Honored

My time has come to a close.  Not only did God smooth the way for us to complete everything we HAD to do, we got to finish a lot of the WANTED to do's as well here in the Solomon Islands.  Being that nearly everyone here is translator staff, I was really privileged to support Bible translation so directly.

 

off the top of my head:

We have accomplished a LOT here:

-file sharing

-secure wireless

-wireless and physical network coverage

-firewall

-billing/metering solution

-better throughput

-networked printing

-physical cabling to specific locations

-computer training

-language data backup/archiving

-offline windows updates

-anti-virus strategy planned

-hf-email more reliable

-remote access

-overall faster network performance
-webserver

-usage reporting

 

Then there are the smaller one off issues as people found me and asked me questions.

 

I.T. guys, you'd be hard pressed to find a spot of the world more grateful for your help, and more hospitable to boot.  I had dinner in every one of their homes, some more than once!  Great group of people.

 

At the end I had to fight back tears for the 'thank you' dessert they threw me and the prayers they prayed over me.  They called me a blessing.  Having those people, call me a blessing.... that's one of those.... 'woah, me? wow!' moments.  I can't express to them how awesome an opportunity to serve them this was for me.  To serve God with my skills.

 

Let's be totally honest, I'm not the world's smartest guy, nor the best I.T. guy around.  I'm just a bloke who said 'yes, I'll go.'  And God has filled in all the gaps since.  So all the glory goes to Him.  He kept me from crashing and burning this week, He gave me what skill I have, He solved problems quicker and smoothed the path for me.  I GET to do this?  Are you serious?  Go exotic places!?  Serve people who call ME a blessing? 

 

THEY are the blessing.  They brought me here, paid my plane ticket, fed me, and made me useful.  Then they appreciated my work, and heaped thanks on me, and gave me a special 'dessert' send-off where they prayed over me.  I covet their prayers.

 

Anyway, it has been a very incredible week.  I miss my family and it's time to go home, but thanks God for letting me do this, and for making me useful to these people and this project.

 

HERE are some of the languages that I was able to directly impact this week:

LANGUAGE

Areare

Aiwoo

Amba

Anuta

Arosi

Asumboa

Babatana

Baeggu

Baelelea

Bauro

Bilua

Birao

Blablanga

Bughotu

Cheke Holo

Dorio

Duke

Fagani

Fataleka

Gao

Gela

Ghanongga

Ghari

Gulaalaa

Hoava

Kahua

Kiribati

Kokota

Kusaghe

Kwaio

Kwaraae

Laghu

Lau

Lavukaleve

Doku

Longgu

Lungga

Malango

Marovo

Mono

Nagu

Nalogo

Natugu

Ontong Java

Oroha

Owa

Pijin

Rennel-Bellona

Ririo

Roviana

Sa'a

Savosavo

Sikaiana

Simbo

Talise

Tanema

Tanibili

Teanu

Tikopia

To'abaita

Touo

Ughele

Ulawa

Vaeakau-Taumako

Vaghua

Vangunu

Vano

Varisi

Wala

Zabana

Zazao

Humbled

If you have ever had a missions experience then you most likely know the feeling of humility that comes from being treated with hospitality from people who have little and whom you are there to serve.

You go with the idea to give and yet you are given so much. That has been my experience here in the Solomons this week.

I'm honored to have been invited here, sent here,housed and fed here. I'm aware if the rare treat to be in a place with such significance during WWII.

Working hard is the best way I know how to thank God and thank the folks here for the many blessings that come with thus opportunity to serve.

This is the market here. These are the people seeking food. These are the people we are trying to reach with the bread of life.

Runnin cable in Solomons

Found this

Part of what I am replacing is the outside waps. Found one in the rafters on a deck with an external antenna connector. But to get power to it they did some splicing and I assume rats or geckos liked the tape glue because it was off and the two power leads were touching. I don't know how the wap wasn't shorting out. But it may have played a huge hand in some of the network faults. This has been replaced with nicer wiring and a wap powerful enough to keep indoors. The wap had geckos all over it staying warm. I would have snapped a pic but it was too dark out.

What I'm here to replace

Honiara harbor

Choices choices

Pop cone!!!

Family Wagon

This is a 'tuktuk' popular in India. It's a 3 wheeled vehicle, powered by a small Diahatsu truck engine. It's a manual transmission. Left foot clutch, RIGHT foot brake, right hand is the twist throttle, and the stick shift rests between your knees.

My wife and kids love this vehicle. My wife, who 4 years ago didn't know how to drive a stick shift, now can drive a tuktuk with ease!

We had this unique family vehicle for a short amount of time and then passed it on to a family who needed it more. For me, driving it was a pain, literally. I had to bend far over to see out the windshield and crouch down. Which is why we passed it on to someone who would use it more. Still, it was a nice way to stay dry in the rain for getting around centre.



THIS is why I didn't enjoy it. They call me Mr. Incredible when I drive it.

Mr. Incredible

Family Wagon

the Family Wagon

Solomons Islands

Honiara here I come.

Our organization has a branch in the Solomon Islands. Currently they have no I.T. guy and are in need of a network across their center to improve communication. Good communication furthers the work of Bible Translation in many ways.

at the business level:
-internet access speeds access to information and resources
-communication to remote areas can put people together who to get the job done quicker
-backing up of data avoids having to re-do work when laptops are damaged by weather, or lost to theft or accident.

on a personal level:
-you feel less remote when you know you can email or call a loved one, a prayer partner, a financial partner.
-overall sense of connection with the different worlds we move between helps decrease the sense of isolation, which in turn, increases the ability to stay in a remote place longer and get more work done (good communication helps to DECREASE the 'island fever' feeling of being all alone and wanting to go home)


Those are simply some highlights of why communication is so important. Some people use it rather creatively and can do multiple translation projects from anywhere in the world!

I'm pretty sure since you're a blog reader, I don't have to fully sell the idea of a reliable connection to the world. Even if it is only 256k download speeds.

