we were all sleeping in these communal huts, about 40 of us shoulder to shoulder sleeping.
Calvin jumped up and spoke in his sleep "don't give me a pop quiz!" waking a few of us up.
Sydney said "mommy snores, daddy breathes loud, calvin talks in his sleep and mister koons snores like a bear."
one night I got confused as to the time, Sydney woke me up and said "daddy I can't sleep" I looked around assumed it was 5am and said "go sit by the fire until the sun comes up." It was actually midnight, and eventually Kendal went to find her and get her at the fire and said "what are you doing up so late, get to bed." "daddy told me I could get up." she had been sleeping about 3 hours. Wow, how confusing it is when the moon is full and you are sleeping.
-------
Calvin and I were out looking at fireflies at night, and he caught one. HE was so proud showing it to everyone, until a village man said "please let it go, if you get his fire in your eye, your eye will go bad and you will not be healed easily". WE think it was an old wives tale, but we honored his request and let it go. Calvin was very proud he had caught one.
-------
Getting off and on the boat myself and another like-sized man filled the little dingy to the point that everyone watched to see if we would make it to shore safely or sink. As we stepped our huge booted feet onto the coral sanded shore of the village it was as if the vikings had landed and everyone looked at us with wonder and amazement. I learned one word in their language "Gosawara" it means "get out of my way!!" and I learned it because the kids would come up to me and touch me and try to get on video that I was shooting and I needed them to move so I wouldn't accidentally step on them while video taping (since I wasn't looking down). It felt rude at first, but it was a very effective word. Made me feel like Fezzik in "The Princess Bride" (EVERYBODY MOVE!!!!!).
-----
One of the songs that touched me had the lyrics
"and we know, yes we know this is a special visit, to Gapapaiwa, that you come so far from your places to visit us, we thank you brothers and sisters for coming to this bible dedication"
hearing their voices lifted, the words hit us. These people were honoring us for our part in helping to make the translation happen, and simultaneously praising God that we were able to come visit them.
God has intended a life for us more abundant than we could craft for ourselves, and days like this, it floods into your heart and overcomes it... and you realize, we can't handle even a small portion of the blessings that God wants to pour out on us.
8/12/2009
Combatting Tech
During this Bible Dedication the translators chose a person to photograph and a person to videotape. I was the video man, but there were others with cameras. One of the pilots who also dabbles in video brought a tripod and an umbrella. The night before the dedication a crying photographer came to me. All her photos up to now had disappeared. Her compact flash card had corrupted and her Mac couldn't see the files.
I told her "let's pray, and I'll see what I can do."
That night, I came down with a fever. The hot weather, bright sun and fever led me to think I could not shoot the footage I had come to shoot.
I tried my hardest, but near the beginning of the dedication I started to feel very sick and could not stay awake. Looking now at the footage I shot about 40 minutes with my lens cap on and putting the camera in the bag. I was somewhat delirious.
Some thought it was the flu, others malaria... whatever it was I'm healed now.
But the enemy tried hard, even the footage I did get, my camera had some odd white balance issue and kept switching into "night shot" mode. IT was very odd.
PRAISE GOD though, the other videographer got some VERY good shots and remained healthy so I will be able to combine our footage.
I asked him "can I use your shots, I sort of missed a lot of the dedication as I was asleep" (I fell asleep on the grass under the sun and many folks thought I had passed out, but I hadn't).
He said yes. Well I really wanted the footage in 4:3 aspect ratio because and in the DV format because that was what MINE was shot in.. I asked him.. "well you might not be able to use it, it's in 4:3 and on DV"
AMEN!!! PRAISE GOD for that.. yes I know HD is the way to go. And maybe on furlough I can scrape together enough to get a good camera. This one has been used to death.
There were other things going on too. The enemy loves to cause distraction and chaos to distract from the celebration of God and His accomplishments, but we didn't let it happen, we simply prayed and God worked it out.
Yesterday, in the comfort of our computer lab, we were able to recover the lost photographs!!!
God is good. He is stronger than the enemy, and His glory will not be diminished.
I told her "let's pray, and I'll see what I can do."
That night, I came down with a fever. The hot weather, bright sun and fever led me to think I could not shoot the footage I had come to shoot.
