening.

It weighs heavy on our hearts, and we found ourselves sitting in church on Easter Sunday not really celebrating the resurrection, but more mired in the sadness that felt like the enemy all around us was winning.

We had spent the weekend shedding tears over so many things, it felt like we simply could not handle one more thing. And then another sadness hit, and another. We had to go to God in prayer and simply ask for some sort of emotional relief of this burden.

So there I was sitting in Church and the sermon was on how the resurrection applies to us today. If you've been raised in the church, then like me you could probably recite an Easter sermon or two.

BUT up on the screen flashed some Scripture, which wasn't even referred to or read aloud. I read them, and God did a good thing. He encouraged my heart, and I could feel the burden lifting.

After church I was cornered by our director and asked to be the Director of Security pointman for one month. Before those Scriptures hit me, I couldn't have done it. That particular job means you have to see the ugly underbelly of living here. All the sad stories and such that happen around the country flood your desk. But I feel that although I do need to protect myself emotionally so that the enemy can't get a foothold... that this job IF I HAVE TO DO IT... is something I can do. (we'll find out in a few days if I will be doing this job... as a side job to my networking work).

You can pray about that. Am I ready to be responsible for the security of everyone living here? I do not feel I am, but I have been asked by a man in authority and have told him I would but I did not think it wise at this time for me.

Here are the verses, and what they told me, I needed to hear:
-they told me our work here is not in vain
-that God will energize us and support us
-I love the imagery in these verses... a crown of beauty instead of ashes.. I felt like I was emotionally heaping ashes on my head in mourning...

Isaiah 61

1 The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me,
       because the LORD has anointed me
       to preach good news to the poor.
       He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
       to proclaim freedom for the captives
       and release from darkness for the prisoners, [a]

 2 to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor
       and the day of vengeance of our God,
       to comfort all who mourn,

 3 and provide for those who grieve in Zion—
       to bestow on them a crown of beauty
       instead of ashes,
       the oil of gladness
       instead of mourning,
       and a garment of praise
       instead of a spirit of despair.
       They will be called oaks of righteousness,
       a planting of the LORD
       for the display of his splendor.

And this one too:

1 Corinthians 15:58 (New International Version)

 58Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

Christ is risen.

Another Dedication

It is a time to celebrate:
Kendal's back is feeling much better.
Conference is over.
AND...

Some of our friends wrote:

"After 17 years of work, prayer, laughter, pain, blessing and heartache; after seemingly endless checking, revisions,
re-checking, talking, talking and more talking, the Iyo New Testament is finally a reality. This is a sample copy sent to us
by the printer as they prepare to bind and ship 1000 copies to Papua New Guinea."


THIS is one of the great fruits of our labor.

Conference

What is Conference?
It is held once every 2 years and it lasts 2 weeks. It is a business meeting for our branch to get together and talk about strategy and vote on leaders. Imagine a 2 week long church meeting.

What is my job at conference?"
I'm responsible for the computing and technical side. So when folks are trying to get online, get email, get something on their laptop working they say "look for that big tall guy over there, go ask him."

You can find me running from table to table working out issues for folks as they try to do their jobs of recording information, getting online, projection, etc.

What is Kendal doing?
With all these adults in 1 place, the kids have to be looked over. So a team came in to do vbs and she is coordinating that, which means she runs around for part of the conference and makes sure things get done.

So mostly, the two of us run around and make ourselves available to others.

You never knew our jobs had so much in common did you?

A Word about Finances

Today a representative from our organization's USA branch said a few words in news about the economy situation in the U.S. Here is my paraphrase:

-now people will have to get used to living with less predictability in the economy for several years.

-on the whole as an organization giving to individual missionaries in down 5%, in past economic declines, giving hasn't been affected.

-an economist quoted believes that our organization will weather the storm when others might not because of our commitment to spreading the Gospel across the world

-as giving drops, it will flatten out... it will not likely increase for a long time (even though cost of living does)... we will need to adjust.