Well, as a favor to this sister branch, our directors have lent me to them to go and:
-install wireless networking
-install network printing
-install file server/backup solution
-install internet routing/firewall/billing system (this is my own custom home grown solution that we're using, and so far, it's been very useful. My manager was asked to give a presentation at a local tech conference on it. Fully opensource, best-of-brand (so to speak) but also customized so that administrators can easily create accounts for people to use their internet with billing. (think of it as a low cost Metered Hotspot).

It's rather complex actually, but cool.
I run VMware ESXi on top of a small PC. That serves 3 virtual machines. Two of which are PFSENSE (opensource firewall, opensource captive portal) and 1 is Ubuntu 10.04 running FreeRadius and a customized version of Daloradius). It can plug into an LDAP domain or Active Directory domain, or, simply use it's own local Mysql database of users.

It's really something I'm proud of having been able to piece together and document. To get the effectiveness of this 1 box, you'd have to pay at least $2000 USD for something akin to what Starbucks uses to provide you with wireless. My cost, between $400 and $630 USD!!

Anyway, geek moment aside...

I'm heading to the Solomon Islands on Monday!!! How cool is that! The sister branch is paying for me to come out there, work my tail off for 1 week, and then come back.

They have no I.T. person, and could really use one, but my hopes are that when I'm done, I'll be able to remotely support them.

I'm telling you, it'll be an adventure for sure. Flying internationally always is. I'll be leaving behind my family for about 10 days. Please pray for them.

Please pray that the trip goes well and things don't break, and that when I'm gone it keeps working well for them. That's the trick. Designing and implementing something that will work for a very long time when I'm away.

Well, time to go pack.
Can you imagine... it's like I'm becoming a world traveler or something! ME!?

I'll definitely take pictures!
I think it's too much to hope for any actual site seeing time, there is too much work to do in too short of a time. But maybe I'll get some good pictures of me setting up the network! That's what you want to see isn't it? No one really wants to see tropical landscapes, and such. You want to see a sweaty guy sitting in a dark room, splicing cables!

Prayer and Hardware

Mock me if you must, but since high school I have believed in the power of prayer on hardware. Since that very first time I was troubleshooting a broken professional tv Video Tape Recorder. The teacher said 'Chad this isn't working see what you can do.' I spent an hour on it, couldn't resolve it, put my hands on it and prayed. It started working.

We don't battle against flesh and blood alone, but in my job it seems that is my primary function. To battle against the physical and logical failures of computers and networks.

Today we had the most catastrophic failure here that I've ever seen.

-one of our VM servers had a hardware error which crashed 8 virtual machines

-when the second VM server came up, and brought them back up, they were in a confused state because the boot sequence was broken (our Active directory came up last)

-at the same time, a motherboard lost a sensor and refused to boot on our main backup server... which means, not only would we not get a full backup tonight, but backups last night probably failed.

-all of this, on top of massive email failures, because one of our smarthosts went down and was refusing connections and I had 900 email messages in the queue.



In short, almost everything was broken at the same time, and I could not find a common cause. Typically you could look at power, but that wouldn't explain why the datastore filled up.

So as we sat there, working, trying to get it back online, I got to a point where I said 'wow! This is a lot to fix.' The phones were ringing, I was both network manager and acting department manager.

I was stuck. I had to fix these things with my co-worker, and had to do it fast.

I stopped and looked, and closed my eyes and prayed.
I put out a quick shout to some of the people calling in to tell me what I already knew (that it was broken)... and said 'all you can do is be patient, and pray'.

"God, if this is some random act of failure, please give me the ability to solve it quickly. If this is a spiritual thing, I pray against the enemy and his attempts. You are greater than he, and I pray you would bring healing to this equipment, bring it online, and I thank you for the skill you've taught me over the years, please make my brain work well right now."

It wasn't even 2 minutes before things starting coming online again.
I can't explain to you the joy that comes from seeing all reds, to all greens, in a very short amount of time.

In the end, we still haven't been able to diagnose a single root cause. It seems like multiple simultaneous failures.

We lost 1 server, the motherboard is dead.
But, as God would have it, we had another server recently offlined (we virtualized it), so we could steal it's motherboard.

We brought the crashed backup server back online in 2 minutes or so, and guess what.

The crashes happened in such a way last night, that we got all of our backups!

Not only did stuff come back online, but when it went OFFLINE, it went in such a way that we still did not lose a single bit of translation data, and all the other data that enables this work. And email is routing properly now too!

Some may cry 'coincidence'. Others may say 'well that's why you have I.T. guys'.

I say, God is great. He spared us.

It could have been really really bad, and I think, it would have been if we didn't realize we needed to pray. If we didn't submit and try to continue on in our own way, sure it may have gotten fixed eventually but God's way is so much better.

It is SO awesome that we're back online, what a crazy morning, but it ended without sorrow and that's a good thing.

Death of Music

This is my M-audio fast track. I bought it close to ten years ago in the U.S. and use it to interface a microphone and a guitar pickup into my mac. I use garageband from there to record tracks and goof around with music. My daughter and son LOVE playing with garageband, and I haven't done vocals for about 1.5 years. So my little fast-track sat in a locked cupboard, next to my microphone.

The other day my daughter and I had an idea for a fun project and I got all the equipment out and set it up for her to sing into, and something wasn't working. After trying a few things, I opened up the little box for the first time and saw this

You may be confused as to what you're looking at. Look for the little piles of dirt. At first I thought it was cockroach poo, but then upon conferring with my son, it's dirt, and dead ants.

Corrosion in electronics is common, notice the copper plate at the top there? Copper corrodes quickly here. Also if you look at the bottom pic you can see light green corrosion near the bottom. This type of thing happens from time to time here. Electronics that are stored, can suddenly become some pest's home. Others can be subject to corrosion from the humidity. The electronics you leave on, can become nice warm places for interesting things like geckos to lay eggs in.

