Healing

I'm writing this story to entertain, and also to explain what a typical Friday is like living here in PNG. The very first thing you need to know is that there is no such thing as a typical day.

You never know what is going to happen on any given day, but Friday's and Monday's seem to be the LEAST predictable.


FRIDAY:

8am I arrive at work to finish some projects and find I'm the first one in. I begin to do my work, and as others file in I find the news that they will be driving across the country for a week and I'll be left behind to man the department. That's fine, I prefer to stay than to take the drive.

PLEASE pray for their safety and that the job goes well, they'll be attempting to in 4 days: (the pic above is them and some of the equipment they'll be installing)
-install 2 wireless links (putting 2 of our centers on faster internet)
-get VSAT training so we can increase our bandwidth and bring other regional centres online.
-success - it's hard when you have to travel so far and have no access to electronics or tools, they have to plan this down to every last screw and zip tie. It is an ambitious goal, but once done, we will have faster access and have 2 departments online that have not yet been online!!!


it's a LOT to accomplish in 4 days.


at 10am I head over to a department selling a used desk to see if my kids could use a nicely made but affordable desk. I pass on the desk it's too big. But I head home to check.... nope too big.

I head back to work

11am I get the news my truck has a bad solinoid on the fuel injection pump, it'll be out of commission for up to a month.

at noon I get home and realize there isn't much to eat for lunch so I scrounge.

I tell my wife the news about the truck and the desk. I leave for work, nearly forgetting that the water to our house is unexpectedly off because they are trenching a new water line in front of my house... as such I have to practically jump the 1 foot wide trench... it was more of a fall jump, but I made it.


THIS is where the day goes oddly.

I decided since we have a 3 day weekend to treat my kids to a trip to the river, so I go to check it out... there is a new gate there since I last went and it's locked.

I find out I have to go to the industrial department to get the key.

I go.. get the key. I drive to a different dept. to make a copy... they said 'we can't copy that key it's a master.'
I call around.. 'woops that's the wrong key'.
I go back down to industrial, they give me 2 keys 'It might be one of these or 1 other one'
I DRIVE clear over to the river, nope both keys don't work.

On the way back I nearly scrape a van, my fault, but thankfully only the rubber of my fender touched the rubber of his fender. I wasn't driving fast, it was a skinny area and these things happen.

I get back 'hey this is the wrong key' he says, 'okay then it HAS To be the other one... you have to go down to the gravel wash to find the tractor driver, he's got the key.'

I drive over the trenching, passed the gates, and find a big frontloader, I pull along side, they were expecting me, they give me the key but want it back by 5pm.

3pm I take it up to get copied.
4pm I get a message:

'I don't have any blanks for these keys to copy, go over to Dept C and get blanks.'

So I go over to THAT department, buy 2 blanks, and come back.

On the way I see someone with ice cream!!!!

The store hasn't had ice cream in months and my wife could use a cheer-me-up today so I stop by the store, pick up a liter of vanilla, and head home. Still needing to get the keys to copied.

AT home what was going to be a quick drop off of the ice cream turned into a dog story.

Apparently our friend's dog got stuck under our house in pain and wrapped up in wire.
They tried to rescue it but it was biting them, so they asked for help.
The young son accused me of setting a wire trap. I assured the little.... tyke... that were I to set a trap, it would have been a lot more effective than wrapping pig wire around a dog's hind legs and causing it to yelp.

SO.. I go inside, get my squirtgun, chase the dog out of under the house, put my foot on it's neck, and whip out my leatherman's and cut the wire loose.

I'm thanked, but the boy refuses to give me an apology for the trapping comment, his mom tells me to soak him with my water gun. I opt not to.

back on the bike, heading to get keys copied.

Drop the keys off at 4pm.

All the while in between all of this I'm setting up printers, debugging software, fixing stuff, and working with satellites.


It's been a really non-boring, crazy day here, oh hey! someone just put me a bottle of Gummy Vites on my desk for no reason.