I tried my hardest, but near the beginning of the dedication I started to feel very sick and could not stay awake. Looking now at the footage I shot about 40 minutes with my lens cap on and putting the camera in the bag. I was somewhat delirious.
Some thought it was the flu, others malaria... whatever it was I'm healed now.
But the enemy tried hard, even the footage I did get, my camera had some odd white balance issue and kept switching into "night shot" mode. IT was very odd.
PRAISE GOD though, the other videographer got some VERY good shots and remained healthy so I will be able to combine our footage.
I asked him "can I use your shots, I sort of missed a lot of the dedication as I was asleep" (I fell asleep on the grass under the sun and many folks thought I had passed out, but I hadn't).
He said yes. Well I really wanted the footage in 4:3 aspect ratio because and in the DV format because that was what MINE was shot in.. I asked him.. "well you might not be able to use it, it's in 4:3 and on DV"
AMEN!!! PRAISE GOD for that.. yes I know HD is the way to go. And maybe on furlough I can scrape together enough to get a good camera. This one has been used to death.
There were other things going on too. The enemy loves to cause distraction and chaos to distract from the celebration of God and His accomplishments, but we didn't let it happen, we simply prayed and God worked it out.
Yesterday, in the comfort of our computer lab, we were able to recover the lost photographs!!!
God is good. He is stronger than the enemy, and His glory will not be diminished.
Menapi Photos
This is the plane the kids and wife took to get to the helicopter pad
this is the village from the sky that my wife took in the helicopter.
Bird's eye view of the area. The boat I came in on is in the water here.
Helicopter view of the village
The Bibles and the missionaries approach on the canoe.
The Bibles are carried in during the processsion, the two in front are the translation couple who spent 23 years on this project. They were emotionally overwhelmed by the excitement of the celebration.
More Conch
The warriors who dressed up as the cannibals. Notice the conch shell in his hand. He blew it to call the other warriors to the shore. Imagine hearing that as you approach an island known for cannibals. DINNER BELL.
Another dancer, the decor he is wearing we call "Bilas"
Calvin posing with one of the warrior dancers.
People excited about the New Testament in their hand.
DINNER!!!
One of the night dancers, in his hand he has a Kundu drum which together with 40 others sounds impressive. Their tradition is to dance all night long to the songs of their ancestors which since have lost all meaning over time.
Calvin making friends in the village.
This canon marks the furthest EAST the Japanese were able to advance during the 1945 Battle of Milne Bay. Held off by the Aussies and the U.S. , this memorial park was once an airstrip.
We took a few days to relax from the village trip and site see. We found war relics and some tropical animals nearby.
This hornbill nearly ran us down in Alotau, swooping over my left shoulder.
Giant snails found in Alotau, the Japanese brought these over during WWII for eating.
The Bible Dedication
This post will be the story, the next will be the photos.
My assignment on this trip was to be the videographer so you can be sure there will be 4 minute video of the entire event.
We decided to make the trip with one other family. We drove 2 hours to the airport, got on a plane, waited 2 hours in the airport got on another plane (a Dash 8 both of them) and then arrived in Alotau.
In Alotau we stayed in a centre owned by our organization. Imagine Hawaii or Florida climates. We spent the night and I did computer work for the centre the next day while the kids played with friends and my wife helped prepare food for the village.
The next day, 4:30am, me and my friend Andrew hopped on a PMV. (Imagine a large public flatbed truck with benches on it) we jammed about 30 people in this truck and then began driving across a road we hoped was open. It was, but we came up with a flat. 30 minutes later the flat wasn't repaired and since it was a duely truck, we went on hoping not to get two flats.
The road was opened, it wasn't washed out, so we kept going and eventually made it to the north coast of the cape. From there we got on a dingy loaded all the cargo and all the people and got on a boat (pictured later). 7 hours on the high seas, VERY calm (like glass), and we arrived in Menapi.
As we dropped anchor I saw my wife and kids land. They opted for the plane and the helicopter route. Much quicker but a bit more pricey. Still we all landed on the beach at the same time.
The sand was white coral, and gorgeous. The village was ecstatic to see us. I've never felt like so much of a celebrity in my life. Dancers dressed in bilas (decoration) greeted us and escorted us to a choir of singers.
Boys and girls, old women and young, all sang to us songs that praised God in their language, and threw in one in English too. We were later told they re-wrote the songs of their ancestors with lyrics to praise God. They had been praying and fasting in preparation for our arrival.