We have what we call a 'dry box' for important electronics. It's a wooden cupboard with a light bulb in it and a fan. That is usually enough to keep this type of corrosion at bay. Although we do find it much more common near the beach (more humidity and salt in the air).

I took several Q-tips and some rubbing alcohol and clean out all the dirt but the corrosion was unrepairable. So I'll be replacing the unit somehow. Still it lasted me several good years, and I can be happy with it.

I have a backup plan, there are some electronics gurus here who could probably fix it, but the time involved would be quite a bit. I think that it might have been salvageable if I had caught the corrosion before plugging it in. I think giving it power zapped something inside that no amount of cleaning will bring back to life.

And this, is only 1 more reason why having technical people here to support the work is important. Someone needs to be able to open up your laptop and point to the big pile of dead ants and dirt and say 'Well, THERE's yer problem!' ... and then fix it.

Tim Tam

...from life in PNG

came across this pic from fail blog and thought it pretty funny.

Arnotts is an Australian company that makes 'biscuits' (Aussie for cookie which is funny if you ever invite an Aussie over for biscuits and gravy, you'll get an odd look 'why would you put gravy on cookies?')

TimTam is a chocolatey flakey cookie that the kids love. Some will actually drink MILO (chocolate flavored energy drink) through a TimTam. (they also eat ramen noodles dry).

So this picture had me laughing. We don't often buy these, because being imported from Australia, they're a little pricey.

Jury Rig of the Week

This is a close up of a FIXED Australian cistern.

A few days ago, our septic overflowed. Septic here is often a small tank, that leeches into the ground. Our septic was full because our ground is so saturated with water from the rains, that it doesn't leech very quickly. The water table is very near the surface, and as such, we depend mostly on the bacteria in the tank to eat the septic up and leech the water.

(for those unfamiliar with how a septic system works, don't worry I'll spare you further details (-;).

I tracked down the cause of this overflow by two methods:
1 - I had no idea where the tank was since I never installed it and found out by following my nose
and
2 - the lid wasn't below the surface, it was near my bedroom window.

I kept telling my wife as we go to sleep at night for a week, 'that funny smell, is NOT me... what is that?'

Long story short;

The toilet had broken, and was flooding water very slowly into the septic tank, filling it up. A small plastic piece, specially shaped to stop the flow of water when the float bob raised, had broken in two.

EASY fix right? head on down to the local hardware store and buy the internals to a toilet.

WAIT.. no one sells the internals to these things?

Okay buy the top half of a toilet then.
$75.00 and a 6 hour drive. Okay crazy glue? Except the crazy glue here doesn't work like it's supposed to, it comes out tacky instead of liquid possibly because of the heat, and once you open the tube, it's worthless the next day. So I don't keep it around too much. I considered duct tape, but tape and water don't mix well.

I asked around if anyone had half of a broken toilet I could scrounge from, but I couldn't find the right piece from those.

A 25 cent plastic piece broke. THERE HAS to be a better way.

So, I scrounged up a thick bit of old sheet metal, looks like it used to be used for some sort of radio bracket. Traced out what I thought the piece should look like.

Took an angle grinder to it, and made a small 2 inch piece of metal, specially shaped with a hole through it... mounted it in place of the cheap plastic piece that broke.

and.. viola... FIXED TOILET.

I was pretty proud of my fix. Admittedly, first I tried wood. I always try a wood fix first, but then I quickly went to metal, seeing as how wood rots slower than metal rusts.

You can see the piece in the pic above, top right. It's shaped like a little tiny noched pistol, but you can't see that part.

That's my jury-rig of the week.

I'm proud of myself for having been able to shape the piece and cut it precisely enough to fit where it needed to go.

Total cost $0. saved myself $75.00 and a 6 hour drive!

I came bursting out of the bathroom, beating my chest and raising my arms in triumph.

"Wife of mine, children, gather around, I have accomplished a great feat!"

and my wife replied,

"that's great dear, but most of us conquered that activity when we were five."

pa dum ta.

no she didn't say that, but it would have been really funny had she.

what she actually said was
"okay?!?!?"
"I fixed the toilet!"
"it was broken?"

doh!
Well, jury riggers unite, revel in my newly fixed toilet, and stay tuned for the next jury rig saga.

Fixer upper

This is the cistern (top part) of an Australian toilet with the lid off so you can see the inside. These toilets have 2 buttons. 1/2 flush and full flush and while standard here, that type of toilet is making its presence known in the U.S.

Aitape Online

As part of our goal to bring our regional areas on line, Kurt and Wayne (co workers) fly to Aitape and successfully installed a VSAT internet connect.

256mb down
512mb up
(blazing fast I know!)


Later this month, I'll be heading to Buka to do the same thing.

(from left to right, Kurt - fellow network engineer, Ben - translator and his co-translator whose name I can't recall, and Wayne - radio/electronics engineer)

Fridays

Fridays around here are really super busy and exciting and I never have figured out why.
But this week I'm acting department manager, which means I'm the guy in charge of the craziness.

RAIN RAIN RAIN
KABOOM, what was that?
I dunno I can't find out right now I have to get a guy out to Aviation to fix their printing, and return the autoshop's rental truck.

On the way, I find the industrial manager looking up, so I stop.

AHA!!! the the kaboom was lightning having hit a tree, broken a branch off, the branch took out a power line.

SEE the light green on the branch? It is most likely the path the lightning took down it,taking a strip of bark with it, but it could also be the branch sliding across the power line as it dangled and took it out.

HARD to tell, but it definitely fell, and it definitely took out the power.

People are running around trying to keep their homes from flooding.

It's a CRAZY day.
WOW.

It is at times like these, that I remember the adrenaline rush of working in I.T. in a third world country. I.T. can be exciting in Corp. America, here, you're working without a net, and soaking wet.

Kaboom

Beautiful sunny morning.
At lunch, it turned into a torrential downpour. Heavier than usual.
I headed back to work, got soaked in the process, to the bone.
the roads were rivers, my yard was a lake. I saw no grass, and I contemplated the chances my home would flood.