I suppose this mystery will be solved when I go home and find my wife had ordered these or something.

I try one.
Not bad... like a gummy bear with a vitaminy after taste.

I read in a book today that 'the gelatin in gummy bears is made from cow bone and pig skin'.

So.. now that I've put that in my body I figure it's a pretty good end to a totally unpredictable day.

Yet it's only 5pm, and I have my kid's choir concert tonight to attend, and anything can happen there too.

WOW.. sometimes life is exciting.

vSphere

So while I was gone, our network room implemented VmWare's vSphere. And then we got a dvd video training us which I'm half way through. WOW this product is awesome!

IT wasn't supposed to happen while I was gone, but it had to because Microsoft decided to eliminate our donated licenses. THAT is a longer more sad story, but as a result this GOOD story happened:

We're half way through virtualizing our server structure, but the implications of this product are huge for us as an organization and for me as an engineer.

Off the top of my head:

-less data loss (I want to say zero but.... any IT folks know you simply don't say certain things out loud (-; )

-less down time
-no more Saturday de-dusting of the physical servers
-less power use
-less cooling requirements
-I no longer have to run up to the server room when the power goes out to shut things down, I can do it remotely, and power them up remotely.
-Emergency contingency (all our servers would fit onto a 200gb external hard drive)
-Quicker recovery from external hacking (oh you hacked me? shoot, well I'll have the server back up in ten minutes)

Man this is simply the coolest product. I've worked with virtualization before but this is the cadillac of virtual systems.

So, for those who wondered 'how will Chad keep his resume up to date and his skills sharp?' Well I now get to play with the latest greatest in virtualization software and will have enough on the job experience with it to become adept. AND there is a possibility that there will be a chance for certification with it.

IF you can't tell, I'm VERY excited about this product and it's capabilities thus far. IT resolves a GREAT many issues for us.

But the best part of it all,
is that we will be better utilizing everything.
Our man power - takes less manpower to handle more servers

Our hardware - we'll get more bang for the buck now

Our electrical consumption - we'll be burning less kilowatt hours as the physical servers are turned off

Our cooling requirements - I've spent countless hours tending to an overheating server room during power outages or air conditioner failures

Our personal time - because we are in a cluster, the 'saturday scheduled downtimes' will become much more rare, enabling me to spend my saturdays doing 'husbandly' and 'fatherly' things.

The entire organization here will profit from this new infrastructure. Most people won't even notice, as people only notice when stuff 'breaks' but the plan is that somehow now, things won't be 'breaking' as often as they once were.

News

Two bits of news today:
-in the local paper there was a writeup about the New Testament Bible Dedication that happened last month!

-the construction team here is working on a new building for our training center. A Dining hall. We will soon have the capacity to host large training courses, feed and house the trainees for the multiple weeks we have them. The training courses often involve inviting Papua New Guinean church leaders or aspiring translators, and train them in how to translate the Bible and how to use the Word of God to communicate to their people. In other words, we do a LOT of training here, we don't simply say 'here's your new Bible'. But we teach them how to use it, how to help translate it, how to apply it.

Think of all the incredible things that this building can be used for!

The Word

The Melting Point of Rubber Bands ...and other disgusting things

So we've gotten into our house, opened the storage closet, and pulled things from it. What we found was interesting to say the least.
Rats and roaches had made their homes inside our clothing.
Mold had grown on everything plastic or leather (shoes).
And dust had found its way INSIDE of cases.

For example, I was surprised to find that dust made it's way into my banjo case and onto my banjo. Although I'm certain a scientist might tell me it was a fungus and not dust, but it looked and felt like dust.

As we walked around people were saying 'so, you cleaning up lots of rat poop?'. THEY KNEW? They didn't tell us.

Sometimes it does feel that this lifestyle has certain rites of passage. Going on furlough is one. Returning from furlough is another. Although we've already passed hopefully 85% of these rites, and the remainder are many years off.