This village is a true example of Christ changing an entire people group. Part of the dedication was the translator couple talking about the difficulties the culture presented in accepting the principles they were going through when translating the Word and how at one point they were considering abandoning the project. But they didn't, they stayed with it, and about two years ago a large breakthrough happened and lives started changing.
We had dinner that first night and met a man named William who served us dinner on his only plates, and told us his story. When I asked him about when He became a Christian he said "one and a half years ago, I realized I was polluting the Lord's temple and changed and gave my life to Him." Changing the lyrics of the songs was part of the entire people group's desire to glorify God. They were praying during the fasting time that they would not do this ceremony in such a way that would be to impress us (their guests) or make themselves look important, but instead to glorify and thank God.
That is the kind of excitement that breathes new energy into our hearts as we go about doing this work.
The people built 7 new houses, 2 new guest sleeping houses for us to bunk in, a wash house (showering with coconut shells) and a cook house. So when we arrived, we all said it was the cleanest, nicest, newest looking village we had ever seen. And that is all because of the efforts they put into hosting us.
The next day was the dedication. It began with a ceremony renacting the first missionaries arriving 118 years ago. They arrived to cannibal warriors threatening them on the coast, but in this new rendition, the bible arrived on a canoe with the translators (who symbolized the original missionaries). Then two women went out in the water to get them carrying a grass skirt up high, symbolizing peace. Then once on land, the bibles and the missionaries, followed by their supporters (friends from their home church and other supporting missionaries (us), followed by the Anglican priests from the village, followed by dancers and warriors.
The warriors really hammed it up, threatening us with spears and sling shots, making grunting noises etc. They pounded 50 kundu drums in unison. I tell you, if I was those first missionaries 118 years ago... it would have been a VERY scary site. The drums and the decoration and the cannibal warriors... all of it together would have made every inch of me want to turn around and go home.
The ceremony then became a parade, escorting the Bibles down the coast to a bridge. At the bridge there was a horde of children chanting things similiar to "we accept this gift of the Word of God and recognize it is for our generation and we accept this responsibility". Things like that. The point was, that there was a strong emphasis on this being for their children and their children's children. A gift of truth that should be passed down for generations. A new tradition.
That choked me up a bit. Although I was experiencing what was arguably a flu. Some thought it Malaria but it was a quick 24 hour flu... so I was already choked up (-;.
Then the Bibles and the procession came to rest in a field with a stage constructed. Speeches, songs, sermons, testimonies and the like followed. It was definitely an official ceremony and it ended with the Bibles being dispersed.
To give you an idea of how excited these people were. They had 1000 Bibles to disperse (sell at a small token price to make sure people would value them) and 800 of them went in the first few hours. Typically if you pre-order 1000 you have them around for a long while, but these people were swallowing up the Word of God. It was an overwhelming statistic to us that these people were excited.
Rest time.
Later that day the pigs came out, and they were speared, roasted, then slow cooked all night. The kids gathered around as the pig hair was burned off a big bonfire was created. This was Calvin's favorite part (until the butchering started, then he left).
Sydney enjoyed the dancing.
We all had a feast, roast pork, the next morning. The day was peppered with rest, dramas, dancing, drums, etc.
The sun set beautifully the full moon rose and we heard the drums from the jungle somewhere. The got closer and closer until about 40 dancing men and women arrived. They danced and invited some of us to dance and would have danced all night long but we eventually stopped around midnight.
That night I got on a boat and fell asleep, and woke up back to our original departure point. We took a PMV back to Alotau and while it was a bumpy ride, we made it.
All safe and sound.
We saw things, experienced things, met people and shared with a completely new culture a time of celebrating Christ and His Word.
It was remarkable.
The lyrics that choked me up most of all, the ones that gave credence to what you and I are doing. Why we are here... was hearing a choir of children and adults together sing...
"Thank you for coming to Gapapaiwa Bible dedication, brothers and sisters, thank you for serving God, praise God for His Word."
still choked up, and the flu has passed.
God is great.
My assignment on this trip was to be the videographer so you can be sure there will be 4 minute video of the entire event.
We decided to make the trip with one other family. We drove 2 hours to the airport, got on a plane, waited 2 hours in the airport got on another plane (a Dash 8 both of them) and then arrived in Alotau.