Lightening, thunder... and was about to post to the community to unplug their electronics to avoid lightening damage when

CRACK!!!!
lighting and thunder at the same time, had to be less than a thousand feet away from us, probably hit a power pole, because our radio repair room shot sparks into the room. (I was outside, didn't see it)

Anyway, definitely expecting some repairs due to lightning damage.
VERY thankful our servers are on DC power.

WeWak (aitape part 2)

Today I'm acting department manager.
At 4:30pm I get a call.

"Chad, aviation called, the rain has cancelled the flight that was going to take our sat dish to Wewak.... can you pull off a miracle?"

Our two guys who are out in Aitape, have a 5 hour bumpy truck ride to Wewak, where they are trusting, our equipment will arrive for them to install a second VSAT dish for a regional centre. (Regional centres are where our translators go to get supplies, recoup, do data backups, and more).

SO... how do I, knowing that everything closes in 30 minutes, get a satellite dish all the way across the country?

HELP. I use help.
a friend in Aviation was able to make a connection with a friend from a different missions organization who had a plane that could go to Wewak.
BUT that plane was 2 hours away.

So I needed to, in 30 minutes:
-find out the flight time
-get a vehicle
-get a driver (I can't go, I'd be leaving the department without a supervisor)
-take the two to aviation
-load the equipment in the vehicle
-arrange for the trip
-book the flight at the end of the trip.

AND did I do it? no.. WE DID IT.

I felt like saying 'we're on a mission from God.'
I called the autoshop - they had a vehicle they could rent us big enough to haul the load.
I asked an employee friend of mine who knew the area, who had a license was a good driver, if he could be willing to go.
Together we loaded the equipment.

So.. thanks to the guys in:
-aviation
-autoshop
-a neighboring mission
-the helpdesk
-and communications department

we are able to deliver, (unless something else changes) the equipment 2 hours away at 6am for a flight going to Wewak to meet our installer friends, so they can do the setup.

IF the equipment fails to get there, then their long bumpy ride and plane flight home will have been wasted time, effort, and money.


AND YOU THOUGHT installing internet was easy. (-;

Aitape online

so today I am acting department manager. Five minutes ago I checked the email and got this

"Could you please call (our ISP contact) and let him know we DO have an internet connection. I can't get through to him to tell him because the sat phone is cutting out."


!!!!
THIS IS GREAT NEWS.

Aitape is one of the locations that is hosting a multiple language translation project (translating more than 1 Bible at a time). We sent a team of 2 guys out there, they left two days ago. They installed a 2.4 meter VSAT dish, and tuned it in successfully.

YES!!!
You have no idea the amount of work that goes into installing a VSAT dish in a remote village location.

In your home area, you'd pour a cement slab, with some bolts, and put the dish together and mount it to the slab.

HERE, you have to make sure all the parts fit in the plane, the bags of cement are considered hazardous so have to be dealt with specially for the plane trip. Then you have to be sure there are workmen to do the pouring, etc.

It takes weeks.

AND THEN, how do you call your ISP to say 'turn on the pipe?' when you have no cell phone or phone service? You use a sat phone.

Anyway, it's online!!!! That's awesome..

stay tuned for part II.

Nobnob

(view from the top of nobnob near the tower)

In Madang Province, at the top of nob nob hill sits a wireless bridge that connects to Divine Word University.

about 4 years of effort goes into that statement.
4 years ago, the reality of having inter-connectivity to remote parts of the country was only a hope. Having that connectivity to POPULAR areas of the country was still only a hope. 4 years ago we had no relationship with Divine Word University or their IT department.

Nobnob is the place that hosts our training for people first coming into this country (and surrounding countries). It is like a jungle boot camp. But a little less so now that they have high speed internet.

For those that remember when my family went through this camp nearly 5 years ago, we went 'black' for 6-14 weeks. No email, no web browsing, no way to really contact us.

Today, the new trainees have cell phones with data access, and laptops. Is it a luxury?

Well sure any technology can be used luxuriously. Calling family and emailing them instead of writing letters that you hope will arrive via airmail... is technically a luxury. (one that makes living here more sustainable). But it is also a useful tool. Imagine getting sick in the village and having no way to call for help.

Even WITH the ability to call for help, last month we lost a dear member of our community to illness that came on quickly in the village. She was able to call for a medical evacuation, and sadly, passed away during the flight. Without communication technology, we wouldn't have known about it for a very long time.

Of course these are extreme examples. The more practical day to day application is that translators can receive communications from anywhere in the world to get their work done, as well as make backup copies should their laptops get damaged or stolen in transit.

As I write this two co-workers are flying to another remote region to install VSAT technology (I'll be doing this next month to Buka) which will bring them online for the first time in the Wewak and Aitape area.

THIS IS A HUGE win for Aitape and for Bible Translation, because it means that the work can continue without a physical presence (if someone has to return from the village, they can remotely help with the translation). It should speed things along greatly in the work.

I always get so excited when we get more and more connectivity and I get to see the ways God uses it.

Before this year is over, we'll have seen nearly 80% of our vision from 5 years ago come to reality. It's been a slow and patience requiring process because of the many obstacles in our path, but God is smoothing them.

I don't know God's mind or His timing, but part of me is excited as we're doing the installs hoping that God is preparing a time of harvest... hoping that finally these obstacles that have come down have come down at the same time for a reason, and that we are seeing God laying the foundations of something GREAT to come!

Something Fun

Two interesting things happened today:

1 - friend of mine out on a survey (they hike around the country like backpackers, to find villages and find what languages those areas are using, so we can gather statistics to guide which Bible translation projects we do).... and he came back with an interesting story. Read, the Tonda Survey

2 - we were able to announce 1/2 price internet per/mb for October. One of my goals here has been to work towards faster, more reliable, and more affordable internet so that we can remain in contact with the places we need to, to get the work done.