Several of you have asked how the economic decline in the U.S. is affecting us, well there is the paraphrase.

Personally we are still able to make ends meet, we have had to get creative at cutting costs and such, but it only accents how thankful we are for all of you that support us knowing that you each have your own economic pressures.

We want you to know how much we value you, and look forward to photos of you to put on our prayer board so we can uphold you in prayer.

We also want to remind you that you are not supporting a lifestyle, but a goal. A mission. It is our mission to serve God's glory with our skills and those skills are going towards getting the Word of God into the hands of people who could never read it before meeting us. Spreading the Gospel.

Thank you all so very much!

Weekend Madness

Let's see, this weekend was a lot of fun, activity, punctuated with moments of rest.
Kendal and I flopped down on Friday after having gotten our conference duties finished. She is in charge of the children's ministry for conference... overseeing a team who came from the U.S. to minister.

Saturday I performed in a concert we have every 2 years.. playing banjo.
Sunday I performed as Goliath in a skit in front of the whole church, because the original Goliath was unable to at the last minute.

Monday we had a nice spiritual retreat, a true day of resting in God, meditating on the Word and praying and listening.

Our teenager moved out for a while but she'll be back. She has been a true delight having in the house as she is so helpful. Teenagers get a bad wrap (-;

Pics for Fun

One of the many beautiful moths we see in this country. Also we see some nice butterflies.


A fun prop for a Bible Dedication ceremony... I don't know who made it, but it makes the truck and the people seem small. Well shoot, I make the people seem small (-;



A little boy dressed in warrior ceremonial garb, dancing during a cultural festival in Goroka




For the next 2 weeks we will be hosting a 15 year old girl, the daughter of some of our friends who needs a place to stay for 11 days. During this time we will also be attending and facilitating a 2 week long business conference.

Kendal will be handling/coordinating the day care and Vacation Bible School with a team from the states. I will be doing the technical side (with others). Networking/wireless/projection/file sharing/messaging/email etc.

It's been a very busy couple of weeks preparing, so I thought I might post a few fun pics, being that I might not be posting much for 2 weeks (or I might, you never know).

You're good

well we still need the prayer
but after putting the last blog post up, I felt a definite lifting of my mood!
But that's not the cool part.

Do not doubt that God answers prayer, because... check this out:

Today about an hour minutes after I posted for prayer on the blog (enough time for some folks to read it on facebook and pray)...

I got an email that said "Chad why is this email bouncing, please fix."
and the email sent to me was titled "Spiritual Warfare" and it had several verses in there and so while I was troubleshooting this email issue, I also went through the verses and was greatly encouraged and helped.

Quick Prayer Request

Please be praying from today through April 12th (Easter) for our family and our center.

Quite a few things have been happening:
-another bridge is falling apart
-Kendal got a cold and it disabled her voice (she's getting better)
-I got a real bad case of being glum.
-We haven't seen any real sunshine for a few months.
-Everything is going wrong today at work, problems and pressures.
-Friends are getting dramatic calls from home.
-We'll be having a 15 year old move in with us for a few weeks as she has no place to stay.


The other day I was sitting there thinking "wow, a lot of stuff is going on, bad stuff."

Neighboring clans are fighting amongst themselves out in the villages right now.

And it started to really get me down..... I mean that "I can't explain why I feel so down." type of down...

And it dawns on me... WOW THIS could be a spiritual attack. Since I had that revelation, there has been some light.

PLEASE pray against the enemy. I don't know if God is going to move greatly during our conference (starts this week, ends April 12).

It is a 2 week church meeting of sorts, and both Kendal and I are deeply involved in it's success.

The last 2 weeks have been tough. We've had everything around us start to suddenly have an increase in "drama". Some friends hurried back to the states this week because of family issues.

Fighting broke out around us (not with us but around us)...
all kinds of things... add them all up and it spells

Spiritual Warfare.