But the most interesting thing....
as we left we removed batteries and then I used rubber bands,made in PNG (the brand is called 'SWALLOW'... so the box says 'Swallow rubber bands', I used the rubber bands to secure the batteries to the device they belonged to so I could use them again when we returned.

The rubber bands melted.
They melted so much that I had forgotten I rubber banded items and was wondering 'what is this colored goop all over my stuff?'

The best I can figure, when left alone the rubber bands do not melt. In the box, they are fine.

I believe that once the initial STRETCH is completed, then at room temperature or slightly above, these rubber bands will melt.

It's the oddest thing. It seems really odd that I should say 'we should import our rubber bands'. But ONLY the ones I've stretched and used, and left alone, have melted.

Anyway, it's all part of life in the tropics. Learning how to cope.

We're glad to be back and settling in again.
People were really excited to see us back, both personally and professionally which always feels good.

Microsoft Licensing

Possibly the single biggest change in the last 6 months is our Microsoft Licensing has been revoked.

I won't get too specific because I don't know how much I should be public about.

We had many donated licenses from Microsoft for windows, office, exchange, etc.
Donated = 100% free.

This year Microsoft asked us to roll out one of their key management servers and we said we simply couldn't do it.

As a result (again generalizing) they decided in our new contract, that all donated licenses were now expired.

Typically Microsoft grandfathers in existing systems that have been on donated licenses.

To me that is unheard of.

I mean you can say 'all future licenses are going to cost you X dollars'.
But to say 'everything we've donated to you in the past is now illegal' is in my opinion ridiculous.

It comes down to a discrepency in the original contract for the program. The catalyst was our refusal to use the key management server, and so suddenly the wording of the contract came into question.

As a result, since we can NOT move to opensource very quickly, (will take 3-5 years to totally migrate because of the remoteness of our user base), we are pretty much forced to comply.

This will cost us $70,000.

$70,000 to legalize what was legal 3 months ago. $70,000 to make legal what should be still legal.

I know that Microsoft tried this in some school districts and the schools took the issue to the press, and Microsoft relented.

I think that with a little pressure they would relent on this issue only it is not within our power or even within our style to cause such pressure.

I don't want to toss any fuel on the fire of these platform holy wars, but I thought it worth mentioning.

The good news is that we are still able to get discounts on Microsoft items, we simple aren't getting them for free any longer.

Personally, I have NEVER worked for an organization so conscious about being properly licensed and legal. In fact this entire debacle occurred because we approached Microsoft with our licensing donation program agreement over the wording of the contract because we felt it was the honest thing to do under their new licensing structure.

I have worked for multi-million dollar companies that were much further out of compliance in Microsoft licensing than we are. I've worked for big companies that have no license management program whatsoever... whereas we keep meticulous records and guard the giving out of licenses closely.


All this to say...
Today I was asked if I wanted to 'purchase a plastic bag'. I had done shopping and they would not give me a bag, they were going to make me buy it. So I refused, and walked off with the stuff in my hands.

What used to be free is no longer free.

I'm thinking in a few years, the freedom that comes in Christ will be the key message preached more than the Love of Christ.

It is a free gift. Those are becoming more and more rare these days.

Translation update

Nehan New Testament dedication this Saturday 15th January.

Also this Saturday is the dedication of the book of Matthew in the Edolo language group.

That's all the information I have right now. I find it amazing that while we're flying into the country, there is a dedication going on, the same as there was when we were flying OUT of the country.

One thing I know, is that God doesn't NEED us to do HIS work, He invites us, and when we accept the invite, while hard work, the blessings are beyond anything we could achieve on our own in this life.

Australian for 'child protection'

Why bother with fancy plastic knob protectors when you can simply raise the knob 14 inches.. sorry, I mean CM how many centimeters is that?

Mental Test

Chad's Mental Acuity test:

1 - travel for 26 hours to a different country
2 - drive a car on the OTHER side of the road and the steering wheel on the other side of the car
3 - drive in the dark
4 - don't get lost.

okay well I got lost but I got us unlost quickly (-;

man am I tired.... what were we thinking getting in a car without a map? Well we found a place to eat dinner and pick up groceries.. so that's a success! Thankfully we had been here once before.