After many years at it, our team has the fastest, most reliable internet that we've had in ... well EVER. But people are very used to using it the way they used to when it was expensive.

SO, we had an idea, came up with a calculation and decided we could take a risk to cut the cost to everyone in 1/2 for 1 month. IF they use it more, it'll cost us less per mb.

My hopes would be to have a nice side effect of everyone being able to skype home for the holidays at 4 cents per mb !!!

(when I came here, the internet cost was around 22 cents per mb)


Our idea to make this happen is a bit risky, a bit zany, but it's a risk we can afford to take, so it's not super risky. What it means is that if we're wrong, and price isn't the prohibitive factor, and people simply don't NEED as much here, well then we'll end up having to pay the internet bill ourselves without the income to do it. BUT, we do have the budget to cover it.

So, it's a bit out of the ordinary, but if it succeeds, it will have been a huge leap forward in making things here more affordable for people.

So... pray it succeeds!

-Chad
nothing succeeds like a toothless parrot.

God leads

wanted to drop a quick line to say this thought that I had only moments ago.

My family and I were in town, scheduled to stay for several days this last week. One night around 2am I woke up, staring into the ceiling and had a thought:

'you should go home on Weds instead of Thurs.' (Yes, I think in abbreviations (-; )

In the morning I told my wife this. It meant packing up a bit early and heading home. When she asked me why, I didn't really have great reasons. I didn't want to say 'I have a feeling.' Because that's not really my style. But I did say things that made enough sense to appease her, which wasn't hard.

There were logical reasons to return early... and I figured my brain must have been identifying those.

We returned.

The next day fighting, massive fighting, broke out in a major town we would have been traveling through. 14 people confirmed dead. The fighting went on for three days. Well, truth be told, I would have been warned about the fighting and would have avoided that town and extended our stay until the fighting was over. But that would have incurred cost. But then I realized today, that the phones here have been down, and so I would have never got the call to tell me to stay out of town.

The thought I had right now was:

'WOW I'm glad we came home a day early!... wait.. GOD probably did that!'

God has us in the palm of His hands doesn't he?

I'm really thankful for those times when we get spared.

The fighting makes me sad. I long to see God's Word transform this culture of fighting up here in the highlands. They do such violence to one another. The enemy has a strong grip on them, and I long for the day I see God's truth break that and change them to a culture of love.

Found by my son in a store

We always enjoy reading poorly translated packaging. Anyway it is a delight for you to have a crocodile.

Weed whacked

Here it's called a bush cutter and it costs over $1000 Usd !!! Ironically paying a man to cut 3 acres of tall grass costs about $12 Usd

We are finding that prices
Are going up as the
Exchange rate devalues the US dollar more. This is partially because a lot of out of country business has moved
here because of the new nickel mine being built.

Hose

In town looking for a hose. Found one but didn't buy it because it cost over $100 Usd !!!!

The bill is in

Total cost out of pocket for our son's medical evacuation - $8000
These are the times that try men's faith.

Often people ask me 'is it cheaper to live in PNG?' The answer simply is 'yes'. It is not however cheaper to fly to or leave PNG. The pricetag for that is $10,000 for my family. It isn't cheaper to get gravely ill in PNG either.

But God transcends money. Money is a man made contrivance that doesn't really seem to phase God at all and yet puts man in definitely difficult situations.

This month has been a difficult month for some of our friends. As support staff we work to support the work of Bible Translation. To get that done you need Bible Translators. This young couple, friends of ours, my wife and I spend a lot of time praying for.

They've had a rough go of it for a long time now. They are newly assigned translators and so we have been supporting them and praying for them to make progress in their language group.

It seems like they've seen nothing but hardship since coming here and we pray desperately that they don't give up. But for years now, they've had major trouble after major trouble.

-Getting land-locked and separated by a huge mudslide
-Illness, fleas, inability to sleep

that was last month
this month it is the birth of their son, but then having visa problems so they couldn't get back to PNG, then their daughter got very sick and had to have a spinal tap....

and then all of this, the flights and the medical bills, they have no money to pay for all of it.

It all seems so desperate doesn't it?

Living this lifestyle means you have very few constants. Life is always in transition. That bugs a lot of Type A personalities who need to have a plan. Well you can make a plan but expect that plan to be dashed to pieces. It's hard on you to be always unsure of one day after the next.

But we do have one constant. One we know. GOD IS FAITHFUL.

Bad stuff happens, but GOD IS FAITHFUL.
Does that mean we always get the answer we want? No. BUT GOD IS FAITHFUL. GOD IS GOOD. GOD IS JUST. GOD IS LOVING.

Money and health (psychological and physical) are two things in constant flux around us. Sometimes we have more of it than at other times.

We live on the edge of faith. We depend on God to show up, otherwise we don't make it.
God shows up. He always has.

Living like this, I can see the Israelites and their behavior. How many times did they hear from God Himself, and yet continued to mess up?

And yet, we often have worry and doubt when it comes to financial and health issues. How many times has God provided for us? For our friends? For others around us?

Why do we worry then?
A problem presents itself, and our instinct is to find the solution. When we arrive at the fact that the only solution to be found lies outside of our control, then we doubt. We doubt if the solution will come. We doubt if it'll come the way we want it to.

Parents with kids who have driver's licenses understand this sense of loss-of-control.

It is out of your hands now.

But each time they return home unscathed, your confidence grows a little in their ability.

God has been so faithful to us that our confidence in the likelihood that He will not let us fall, is immense.

And yet, silly us, we tend to worry.

Today when I got this bill for the medivac my jaw dropped. I thought we had already seen the last of the bills. And I admit, I did think 'how are we going to pay this?' For a moment.

But a voice inside of me said loudly, 'He's never let you down.'

And He hasn't.

God is faithful.