I know this term is scary to many, it was to me... but it is a daily thing here.
Even something as simple as exhaustion can be an attack.

So if you have a few minutes, pray that God would cause the enemy to flee from us, from our family, from our center, and that God would work greatly here these next 3 weeks.

Thank you.

You know, how life has it's regular times, and then it's sudden new dramatic times? Then it has its "when it rains it pours" times? This is a "raining and pouring" time in almost every sense of the word. Every single thing around us right now has drama... a term I used for.. increased problems and stress.

We could use your prayer.

Fahr Mun

That's mah name.

Our center has a volunteer fire squad, and a Japanese fire truck with customizations and conversions done by our auto-staff here.

Each month we take turns taking the truck out, fire it up, drive it, test the hoses, etc. This month was my turn and I brought my son with me. We stopped to take a few photos after running all the water.

If ever we fight a fire, I'll let you know.
If a weekend warrior is a reservist, what is a "I drive the truck once every 5 months and never fight a fire" person called? .... Safe.

I really liked these two.

Rain Dance

It has been raining a LOT lately, usually when it rains we have a slow trickle into our water tank. My wife took a photo of the down pouring into our water tank during a heavier time of rain this week. Our yard is swampy.

On Friday Sydney, had performed in a musical in which she had a solo. She surprised us when she told us she tried out for it. And she did a GREAT job of it. It was nice to see her enjoy it.

They did like 4 performances.

Anyway enjoy the pictures.

Book Parade

The school doesn't celebrate halloween (which I'm glad about), but they do celebrate book week. For a week (or 2) they have the kids compete in reading. Classes compete against other classes for reading hours, individuals for book cover art, and they dress up on the last day and march in parade dressed as one of their favorite book characters.

Calvin chose Prince Caspian, Sydney "Fern" from 'Charlotte's Web'

These are their photos.

Sydney got first place for art in her class and Calvin got second place for art.
(art=book cover)

Kendal made the costume for Calvin. The question was "how to find a chain mail vest".. well, KEndal headed into town, found this silvery dress, and altered it. Then a friend found the belt in town.. Calvin felt like the star with this costume.. and we were very glad the whole getup cost around a dollar.

It is simply amazing what you can find in thrift stores. There are few "new" clothing stores in this country, you can buy some new clothing, but the thrift stores are packed every day. Most of the folks in this country are wearing clothes passed down from other countries and very rarely understand the logo they are wearing.

I saw a guy with a "raiders" t-shirt on and instinctively began to mock him jokingly, when I realized, he has no idea who the raiders are.

Mape

No this isn't a Vietnam prison camp photo.
It also isn't a movie set.

This last week the Mape language group had a Bible Dedication. This is where it was held.

Today I was able to view photos of this dedication, of which we all have played a part, but was unable to go.

What I was able to do, was to explain to a national who was trying to tell his family how to plant coffee, the very simple procedure of compressing images in a Word document so that his 16mb files could become more like 1/2 mb files.

I don't know in the long scheme of things how helping a man compress images helps, but I know that the teaching experience, helped build our relationship more.

Another Answered Prayer

A big challenge we've had recently is getting our kids' passports renewed.

Our kids passports expire in July of this year, and to renew them in country you need to have an official of the U.S. Consolate site the kids. This would be an expense of around $500.00 or more for us to travel to the Consolate by plane.

Well the good news WAS that a representative was going to travel to us to do the sighting, but then at the last minute they canceled. Which means we were faced with taking time off work, getting the papers, the money, oh the money!!! To renew alone costs about $100 per child, not to mention the hotel stay, and the air fare, and taxi rides and all that in town.

So our approach was "I dunno how I'm gonna do this, so.. let's ask God for help." And then wait and hope for the best.

Today my wife found me in a meeting and said "we have a small window of opportunity, can you get the paperwork ready in 20 minutes?"