In Alotau we stayed in a centre owned by our organization. Imagine Hawaii or Florida climates. We spent the night and I did computer work for the centre the next day while the kids played with friends and my wife helped prepare food for the village.
The next day, 4:30am, me and my friend Andrew hopped on a PMV. (Imagine a large public flatbed truck with benches on it) we jammed about 30 people in this truck and then began driving across a road we hoped was open. It was, but we came up with a flat. 30 minutes later the flat wasn't repaired and since it was a duely truck, we went on hoping not to get two flats.
The road was opened, it wasn't washed out, so we kept going and eventually made it to the north coast of the cape. From there we got on a dingy loaded all the cargo and all the people and got on a boat (pictured later). 7 hours on the high seas, VERY calm (like glass), and we arrived in Menapi.
As we dropped anchor I saw my wife and kids land. They opted for the plane and the helicopter route. Much quicker but a bit more pricey. Still we all landed on the beach at the same time.
The sand was white coral, and gorgeous. The village was ecstatic to see us. I've never felt like so much of a celebrity in my life. Dancers dressed in bilas (decoration) greeted us and escorted us to a choir of singers.
Boys and girls, old women and young, all sang to us songs that praised God in their language, and threw in one in English too. We were later told they re-wrote the songs of their ancestors with lyrics to praise God. They had been praying and fasting in preparation for our arrival.
This village is a true example of Christ changing an entire people group. Part of the dedication was the translator couple talking about the difficulties the culture presented in accepting the principles they were going through when translating the Word and how at one point they were considering abandoning the project. But they didn't, they stayed with it, and about two years ago a large breakthrough happened and lives started changing.
We had dinner that first night and met a man named William who served us dinner on his only plates, and told us his story. When I asked him about when He became a Christian he said "one and a half years ago, I realized I was polluting the Lord's temple and changed and gave my life to Him." Changing the lyrics of the songs was part of the entire people group's desire to glorify God. They were praying during the fasting time that they would not do this ceremony in such a way that would be to impress us (their guests) or make themselves look important, but instead to glorify and thank God.
That is the kind of excitement that breathes new energy into our hearts as we go about doing this work.
The people built 7 new houses, 2 new guest sleeping houses for us to bunk in, a wash house (showering with coconut shells) and a cook house. So when we arrived, we all said it was the cleanest, nicest, newest looking village we had ever seen. And that is all because of the efforts they put into hosting us.
The next day was the dedication. It began with a ceremony renacting the first missionaries arriving 118 years ago. They arrived to cannibal warriors threatening them on the coast, but in this new rendition, the bible arrived on a canoe with the translators (who symbolized the original missionaries). Then two women went out in the water to get them carrying a grass skirt up high, symbolizing peace. Then once on land, the bibles and the missionaries, followed by their supporters (friends from their home church and other supporting missionaries (us), followed by the Anglican priests from the village, followed by dancers and warriors.
The warriors really hammed it up, threatening us with spears and sling shots, making grunting noises etc. They pounded 50 kundu drums in unison. I tell you, if I was those first missionaries 118 years ago... it would have been a VERY scary site. The drums and the decoration and the cannibal warriors... all of it together would have made every inch of me want to turn around and go home.
The ceremony then became a parade, escorting the Bibles down the coast to a bridge. At the bridge there was a horde of children chanting things similiar to "we accept this gift of the Word of God and recognize it is for our generation and we accept this responsibility". Things like that. The point was, that there was a strong emphasis on this being for their children and their children's children. A gift of truth that should be passed down for generations. A new tradition.
That choked me up a bit. Although I was experiencing what was arguably a flu. Some thought it Malaria but it was a quick 24 hour flu... so I was already choked up (-;.
Then the Bibles and the procession came to rest in a field with a stage constructed. Speeches, songs, sermons, testimonies and the like followed. It was definitely an official ceremony and it ended with the Bibles being dispersed.
To give you an idea of how excited these people were. They had 1000 Bibles to disperse (sell at a small token price to make sure people would value them) and 800 of them went in the first few hours. Typically if you pre-order 1000 you have them around for a long while, but these people were swallowing up the Word of God. It was an overwhelming statistic to us that these people were excited.
Rest time.
Later that day the pigs came out, and they were speared, roasted, then slow cooked all night. The kids gathered around as the pig hair was burned off a big bonfire was created. This was Calvin's favorite part (until the butchering started, then he left).