This month I've heard of some friends who are gravely ill. Yet they glorify God and say 'He is good.' If you've ever asked yourself 'how can this person who is dying say that God is good?' Then I want for you to know how they could say that. It comes from a profound relationship with Christ. The kind of friendship where you know that friend has your back. Where that friend loves you despite all your failures. That friend knows you within and without, and constantly upholds you. You may be at your darkest and deepest and worst moments of your life, and they are there holding your hand. Should we hate this friend because they have the supernatural ability to remove the bad stuff from us? Or should we love this friend because even though the bad stuff comes, the really good stuff lies just around the corner, and there would be no good stuff, without Christ.

1 Cor 1:
4 I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. 5 For in him you have been enriched in every way—in all your speaking and in all your knowledge— 6 because our testimony about Christ was confirmed in you. 7 Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. 8 He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.

Managers and Donuts

1 week ago yesterday I officially became the manager of a portion of my department. Management in a multi-cultural, volunteer based ministry is an interesting twist to the challenge of managing.

It's something I've been trying to avoid for a long time. There is no benefit to one's self to becoming a manager when you are supported by people rather than by your job. So then why would I want to become a manager? I really for many years, have wanted to be a worker bee. I am happiest when knee deep in technical issues that need resolving, or when thinking about how I can use some technology to further the attempts of man to serve God's purpose.

It's not the first time I've been asked to assume a leadership position here. Each time I have prayed and considered it and each time I felt more called to be a worker bee. Although managers are worker bees, often they handle the things that we worker-bees don't like to do so that we can keep working.

So now I'm a manager, but also a worker-bee. See we don't have enough people so I wear two hats.

"Chad, I think we should install wireless across the entire Aviation department, do you approve?"
-switch hats-
"Yes I approve, can I handle the paper work for you?"
-switch hats-
"That would be wonderful, thanks."

Lest you think my hair turn too pointy. I found out most people already thought I was a manager, no I've only been ACTING manager before (-;

My new challenges include all the administrative tasks, plus the well being and successful operation of telephones, helpdesk, networking and software development. I have several ex-pat direct reports as well as papua new guinea nationals.

So... why would I say yes? Would I say yes simply because no one else would?
Nope. I say let God raise up someone to do the job. I refuse to take a job I will fail at. I have a responsibility to you who sent me here, to spend my talents as best I can and to do what you sent me here to do.

The reason, is because as I age/mature I look around and I see more of the decisions being made, and more of the process. In my youth I was happy to let someone else handle the burden of leadership. But I have come to the realization that God has given me skills and talents and that I was not submitting a large part of those skills to Him because I didn't want the extra stress and burden.

I'm hopeful that part of me can be used to serve God in a new (and additional) way, that will encourage others to do their best for Him too. I hope to bring to the table, passion and encouragement.

It's time I start being part of the solution, and pitching in to do a job few really want to do.

So that will consume some portion of my time now, but I am still a network engineer and will remain so, until I find that my hair has become so pointy as to become a burden rather than a help to the network team. I hope that time will be a great many decades away.

Please join me in prayer as I need God's help to be a good servant leader.... this role can affect the longevity of so many other people. AT the worst I could be a bad manager and discourage people wanting to serve God. At best I could be an inspiring leader who pulls the best out of people!

God will be the only way the best is possible in me.

ON DONUTS:
The other day I saw a line for donuts at a store. Nationals love them. A friend of mine sells them at market every friday and makes a killing. I stood outside a store entrance the other day and saw PNG'ians coming through with sweet kai (sweet-food =donuts).

And my first instinctive reaction was "why are they spending what little money they have on junk food?" then "oh, maybe they already had something with protein in it." and it hit me... much like my kids before kindergarten, it is possible a percentage of Papua New Guineans have very little education in the area of nutrition. If you don't have that understanding, then you would naturally eat what tastes good and is available.

I'm not saying ALL PNG'ians, I'm definitely some, and maybe most. HEALTH and NUTRITION training is a constant challenge in countries like these.

And I began to compare it to spiritual matters. It seems instinctively like they are making unwise decisions that are affecting them physically.... they need to be told about nutrition.

How much more are they making decisions that affect them spiritually.... they need to be told about Christ.

That donut has a hole in the middle of it for a reason.
Comparitively, so does their 1 kina coin. A hole right through the center of it.

The kids when they play soccer, and the ball goes through the opposing players legs, shout '1 kina!' Perhaps it's because of the hole in the coin.


PNG has a hole in it's soul, and if you have eyes to see it, it's everywhere.
And it pains me to see, it hurts my heart to see. It hurts to the point where you almost need to protect your heart a little. So many missionaries can easily get jaded over the years because your soul can't take seeing a people hurt themselves for decades on end. If you ever hear one of them make a joke about the culture they serve, perhaps don't see it as an insensitivity but a self defense measure.

I can tell you there is such a geniune desire to see PNG come to Christ, to embrace Him, to change their behavior as a result of that love, that they stop tearing each other and themselves down... and start building up.

There is a hole.
There is a gap.

And with your help, we stand in the gap together, ushering them to find Christ.

Minute 2 Winit

So I may have mentioned that 1 saturday a month or so, we volunteer to do something fun with the 7th and 8th graders.

IT's been hard to get them to mesh as a team, because there is a grade division.

But tonight I think we succeeded.

I downloaded 6 minute to winit videos, and my wife and I planned the events and had others help
with running the booths, and we had a marathon TEAM based minute to win it.

The folks gelled and there were a lot of good team building things happening.

If you want my formula, here is how to host a successful youth minute to win it night.

goals:
-separate the 'cliques'.
-award sportsmanship
-have fun
-award team and individual achievement.

1. Pick your six (or however many) events from the minute 2 winit website (we chose events that were titled tastefully and didn't waste food or consumables like Toilet Paper because of our limitations here.

2. Download and watch the videos, make a list of the equipment you need

3. Ahead of time, gather your equipment for each event.

4. Label your events with numbers (1 - 6)

5. Place all needed items for event in a bag marked for the number of the event (separate out your game pieces by event (1-6)

6. Recruit 1 person to run each booth (1-6)

7. The day of the event, setup is easy, drop the numbered bag off at the station it's for, explain to each leader the rules, and the setup, have them do the setup. Give them total control over the rules, let them be the booth boss.