It is funny to drive yourself TO the airport in San Francisco and then around in Australia... it takes a few moments to get your bearings back.

Which still doesn't stop you from turning on the windshield wipers instead of the blinkers from time to time. (-;

We're in Cairns, AUS for a few days waiting to get into PNG. We will all be falling asleep in moments but wanted to thank everyone for their prayers in getting us here!

See You Later

Our furlough is over.
Home Assignment is complete.
We get on a plane in a few short hours.

We're sad to depart, We're excited to arrive.

We have become well versed in saying farewells, and so we don't say 'goodbye' we say 'see you later'. Because one way or another, we'll meet again.

Huge thanks to everyone... here is our stay in a nutshell.


We were in America for:

194 days
10,500 miles of driving
11 church public speaking engagements
a few new ministries
many new friends
3 family baptisms
2 family members passing
1 new family member
1 new church family

We've seen some new technologies while here:

onlive.com - video gaming at the next level
pandora internet radio
hulu.com
netflix streaming movies
iPad
augmented reality
check cashing from your phone
3d Television
HD television is widespread (was infant when we left)
faster and cheaper
VOIP on consumer level caught on (we were early adopter)
Xbox Kinect
Google Video
Skype has gotten MUCH bigger
Tablet pc's and touch screens are very popular now
RFID
Wikileaks

We Enjoyed:
Seeing family and friends
Dining out
Hot showers
Pizza
Internet speeds
Fall colors
playing in the snow
and more...

We were surprised by:
the traffic increase
the cold Winter
how fast time passed


Meanwhile back in PNG:

2 New Testament Bible Dedications
many new people
new things going on at each of our job


OUR ITINERARY for people who enjoy knowing and praying:

Mon 10 Jan
Depart San Francisco 19:45
Arrive Auckland, NZ 12 Jan 05:55
Duration 13:10
----lose a day----

Wed 12 Jan
Depart Auckland, NZ 09:10
Arrive Cairns, AUS 11:25
Duration 5:15

----over night in TREETOPS at CAIRNS for wed,thurs,frid

Sat 15 Jan (friday in USA)
depart Cairns, AUS 6:45
arrive Port Moresby, PNG 8:30

Sat 15 Jan
depart Cairns, AUS 9:41
arrive Aiyura, Ukarumpa PNG 12:00

Travel Sagas

Papua New Guinea is a hard place to travel to. Schedules get changed, planes break and are grounded, etc.

Tonight we had an interesting situation.
Only hours ago we were saying 'wow, we're really ready ahead of time, I wonder what might go wrong to make us scurry at the last moment? Well whatever it is, we're fortunate to be able to have the time to handle it."

Around 2pm we got a bunch of new documents to fill out and as per usual, we didn't procrastinate, we did it immediately. We filled them out and sent them in, and WOW that surprise was easy to handle.

But a few hours later we found all those documents were moot.

A plane in PNG had a mechanical failure and was grounded.

Our flight from Australia to PNG was cancelled.

EVERYONE had to scramble. People in PNG had to scramble to figure out how to get us un-stranded....

appointments were to be changed...
documents changed...
flights booked... etc.

AHA! This is the big surprise! Okay.. so as usual, with slightly elevated calmness we deal with it.
We go online and book a flight.

Only the flight booking doesn't go through. Because our credit card fraud protection stopped us...

So I call in, fix it, rebook
The flight now costs $200 more, because the value of the seats went up.. why? because I booked the same flight a few minutes before but failed. Qantas was unwilling to bend on the refund. ..... moving on.

And... also, because we changed airlines, we're not longer considered as coming from America so our baggage allowance is cut in half

so an extra $450 bucks in luggage fees is added.

So in 15 minutes time, we had to scramble quite a bit and pay more... we thought.