Sydney enjoyed the dancing.
We all had a feast, roast pork, the next morning. The day was peppered with rest, dramas, dancing, drums, etc.
The sun set beautifully the full moon rose and we heard the drums from the jungle somewhere. The got closer and closer until about 40 dancing men and women arrived. They danced and invited some of us to dance and would have danced all night long but we eventually stopped around midnight.
That night I got on a boat and fell asleep, and woke up back to our original departure point. We took a PMV back to Alotau and while it was a bumpy ride, we made it.
All safe and sound.
We saw things, experienced things, met people and shared with a completely new culture a time of celebrating Christ and His Word.
It was remarkable.
The lyrics that choked me up most of all, the ones that gave credence to what you and I are doing. Why we are here... was hearing a choir of children and adults together sing...
"Thank you for coming to Gapapaiwa Bible dedication, brothers and sisters, thank you for serving God, praise God for His Word."
still choked up, and the flu has passed.
God is great.
8/11/2009
We're fine
We're home, we're safe, we're fine.
For those reading news about a plane that went down, it was a different airline than what we took, and it was in a different area. We are safe and sound.
Thank you for your concerns, following shortly we'll post pictures of the dedication and the story of the trip. It was awesome!
For those reading news about a plane that went down, it was a different airline than what we took, and it was in a different area. We are safe and sound.
Thank you for your concerns, following shortly we'll post pictures of the dedication and the story of the trip. It was awesome!
7/27/2009
Pics for fun
The Malasanga coastline looking east toward Welowelo.
The bugada coastline on a gorgeous day. This coastline suffered damage during the December king tides.
A friend of mine took these photos while out on survey. Survey is the Indiana Jones type job of translation work. You load a backpack with survival gear, and head out into villages who have voiced an interest in wanting a translation done in their language. The surveyors learn the geography, learn the people, and the viability of beginning a project. (If a translation project takes 20 years to do, and a language has only a few hundred people in it, will they be around in 20 years? Will that language be dead by then or thriving?) These are questions the surveyors do. They get dropped off or hike in to new places and discover these things. And along the way they snap some really nice photos of remote areas of the country. (-;
thanks for the photos to Scott
7/25/2009
fun photo
I like posting funny photos of things found in stores.
This week:
The Lecends of Batnen
OF COURSE!
note: batman, daredevil, a power ranger, the hulk, and spiderman.
I'm not a comic fan, but I believe some of you may be able to tell there is a mixture of DC and Marvel there.. along with a power ranger.
It's always fun to see what you'll find.
7/23/2009
Hand Carved Chess Set
someone at market was selling this chess set. It's obvious they've never seen the game before. (-;
props to Michael
7/22/2009
Travelling to Menapi
Okay we're all booked for travelling to Menapi for this Bible Dedication. I thought it might be helpful for you to see what we're doing.
Ukarumpa and Menapi are maybe 100 miles apart. But there are no roads. So the only access is via fixed wing plane to an airstrip and then from there a helicopter shuttle. OR you can travel commercially fixed wing and then take a boat. Since our only boat is in Alotau, we are flying into Alotau and then taking the boat.
Roads: - the roads are anywhere from paved full of potholes to dirt and possibly you find out half way through they are washed out.
Seas: - this time of year VERY choppy and gauranteed to make you sick (-;
So... here is the plan:
We (a van of 12 people) drive 2 hours to Goroka on mostly paved roads, curvy and typical third world main highway type road.
From there we all hop a commercial airline plane and fly 1.5 hours to Port Moresby.
From there we change planes and go to Alotau (2 hours or so)
From alotau we get picked up and drive the road to the centre. REst for the day.
From there the women and children take a fixed wing aircraft to the other side of the country while us men take a boat 7 hours across choppy seas, around the cape. There WAS a road straight from ALotau to the other side of the cape, but it washed out. That road would have taken us an hour to drive, and saved us 7 hours on a boat.
From there, the ladies take a helicopter over to Menapi, and the men go another 7 hours on the boat. (the boat is more affordable and we know the captain, so we're going to save money and also to keep him company)
After we arrive, we'll celebrate and have a ceremony and sleep on the hard ground or possibly a village house floor, and then the next day get back on the boat and travel back.
