Wives and Women

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So that's the setting.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why I dig My Job

Why I dig my job.

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

South America in Gingerbread

my daughter did this for social studies, 4th grade

Valiant Foe

alternate title "So Long, Gofair."

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

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

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

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

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

So I slayed the next one with a mouse trap.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What did I do today?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Technology in the 3rd World

this pic should give you an idea.

Today We Pour

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It really is exciting to be a geek sometimes.

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

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

Birthday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tv and Stock Take

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

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

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

So all in all, a busy day.

Pooch porch or doggy deck?

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

Girl fort out of mini bamboo

Jury rig I found telephone batt. 3aa

New toy at work

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Little Things

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

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

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

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

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

Easter 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Isaiah 61

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

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

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

And this one too:

1 Corinthians 15:58 (New International Version)

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

Christ is risen.

Another Dedication

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

Some of our friends wrote:

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


THIS is one of the great fruits of our labor.

Conference

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Word about Finances

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

Thank you all so very much!

Weekend Madness

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

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

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

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