WELL of course our tensions were raised for a bit, and we had to spend a lot of money in a very short time... and of course we're thinking 'man this is wasted money'.

But then we considered it.
We knew something might happen, the possibility with Papua New Guinea is that you have to expect the unexpected... ANYTHING can happen.

So we became suddenly so thankful that we had the wherewithall to bear it. We aren't over stressed. We aren't short on time, we aren't at our limit... we are packed, the documents are signed, sealed and delivered, we're simply prepared and calm...

and thanks to financial partners like you, we had the money to deal with it and the time and encouragement to know that people have our backs. So it was not at all sudden panic.

But here's the coolest part... ready?

If you tally up all the 'extra fees', and costs, etc... because we acted quick we got a much much better rate, AND the new rate was lower than the original flight.

So while we do have to take an extra plane, which is what we were trying to avoid, and spend an extra day travelling which is also what we were trying to avoid,

WE STILL arrive back in PNG, on time, before school starts, and ... ready for it?...

even with all the changes, the total cost to travel the same distance... is STILL the same price (if not a tad bit cheaper)!!!

AMAZING?
have you ever been able to totally scramble and move your family of four in an emergency internationally and NOT have to pay hundreds of extra dollars?

we didn't!!!

it's remarkable to me.

BUT it does mean a bit of extra travel weariness on us.... it's the same path we would have taken before, on a bigger airplane, for the same price, only arriving a day later without changing our departure day... so an extra day in transit is our biggest loss. Not bad?! An extra day in sunny Australia? Could be worse.. right?

it's actually good news.

PLEASE pray for safe travels, and no more hidden surprises.
PLEASE pray for family health as we travel, my kids are both miserable with a cold.

thank you for your prayers.

Weather

You'd think after nearly 6 months of being here in the U.S. that we wouldn't have any more cultural 'surprises'. Today I found another one. I was going to visit my Uncle and he said 'well I checked the weather and it will rain hard tonight, so maybe we should reschedule'.

It dawned on me. I had not been checking the weather here as a way to determine my next day's actions. It's California so you don't need to TOO much. But then it hit me why.

In PNG the weather forecast is always the same. Sunny with a chance of rain. The rain comes almost every day, and there is no way to predict when. It takes only moments to go from very sunny and warm to a torrential downpour.

Because of this often you get caught in the rain without an umbrella and wearing shorts and sandals with a t-shirt.

Sometimes you get a warning, the clouds come in and it sprinkles. To give you an idea of how fast it turns into HEAVY rain:

One day I was outside working, and I felt a sprinkle. I thought to myself 'this means I have anywhere from 15 seconds to a minute before this rain turns serious if it's going to'. So I literally began running for rain cover.

No sooner had I made it under and overhang than WOOSH a flood of rain fell and fell hard. I couldn't believe how fast it had happened.

In PNG you have the occasional days of 'tut tut it looks like rain, I think I'll get my umbrella and hat'... but more than often it's 'tut tut.... I'm soaking wet now'.

So to come to California, land of sunshine, it dawns on me that some people still do depend on weather forecasts to plan their days. Even if I had wanted to in PNG, the weather reports are never accurate... and more often than not they all read the same thing across the country.

One other thing about the weather.
Here the rain is cold and often joined by wind. Going out into the rain is miserable, and brushing against a bush or something that drops water onto you, makes you shudder.

In PNG, if you didn't go out in the rain, you'd rarely go outside. But the water isn't nearly as cold as here, and there is not often accompanying wind.

Simply straight, hard, warmer, rain. You don't mind getting soaked as much because it's not an issue of also being cold. I've said this before when asked about humidity.

Living in PNG, you learn to deal with moisture in every sense of the word. You learn to let your clothing dry while you wear it, to go days on end without ceasing to sweat, to put all leather objects in well ventilated areas to avoid mildew. You simply learn to deal with moisture. But the accompanying heat makes it much more bearable than the accompanying cold that comes with moisture in the U.S.