So, travel wise, we're looking at a VERY long route to get to this location, which I hear is gorgeous.
Me and my friend are of two minds on this.
He keeps saying "it's great adventure, we'll get sick, it'll be GREAT"
I keep thinking "oh boy, 15 hours of seasickness is gonna put me in a great mood to sleep on the dirt. I'm gonna be too tired to enjoy the ceremony."
So here's how you can pray:
-calm seas, good travelling, that I'll have a good attitude. It's an adventure and like any adventure, you need to have a good attitude.
Personally I wouldn't blame anyone who called me crazy. Because of all the travel we're paying a handsome sum to do this too. So that's a possible double whammy on my attitude. Each time I'm bending over the side of the boat I have to think "yup I'm paying for this." hehehe.
-good attitude (yes I listed that twice)
-safety
-an excellent celebration (I'd really like to have this been a memorable occasion for the entire family)
-energy
-skill - I'm going to be in charge of video documenting the event. A tricky task because I'll need batteries and won't have any way to charge them, so I'll have to conserve my power and use it wisely.
-finances - it would be nice to have this trip paid for before we get on the boat.
Thank you all so much, and if you ever want to come visit us, give us plenty of notice so we can plan an adventure for when you're here!!! A dedication is the celebration of the fruition of a team effort. As we travel there, it's like we're taking you all with us. I'm going to have a video to show you, it should be a GREAT time!
7/19/2009
Sharing the Failures
Well I suppose since I just shared a success I should share a failure.
For a long time in my career I have been able to say "I have never had a large data loss." I've always been extremely careful about backups and double backups. But mostly however, that was on unix systems where duplicating disks and running raid was my cup of tea.
This weekend our major corporate email database (microsoft exchange) was corrupted while one of my co-workers tried to restore an inbox. After 8 hours of work and database recovery, I was able to restore ALL previous email but 2 days worth.
Still, 2 days worth is serious data loss to me.
Fortunately, out of the 600 people on centre, only about 5 people thus far have actually experienced data loss because most folks were running in Cached exchange mode.
I have not experienced any key people... so the data loss isn't HUGE.. and so far nothing vital was lost. I've even had people say "hey I love it, now I have a scape goat.. I can say 'oh sorry I haven't worked on that, you must have emailed me during the 'blackout'"
Still though, this weekend was a time for me of pondering if it had been better I didn't even wake up this weekend. I know my value here, I know God put me here, but it doesn't mean everything I do will be a raging success.
This data loss, while minimal, was the largest data loss of my entire career.
I guess that means I've had a blessed career.
I think the sting is a little harder because my customers are also neighbors and if they feel an email loss, so do I.
Formerly if I had down time like this, it would have been costing us millions of dollars, and so working here for me has been less stressful than working for a big corporation.
I did learn this weekend though, that I need to constantly be vigilent.
The entire error happened because I was very very busy handling 3 emergencies and someone asked "Hey Chad should I try this." and I said flippantly "yes" without thinking through the consequences.
I think from now on, I'll be more realistic about my abilities and try to be more cautious. I think handling 3 emergencies isn't a time to be answering questions I'm not entirely listening to.
I praise God! During the outage I was praying "God please, let the only person affected by this be me, let me pay the cost for my mistake, not everyone else working here."
And while I was upset about the failure and loss, God brought this to mind:
-If I hadn't split the email servers to home/corporate 2 months ago, this loss would have affected more than twice the amount of people.
-Cached mode saved most emails for most people.
-You've learned a valuable lesson from this.
Yes I am humbled today. It is a good thing to be humbled from time to time. And I personally LOVE that God doesn't seem to let me get out of check. I constantly pray that God would not let me think that what is done here is of me, but instead of Him.
This weekend could have been HORRIBLE but instead it was only bad. That's a huge reminder that the skills I have are from God and my attitude should reflect that.
It was fun being a hero last week, but it was also enjoyable in a different way, to watch God be the hero this weekend.
For a long time in my career I have been able to say "I have never had a large data loss." I've always been extremely careful about backups and double backups. But mostly however, that was on unix systems where duplicating disks and running raid was my cup of tea.
This weekend our major corporate email database (microsoft exchange) was corrupted while one of my co-workers tried to restore an inbox. After 8 hours of work and database recovery, I was able to restore ALL previous email but 2 days worth.
Still, 2 days worth is serious data loss to me.