Well of course we could because we already had the new passport photos printed and the application 90% filled out, because we were expecting to have to do this.

Apparently the diplomat I mentioned having lunch with earlier, was able to site our kids (as well as about 20 other families) today during dinner time. I was joking earlier today with my wife about asking him, but someone else must have because they pulled it all together last minute.

So, a few hours later, a few points in risen blood pressure for many families here, one speaker phone call to the consolate to say our oaths, and voila...

So Praise God!! Our kids passport apps have been submitted now.

You never know

"Chad do you think you'd get bored being a missionary?"

I was asked that more than once before starting this.
I marvel at how "un-boring" life is at times.

Today I had lunch with a Diplomat.
He was the US Embassy Diplomat for Security Affairs or something like that.
We talked about the trends in this country, about Muslim influence, about all manner of things security based and I found him articulate and intelligent.

And as I was walking back to work I thought "wow, I had lunch with a Diplomat."

The other day I was playing banjo down by the river, giving our puppy a bath and I thought:
"How many people in the world can say they have played banjo, near a river, in a jungle inside the South Pacific?"

I really don't know how long this ride God has us on will last, but there are these moments that are so rare that you think "I am living a life more abundantly."

I reflexively praise God in those moments.

Book Week

At our kids school, they have several non-U.S. traditions. They don't celebrate halloween, or president's day because the kids that attend are from 17 different countries. But they have other special days, one of which is Book Week.

During Book Week the teachers emphasize reading through several fun events. The classes compete in different challenges, the biggest of which is to see which class can read the most pages in a week. Typically my kids say "whatever class has Jo in it will win" one kid is to books what piranha are to meat.

Most of the kids here read a lot because frankly there isn't too much else to do at home.

Yesterday kicked off Book Week with a bang. The principal paid for a helicopter from our Aviation department to come and land, dropping off "Sparky" the clown (one of our neighbors when dressed as Sparky, becomes an entirely different person and the kids love it.

Sparky talked about reading, the Bible, and getting "taken away" by books. In the end, the helicopter lifted off, and took away their principal and vice principle (and one very excited Finish onlooker who got a free ride).

At dinner it was all the kids could talk about... how exciting it all was, how funny the clown was, and the message stuck with them.

It's great when something unique like this happens, because it reminds you that for all that our kids will not experience that other U.S. kids will, they will experience as many things that the U.S. kids will not.

I enjoy taking time to appreciate these little blessings from God that I see as encouragements that our kids will turn out to be adults who follow God.

Training

We are a training facility. We have more Papua New Guineans working at the computer department than ex-pats. As such, the ex-pats usually have the training background and we try to share it. We are all united with the common goal of reaching people for Christ, and so for us to share training with co-workers is a natural thing as well as a way to help their futures here.

We have been conducting training recently, writing the curriculum and then training. Today we introduce a few people to tcp/ip. I'm interested in seeing how that goes.

My experience is that the nationals here are for the most part very bright, and once they hear something, they retain it very quickly. Especially anything relationship oriented. So if we can communicate networking in a "relationship" context I'm hopeful they will learn it quickly.

I'm still amazed at how many people know my name after only hearing it once many months ago.

Wokim Wok

Someone said this the other day, "wokim wok" in tok pisin it means "work the work".

This month is flying by, each day is a challenge trying to stay on top of things.
I'm managing a building overhaul (still, they decided to double the project). We have a server that habitually goes down and we've been troubleshooting it.

We are responsible for Conference, (a huge every other year, 2 week long meeting), and so there are a lot of technical considerations there (which I am also managing).

Excitement, after 4 years of using a 1200 lumens projector for our meeting house, we have purchased a very affordable 4000 lumen projector with LAN capabilities. (toshiba tw420).

I was in charge of finding and researching projectors for a replacement. Was given a budget and found a GREAT projector for under half the budget. Everyone was SOOO pleased that we weren't sure if it was too good to be true.