8. Play the instructional videos for the kids.

9. Divide into teams (this method works well)
- as the kids come in have them write their first and last name on a slip of paper
- choose 6 kids to pull out an even amount of names (thus the teams are randomly assigned)
other methods are easy for the kids to cheat with... if they each pull out a number they can swap.

10. Team 1 starts as booth 1, and 2 and 2, and so on

11. Timing: EACH booth boss has a watch with a second hand.. to time 1 minute.
If you have 5 kids per team, and 6 booths, a good amount of time is 7 minutes. We budgetted too much time, we did 15 minutes because we assume 8 kids and 1 minute setup, but what ends up happening is the kids help with the setup as the play happens... so you spend almost ZERO time on setup

ROTATE teams to the next booth after 7 minutes.

12 Scoring: EACH team has a score card. The booth boss gives 1 point for each person on the team who successfully passes the test. If they have succeeded once, they don't get another stamp. This encourages EVERYONE to play and also awards individual achievement without causing one to shine more than any other. (otherwise the kids will elect the BEST to keep doing it for unlimited points). IF they run out of time they can redo for fun only.

SPORTSMANSHIP: - the timekeeper who is roving from booth to booth will put an S on the card if they get a sportsmanship point.

13 AWARDS: - we had a silly trophy and some candy to give out, because we hope to do it again. The trophy was little too 'girly' so the boys didn't care, but the girls sure did. Since when did GIRLS care more about trophies? Since the trophy was a plush toy FISH.


So that's how we did it. It was a HUGE success. The kids had a lot of fun, really went outside their social boundaries... which was our goal. WE saw some incredibly good sportsmanship, and it was the first time we didn't have some odd conflict happening in a corner somewhere.

But now, it's rest time, we're tired, it took a lot of creativity and work to pull it off, but we do it because we love our kids and this is part of living here. They don't have malls to go to, they don't have movie theatres, or whatever else kids do. But they do have these special saturdays where they never know what is going to happen... but they know it's always fun.

God wants us to know what is on His network

When I first arrived in PNG there was no way to monitor the devices on our network. We knew they went down when people called to complain. One of my first tasks was to build a NOC (network operations center), so I would know, get emailed, paged whenever anything went down.

I had done this at previous jobs several times, only now, I had to do it with zero budget.

There are opensource tools out there that are nice, but they have huge drawbacks in that the guy who sets up the NOC is the only guy who understands it. I needed something intuitive that anyone on the team or following me could learn quickly.

That rules out a LOT of solutions.

One solution that I knew and liked was Solarwinds 7. I wrote a friend years ago and they donated a license. Suddenly we could see all our devices and do monitoring. We fell in love with it and it was easy to manage. Now it's several revisions old, but still very useful.

Not long after that I wrote a letter to a company producing PRTG because I needed to bandwidth monitor my firewall via SNMP. They wrote me back with a 100 node license, gratis!!! FREE donated because we are a non-profit organization.

I saved that letter as 'this is my template for a successful donation request.'

Recently though we've needed to monitor services (linux and windows). So I began playing with Zenoss. But found that while it was the best opensource monitoring, it wasn't a simple and good compliment to Solarwinds. More like a replacement. It was hard to configure but not as hard as others.

Which brings me to IPsentry and WhatsupGold. IPsentry is an unassuming little tool, it looks a bit aged, but it's very powerful and easy to configure and does EXACTLY what I want to do. Total price $695.

I took out my request template, customized it, and sent it to IPsentry. Within 24 hours they donated a full package license to us!!!!!

I'm so elated right now I can't explain it to you.

THEN, I did the same for WhatsUpGold, which is around $4000 product now. (I remember when it was free). They wrote me back and said 'how many nodes do you need?'

WHAT!??? WOW!!!

Okay so that you are following:
-Solarwinds - $3000 - donated
-PRTG - $800 - donated
-IPsentry - $700 - donated
-WhatsUpGold - $4000 - donation possibly in progress

With those 4 products, there is no way anything happens on my network I don't know about.

Oh yeah,
Bomgar - appliance costs $61,000 - donated at cost $1400
Packeteer - new $10000 - purchased at bankrupcy sale $1300

I know I groused a bit about Microsoft changing their licensing on us and costing us thousands, so consider this post equal time and a thank you.

There have been some great donations to my department in the last several years.

Whenever I run into a problem I run through this mental flow chart:



And I get to that part about a creative solution, and I sent out emails and letters, and wouldn't you know it, God responds through people.

I have had failures, I've asked for donations and been told no. But it strikes me today, that in this one thing, I've had a tremendous amount of encouragement and success. God must REALLY want us to be able to monitor what is on our network. Look at that list of products? We would NEVER be able to have brought this NOC up to this professional level without those donations.

I am so encouraged by the fact that God seems to be blessing our efforts to supply professional support to the effort of Bible Translation. It's like a huge stamp of approval on my efforts here.

I would have never thought about writing for donations, years ago. I never had to, I always worked for corporations that had financial resources.

Here, we have to be a tad more creative and I thank God and give Him the glory for every creative effort and thought I've had in this area!!

So this is a thank you to the people who have contributed, to the companies and their donations, to the work of accomplishing changed lives through Bible translation!

Lots going on

This is a nice lunch snack in some villages. I have volunteered to eat one, but have been warned some people are really allergic to them, and so I have passed.

There is a LOT going on right now, so much I haven't had time to blog.
-there was a bible camp for local kids

-a 2 week training course to teach Papua New Guineans why we are here, to help us become 'wanbel' (of a like mind - but literally means 'one stomach'.. here the stomach is used how we would use 'heart' in the U.S. so.. we have the same heart for seeing people changed by God's Word....we are wanbel (juan - bell)

-bible dedications revisited - we looked over all the dedications done in the first 6 months of 2011!