Fortunately, out of the 600 people on centre, only about 5 people thus far have actually experienced data loss because most folks were running in Cached exchange mode.
I have not experienced any key people... so the data loss isn't HUGE.. and so far nothing vital was lost. I've even had people say "hey I love it, now I have a scape goat.. I can say 'oh sorry I haven't worked on that, you must have emailed me during the 'blackout'"
Still though, this weekend was a time for me of pondering if it had been better I didn't even wake up this weekend. I know my value here, I know God put me here, but it doesn't mean everything I do will be a raging success.
This data loss, while minimal, was the largest data loss of my entire career.
I guess that means I've had a blessed career.
I think the sting is a little harder because my customers are also neighbors and if they feel an email loss, so do I.
Formerly if I had down time like this, it would have been costing us millions of dollars, and so working here for me has been less stressful than working for a big corporation.
I did learn this weekend though, that I need to constantly be vigilent.
The entire error happened because I was very very busy handling 3 emergencies and someone asked "Hey Chad should I try this." and I said flippantly "yes" without thinking through the consequences.
I think from now on, I'll be more realistic about my abilities and try to be more cautious. I think handling 3 emergencies isn't a time to be answering questions I'm not entirely listening to.
I praise God! During the outage I was praying "God please, let the only person affected by this be me, let me pay the cost for my mistake, not everyone else working here."
And while I was upset about the failure and loss, God brought this to mind:
-If I hadn't split the email servers to home/corporate 2 months ago, this loss would have affected more than twice the amount of people.
-Cached mode saved most emails for most people.
-You've learned a valuable lesson from this.
Yes I am humbled today. It is a good thing to be humbled from time to time. And I personally LOVE that God doesn't seem to let me get out of check. I constantly pray that God would not let me think that what is done here is of me, but instead of Him.
This weekend could have been HORRIBLE but instead it was only bad. That's a huge reminder that the skills I have are from God and my attitude should reflect that.
It was fun being a hero last week, but it was also enjoyable in a different way, to watch God be the hero this weekend.
7/17/2009
Power
Part of living here is losing power.
We have a massive generator system which helps us maintain security lighting and power to our homes. However tomorrow we'll be undergoing a full day's outage to upgrade the generators (which we are very thankful for).
As a result I'll be working most of Saturday to keep the servers offline so they don't over heat.
Here was my son's prayer tonight
"Dear God, thank you for all the wonderful things you've given us, like blue skies, and birds and water, and power, even though tomorrow we won't have any. But it doesn't really matter because I'll be outside all day at a mumu. Amen."
hah!
( a mumu is a traditional meal, similiar to a luau, in that the food is all cooked in the ground with banana leaves)
Laugh till it hurts
Today was a really tough day at work. The kind of day where you come home and really want to find out your kids were well behaved.
Well my daughter misbehaved a bit and I had to send her to her room. She had moved something of mine that I had told her not to touch.
So I sent her to her room "please do not touch my things."
and she replied "well dad, I didn't mean to touch your laptop."
well I didn't KNOW she touched the laptop, I was talking about something else, so I opened my laptop, and apparently for around an hour or so, my daughter and her friends were playing with Photobooth on my mac.
They shot video.
I'm watching this video not sure to be mad or laugh, and I see my daughter touching all kinds of things. In one video she's playing my banjo and mimicking me.
So I call her in.
"While you were in there did you touch anything else?"
"nope... "
"my banjo?"
"oh yeah.. that."
So we have a serious problem now, see, she wasn't silly enough to confess to anything she didn't have to, but she was silly enough to video record herself breaking the rules about my banjo.
We had a talk about trust, and now she's not allowed in my office.
Meanwhile I'm watching these videos laughing with my wife, and definitely burning these to DVD.
THESE babies are coming out when the kids start dating.
"photo albums? No... I wouldn't show you photos of my kids when they were younger..... no.. I HAVE DIGITAL!!!! Here, I'll upload this video to your phone."
mwa hahahahahahhaahah
7/16/2009
Being a Hero
from time to time days come up where you get to be someone's hero. I personally relish the days where my talents can enrich and help someone else in this way. Yes what we do here helps Bible translation. But occasionally it also saves someone's day.
My wife and I have a little joke, when I get home from work she says "did you save the day again today?"