But the package came this week, we opened it, and WOW.
Not only can you project over the network, but you can actually see images and color backgrounds now in the meeting house!!!

People going to functions, (church, prayer meetings, tok pisin services etc) aren't going to know why but they will enjoy the projections much more now.

The lan sharing is ahead of competitors but still is very first generation and needs some tweaking (you can't halt someone from sharing over the lan once they begin, so they can monopolize the projector).

Anyway, it was a big "phew!" moment for me as it was the first time I've been in charge of ordering equipment here. I used to do it a lot in the U.S. but here you have the added obstacle of not being able to actually SEE the unit until it's been paid for and shipped. So if you make a mistake, it's up to 3 months to find out.

thanks to God for the guidance on that one!

Valentine's Day

Well I took photos and I was waiting until I got them off my camera to post, but things have been busy and I haven't prioritized it. So here is my non-image post.

My valentine for my wife was three fold:
-I found some tile in storage and mortar and grout, and tiled up a hole that has been bothering her for some time (total cost = $0.00)

-I had my daughter sneak off to market early on Friday to buy flowers (total cost = .33 cents)

-I took my wife "out" to eat at a fundraiser for the high school, we double dated with a couple who recently had a baby and it was their first night "away" from home. It was fun, (total cost = $12.00)

We got our puppy!
And even though I was voting for "blunderbuss" the name "budge" sort of stuck.

I'm pretty happy with this puppy. I've been doing serious research on dog training and choosing, and so far it's paying off.

In 3 days he knows his name, he's been crate trained (potty trained, doesn't whine at night, knows who his master is, etc), and he's GREAT with the kids.

I'm very happy with the personality of this dog, and how quick he takes to the training. I have no experience training a dog, but all the reading I'm doing is paying off because he really is well behaved.

he is an outside dog and I will begin training him to be a guard dog in a few weeks, for now I'm going over the basics... who the master is, where he can relieve himself, not to bark at the wrong time, to bark at the right time, etc.

Google is man's best friend here, maybe I should have named him google. I went from knowing nothing to being able to crate train this dog in 3 days!!

I enjoy dogs, however I only enjoy well trained, well behaved dogs. Around here, a quick way to upset neighbors is to have an all day barker, a digger, or an escaper. So far, budge isn't any of those things.

Having a dog around brings a sense of security to the family, and really he has brought excitement to our household, and fun too.

Special Daddy Moment

You might file this one under "too much information."

2 years ago we experienced a 6.0 earthquake here which really frightened my daughter. She got under the table, and was crying. After that there were several "I can't sleep" nights where any floor movement woke her up.

So finally one night I said "I will be here to protect you."

Well, an earthquake hit around 3am one night soon after and I went from a dead sleep to running to her room when she woke up she saw me standing there. I was glad my brain was able to remember to go to her room like that, so I kept my promise.

Typically during a night quake (we have one or two a month, very small, almost unnoticeable except I'm good at noticing them), I wake up, and wait to see if my daughter did. My son and wife sleep through them typically.

Anyway, last night around 1:15am, a 5.5 came and I shook awake, and went from a dead sleep to a sprint in less than a second.

I got to my daughter's room moments after hearing her scream "DADDDDDDDYYYY!!!"

I hugged her and kissed her and told her it was alright, daddy was there.
she replied "yes, you came, but sometimes you don't come."
I said, "you're safe, go back to sleep."
and she went to sleep.

If I hadn't have been there she would have lost about an hour of sleep.

This may seem odd, but one thing I have learned more here than anywhere else, is that when I get an adrenaline dump like that it goes to my stomach and about 15 minutes after I calm down, my stomach really hurts for a bit.

Those who have been in a field may sympathize, there are times when you JOLT awake and react quickly. Mostly it's quakes here or an odd noise that jolts you awake.

So I lost around an hour of sleep last night thanks to the quake.... but it was worth it... I was there with my little girl able to make her feel safe.