-work has been busy, we're on the verge of connecting to the internet 3 new regions in the next month alone!!! using VSAT technology.

Today was a very good day at work, as I was able to help a translation consultant before he left for the village tomorrow, I was able to help solve a problem that could have put a major project off by a month, and I was able to assist a teacher to conduct some English learning training.

Every now and then, God gives you a glimpse, a reminder of how we are honored to serve Him, and how our contributions help. Today was one of those days!

Thanks God... keep up the good work in this country! I'm very pleased to see all the training and the changing of hearts and minds as people start to see the importance of growing closer to Christ and training others to follow.

anwered prayer

I wanted to tell you all this story... I'm still sort of shaking from how amazing it is.

Today at 10:30 we had 4 network guys sitting in a room taking training. When the phones began to ring. Something was seriously wrong on the network. Typically we can find the issue within moments with our operations software, but we couldn't.

It took a while but we finally found out a server was down,
then another server
then another
as we tried to find the common denominator, each time we tried to fix things, it got worse.

Then a knock on the door, my wife said 'pray for (our friends) their 5yr old daughter is getting medivac'd for an appendicitis'.

Email stopped working. EMAIL is critical during a medivac because they need to get email approval before getting a plane into the air.

So now the pressure was on. Aviation couldn't fly, the clinic couldn't get approval, and servers were going down.

We worked through lunch, and into the afternoon when we found also that in the middle of this, all of our DNS records were gone.
Our ISP had a routing issue that caused the dns servers to go offline... so now, mail and internet weren't working.

DURING a medivac.

The network room was complete chaos. I took a few minutes once we realized calls needed to be made, left a co-worker to make the calls and headed home. I talked to my wife who mentioned that their Bible study was cancelled.

And then it hit me... this is NOT a coincidence.
I headed back to the office, buried my face in my hands. I prayed, 'God I don't think this is a coincidence, I think the enemy is stirring up confusion right now and I don't know why, please thwart him. God bring us victory over this!!'

While I was praying, the phone rang, my co-worker answered it, I ignored it and kept praying.
I lifted my head from my hands the call was over, my coworker said,

'it's all working again'!! PRAISE GOD!!!
and then I turned to tell him how I was just praying and we heard the medivac plane take off.

PRAISE GOD.. HE is powerful, HE is victorious.

In the end, a routing problem in Singapore was the cause of the computer issues.... and I'm glad those are over, but there had to be a reason all this strife was stirred up, so we're continuing to pray against that.

But I wanted to take a moment and praise God, for immediate answered prayer, and how awesome is that!

Krahij

The tok ples name of this is krahij, and we get the word for two minute
noodles (like top ramen) from this - krahij taphmnei - rope of krahij. When you eat these,
the insides come out as a piece of thread. They are pretty tasteless - a
good thing when you need to be polite and eat what is given. The only thing
to handle is to get the thing into your mouth and then just swallow and
smile.

No, I have not had the privilege of eating one yet, but I'm sure if I visit my finish friend who lives in this village, I may be offered a few... and yes, I would in fact eat it if offered.

Often people ask me what the oddest thing I've eaten here is. I may say 'grasshopper' I've avoided eating rat, but I did eat a small river eel. I have also not eaten the popular sago grubs, which I hear are as fun to eat as popcorn.

No matter how disgusting a food sounds, when you're offered it as a form of hospitality, in a culture where food is so central to relationship building, you eat. And you smile!

like a friend once taught me 'take small bites, and think CHICKEN!' (-;

Sorcery

today I thought I might borrow from someone else's blog, because the 'teen mission trip' mentioned had some of the youth from our center here and the author/translation team actually live on our center here that I help support.

from
http://www.pbtpng.org/forgiving-amongst-sorcery
Forgiving amongst sorcery


By Rhonda Hayward

“Before she became a Christian, Martha killed some of my children through sorcery. But now we are sisters in Christ and I don’t have any bad feelings toward her. Christ has forgiven me and I have forgiven Martha.” These amazing words were spoken by our good friend Druk. She is the wife of Gabriel, the Tay preacher who helped establish the first church amongst the Tay people. During the teen mission trip in April, Druk, in the presence of Martha, gave the above testimony to Carissa and a few of her friends as they were sitting talking together one afternoon.

Martha, now an exuberant Christian, was indeed an ex-sorceress. She readily testifies that she used sorcery to kill many Tay babies and children. In 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, Paul enumerates various past sinful lifestyles held by the Corinthians. Then he says, “But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God”. Paul’s words are true for Martha, as well as for each one of us.

Though we knew Martha’s past, when Carissa and friends returned to the house and shared with us what Druk had said, we were amazed. We had not realized the depth of forgiveness, healing and reconciliation the Lord had done in the lives of these women. These words are a powerful testimony of God’s supernatural grace at work in the lives of the Tay recently to bring about the fruit of forgiveness and reconciliation.

In March, we held a scripture use course, requested by the Tay, on unity. It was a delight to realize that many of the scriptures on unity in the Bible are from the recently translated books of Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians into Tay. How even more delightful to see the truth of those verses “translated” into the very lives of the Tay and see the fruit of unity evidenced, as in the lives of Martha and Druk.

Druk’s testimony was a great encouragement to me, but also a great challenge. May God’s forgiveness and reconciliation be richly displayed in how I love and forgive others.

“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” Colossians 3:12-14

Rhonda is the wife of Steve Hayward. Steve is a Bible translator serving among the Tay people group. They are nearing the completion of the Tay New Testament.

zuchinni

this morning I stayed home to watch my sick son while my wife taught. Upon leaving the house she had a hard time opening the door. Then she said 'uh babe, what is the date today?'

and I instantly knew....

I said 'oh no... they didn't?' but they did.
Someone snuck a zucchini on our front porch.

But that wasn't all.

When I got into work after lunch, there was on on my desk.

Whoever you are, well played.

I didn't see it coming