In the past 24 hours I have been a hero twice, and it isn't a pride thing that makes me feel good. It's the fact that I can serve and help someone else that makes me feel good. To be of use, to be helpful, to be able to fill a drastic need.
Yesterday the principle of the primary school was having a REALLY bad day. I won't go into it, but it was simply everything going wrong. I was in a unique position to help. One of the things that went wrong was her laptop stopped booting. It took me about an hour of running chkdsk /r on her laptop and it was up and running.
She also had several computers from the PC lab have multiple problems. School starts in 3 days. And her computer lab is in a shambles. So our team of crack computer experts swarmed on the situation and have been working to repair it.
We saw the look in her eyes that day, man was she spent. So Kendal and I invited her over for left overs. While we were eating dinner, 2 friends stopped by, so we said "grab a plate". Suddenly our nothing planned evening became a left-over buffet and a great meal with friends.
I get a call from one of the top managers here, that their laptop was stolen in the capital city. So I had to scramble to check data backups and inventory information to help the police recover.
Today I came into work and the corporate email database (exchange 2007) was down.
So I've been repairing that so that people can get back to work.
It's been 24 hours of heroic activity. Perhaps it's my years of doing this now, but I recognize that God has put me here and given me these talents to use them to bless others and I really feel good when I can be useful that way.
So, it does feel like being a hero, but it feels more like being put in the right place at the right time by God, with the right skills He positioned me to learn.
There is something so very satisfying about that, so very peaceful about knowing without doubt that you are where you are meant to be.
My wife and I have a little joke, when I get home from work she says "did you save the day again today?"
In the past 24 hours I have been a hero twice, and it isn't a pride thing that makes me feel good. It's the fact that I can serve and help someone else that makes me feel good. To be of use, to be helpful, to be able to fill a drastic need.
Yesterday the principle of the primary school was having a REALLY bad day. I won't go into it, but it was simply everything going wrong. I was in a unique position to help. One of the things that went wrong was her laptop stopped booting. It took me about an hour of running chkdsk /r on her laptop and it was up and running.
She also had several computers from the PC lab have multiple problems. School starts in 3 days. And her computer lab is in a shambles. So our team of crack computer experts swarmed on the situation and have been working to repair it.
We saw the look in her eyes that day, man was she spent. So Kendal and I invited her over for left overs. While we were eating dinner, 2 friends stopped by, so we said "grab a plate". Suddenly our nothing planned evening became a left-over buffet and a great meal with friends.
I get a call from one of the top managers here, that their laptop was stolen in the capital city. So I had to scramble to check data backups and inventory information to help the police recover.
Today I came into work and the corporate email database (exchange 2007) was down.
So I've been repairing that so that people can get back to work.
It's been 24 hours of heroic activity. Perhaps it's my years of doing this now, but I recognize that God has put me here and given me these talents to use them to bless others and I really feel good when I can be useful that way.
So, it does feel like being a hero, but it feels more like being put in the right place at the right time by God, with the right skills He positioned me to learn.
There is something so very satisfying about that, so very peaceful about knowing without doubt that you are where you are meant to be.
7/12/2009
Planes
This picture is of the delivery of the Iyo New Testament.
The village is the area of some of our friends who will be dedicating soon (although we will not be able to attend as we are attending ANOTHER dedication).
The Cessna 216 you see here was able to carry all of these Bibles in 1 trip with 2 pilots.
One of the many ways I supported this particular delivery is by maintaining the systems that allow the pilots to move about.
Aviation has so many technical requirements, tracking, communication, booking, shipping. All of which take computers, radios, gps systems, and complicated software to maintain.
I lend technical assistance to Aviation by helping the guys there who maintain their software. Kendal teaches the kids of the pilots and the translators.
In fact Kendal had the son of these translators in her class.
I love these types of pictures, seeing a box of Bibles in a village represents a huge team effort. You are part of that team by allowing us to be here.
7/08/2009
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.
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.
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.
7/07/2009
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.
7/05/2009
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.
7/02/2009
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.
6/30/2009
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.
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.
6/29/2009
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.
6/08/2009
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)
5/24/2009
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.
5/20/2009
5/19/2009
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.
5/15/2009
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.
5/10/2009
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. (-;
5/01/2009
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.
4/28/2009
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.
4/21/2009
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.
4/16/2009
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.
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.
4/12/2009
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.
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