Prais i Go Antap Tumas

"Price He goes On Top Too Much" - The price is too high.

We are getting a puppy soon as I've mentioned. He will grow into, among other things, a guard dog. So we need to have a fence installed. The most affordable way to install a fence is to use firewood logs, coat the bottom foot in used engine oil (to avoid rotting) and then put them in the ground and run wire between them. It isn't a picket fence, but it's also not entirely ugly.

If I were to do the work myself, the fence would not come out very good, and since labor is very inexpensive here, I looked up a man with a good reputation and hired him to do the work.

Hiring a Papua New Guinean is always a tricky ordeal because in their culture the boss man, has certain responsibilities. If his children get hurt during the course of the work, regardless of where they get hurt, or why, he will come to me for help. I am his caretaker, I look after him. This is true to a certain extent.

So employing is a responsibility, but then there is the "what price is fair?" and "am I getting suckered?" question that makes you wonder.

I explained the fence to him, bought all the materials and asked him to quote me a price. He quoted me a REALLY REALLY high price.

I was surprised, in my head I had a number I wasn't willing to go passed, and this price was double that.

Knowing that in this culture you do NOT haggle. They say a price, you can ask for a number two price, and that's it. AT least not over FOOD. You can slightly haggle over other things.

So I asked him to come down a bit, and he did no problem, still way more than I thought was fair.

I went to a trusted friend and asked "what is fair" and he gave me a price that was more what I was thinking. So today I had to speak with this man and offered him the lower price and he took it without grumbling or even frowning.

And it struck me as odd, that this man started at 800 Kina and wound up with 300kina and is perfectly happy.

So it was then that I learned a valuable cultural lesson.
Someone told me today.

"Papua New Guineans are not good at estimating work cost. You need to tell them what you will pay them and let them accept or refuse."

AHA!
So he wasn't trying to gauge me, everyone who recommended him said it didn't sound like him. He was simply not capable of doing the math in his head that would figure out what the labor cost him.

Also because of this inability to estimate well, it is often wise to draw up a contract because jobs can drag on and on and on if you are paying by the hour, not because they are trying to bilk you, like we might view it, but because in their culture, pace is slower, and there is no motivation to finish a job until there is another job lined up.

So I got a contract for 300kina.

And in the process I learned a lot and will be getting a fence.

Feeling and Piling

Today during Tok Pisin devotions I took the opportunity to read, because I can read tok pisin fast, although my weakest place is praying, because I don't practice praying in tok pisin, typically you like to pray in your heart language.

A major difference between English and Tok Pisin is that the "i" is pronounced "EEE"

so when I was reading the story of Josep(h) I got to the word "pilim" which I mistakenly pronounced "pile em" instead of 'peal eem'.

"pile em" means - to make a pile of something and would be spelled "pailim"
"peal eem" means - to feel.

so Joseph cried and hugged Benjamin, in tok pisin is more like "Joseph felt tears and hugged Benjamin" what I apparently said more more like "Joseph piled water and hugged Benjamin"

I read tok pisin rather quickly, and when it comes to Tok Pisin, so long as I am not originating the thoughts, I can hear, read and understand quickly. So as soon as I said this I knew... some folks around me politely and quietly corrected me in murmurs. Out of all of Genesis 45 (in tok pisin it is called Stat (as in Start) 45), I made one pronunciation error, but it was a funny one.

At the end of the reading, I actually got a compliment. I wasn't expecting that.
The reason I chose to read this time was because I saw the chapter was long, Joseph is one of my favorite people in the Bible, and because I know that even though I'm not fluent in Tok Pisin, I can read faster, and I selfishly didn't want to be there for an hour, because we do devotions before work can begin.

It draws for me the ironic difference. They are native speakers, and yet I can read their language better than many of them can. It is because their language is a spoken one and the illiteracy rate is high and the education level is low. It is almost like a switch when we read the Scripture.

A friend of mine can read the Word very slowly and choppily sounding like a fourth grader from the U.S. when reading, but when he puts down the book and speaks on what he read, then the switch flips and he talks fluidly and rapidly. It is the opposite for me. I read fluidly and rapidly and speak more slowly.

Rare find

There are many rare birds in this country, but this, truly is a rare find.

a friend sent this to me in an email and I got such a kick out of it. At the same time my niece emailed to ask what do some animals look like here, and I thought seeing this photo might surprise her a bit.

It would be a very loyal and talkative pet.

Some Photos

>




This is our new puppy. Did you know female dogs could have multiple sires? Well this puppy is the giant of the litter of 4. His brothers and sisters are black and look more like german shepherds. He is 1/2 German Shepherd, and a mix of retriever of some kind. We're hoping he'll be a good guard dog and good family dog. We pick him up on valentine's day. He's gonna be a BIG dog. Name possibilities are: (guess who chose which ones)
Bruno, Shredder, Princess, Woz (for wasman which means guardian, and of course.. the Woz)




This is a rhinoceros beetle, found very commonly here. They like damp areas and are very fun to play with as they HISS as loudly as a cat if bothered. They cling tenaciously to almost anything.



This is a mobile bakery. You don't see this very often, "fast" food here is called a "kai bar" and it sells rolls and snacks and meat pies and such. You take your chances. This one however, is a mobile unit obviously run by some motivated entrepenours.


HEY!!! There's a baby in that bilum! Yes, kids are carried around in many ways, not the most uncommon of which is inside a sack called a "bilum" attached to a head.

Anniversary

When life gets a bit busier my blogging slows a tad. Although busy life here isn't what busy life used to be back in the U.S. still you adjust to your definition of normalcy. Well this past 2 weeks have been very busy for us at work. I briefly touched on it, we made a network change and at the same time of that change, a LOT of things broke at the same time.

So we've been working nights, and weekends and such like that trying to stabilize, and we have.

I had the pleasure of spending 8 hours troubleshooting one translator's laptop and getting to know him a bit in the process. I should have followed my instinct and solved the problem in 5 minutes but I wanted to be VERY thorough before I did. It turns out my initial instinct solved the problem (note to self.. always always always uninstall ZoneAlarm).

Last night was our 13th wedding anniversary. For a gift I hand made a rosewood picture frame and put a photo of the place I proposed and gave it to my wife. It was my first (wood) router project I'd ever done, and I'm not completely satisfied with how it turned out. Thirteen is lace, and so I bordered the picture with lace. (thanks to a friend in the states who provide me the picture about a year ago).

I'd been holding onto the photo for a long time, waiting to use it at the right moment.

My wife gave me a very thoughtful gift, a few bags of sunflower seeds. I think it was the first time the store had them and she thought of me when she saw them. (aaawwwwww!).

She made a very tasty dinner and we ate it by candlelight after the kids went to bed. We decided to have a quiet dinner inside, and not try to do anything fancy. We don't have a great track record for anniversaries the last few years, so we laughed about locking the doors and not going outside.

For our 10th, we were in training in Florida, and we found about an hour to ourselves to enjoy some quiet time near the pool, alone, until an older couple joined us for an odd conversation

For our 11th we were in Waxhaw, NC, and we tried to go out to a dinner show which was so awful we left half way through.

For our 12th we were in Papua New Guinea, and we tried to go into town and get a meal, but we had to share it with an injured tree kangaroo, geckos and flies. It was surreal.

So for our 13th, we decided to play it safe and stay indoors, and it was very enjoyable and quiet... completely unmemorable. And when you've had VERY memorable anniversaries for 3 years in a row, unmemorable is a good thing.

We read through some questions we try to discuss annually. Goals, parenting ideals, spiritual aims, etc. One question was "what can you do as a couple to improve the world?" And we decided,... we were finally doing it.

The picture above is of a Matsumaru man at a New Testament dedication we had recently.