One Hundred

What is God doing in America?
Well, the Owens family is heading to PNG for our second term on Jan 10.
We have reached 100% of our financial partnership, and are so very thankful that you all have joined us in our next term. Stay tuned to this blog for exciting things to come!

Celebrate with us as we recognize we are at 100% financial support and cleared to return to PNG, the plane tickets are purchased, and the bags are getting packed.

Praise to God we can go into the Christmas week knowing those issues are behind us, but to be truthful we never worried, because we had a peace and a confidence that God still had a call on us to return. We even were patiently expecting it to be January.

It is remarkable to us the encouragement that we have received and we are excited that not only did our 100% pledged support has arrived, but that we also have a new church family joining us! We're especially excited and blessed by that.


WHAT IS GOD DOING IN PNG?
(news as of Dec 17) 10 Bible Dedications in 2010 !!!!

Takuu Dedication - On 24 December the Takuu people of the island out beyond Bougainville will be celebrating the dedication of their New Testament that Abraham Vaeleni and Sue [..edit..] and others translated. Please keep these events in prayer, that the power of God’s word in these languages will penetrate their hearts as they read their scriptures. The other interesting piece of information is that the Kwadima II (the SIL boat based in East Papua) is heading up to Buka so as to be able to take the visitors from Buka to the Mortlock Atoll for the dedication. This will have made 9 NT dedications and 1 revision dedication in 2010. Isn’t God good?????!!

Stuck

the weekend thus far

It's been a surreal weekend.

Woke up Saturday morning, breakfast food was covered in ants, and a huge skunk sprayed our house. In the midst of packing we were cleaning the house for company and cleaning the AIR of skunk. Company wasn't able to make it, so we had bbq'd steak and potatoes just the four of us. It started weird but ended good.

Sunday, we gear up to go to church, I dressed a bit shabby in jeans knowing I was going to help a friend move today.

Found that the rain had sunk the drive in down and our car was completely stuck. After about 40 minutes of trying to get unstuck, called AAA.

I also wrote our pastor and said 'sorry we didn't make it'
he replied 'I was going to introduce you this morning as missionaries'

I thought 'does he know how close we were to going to church covered in mud? I actually thought 'I'm not changing, we can be a bit late no one will notice mud covered jeans.'

PHEW.. dodged that bullet.. 'Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Chad and Kendal, Chad's the one covered in mud as um... a symbol of life in PNG yeah, that's the ticket.'

Three things we're thankful to God for:

1 - the car we bought had a tow hitch, almost totally useless except we got towed out SUPER fast

2 - for giving me the foresite to purchase a AAA membership even though until today we hadn't needed it...

3 - for the fact that with all this weirdness, we weren't bothered in the slightest. Not with company canceling, the skunk or with being towed. I dunno why, but for some reason all this weird stuff that might upset and stress people out,... didn't even phase us.

It's been a great and restful weekend, in an odd missionary kind of way.

Last night for dinner, we put on a virtual fireplace on the computer, looped it, and played some christmas music.. so it was fun.

thinking with my ears

One of the things I've been spending a lot of time thinking about lately is mission strategy as it regards to technology. Frankly, if the Lord is going to tarry until everyone gets a chance to hear, I'm very invested in getting people to hear the Gospel message.

So they why do I work for a Bible translation agency? Because until we have the language, we can't do anything with video or audio. During the process of translating the Bible, we develop the dictionaries and all the written aspects, but we also develop videos and recordings to share with people and partner with other agencies who do it well. We provide the engine that feeds the language understanding into all these other wonderful ways to prove to people the YES GOD KNOWS YOUR LANGUAGE TOO!

The Luasanne congress has occured 3 times in history. The best minds of missions strategy come together. This year in Africa. In my reading through the conference notes, I came across this nugget:

REACHING ORAL LEARNERS a. What is the need? The subject of Orality, or reaching oral learners, is one of the break-­‐through ideas in mission strategy that is just starting to gain momentum. Two-­‐thirds of the people throughout the world are oral learners. That is, they prefer to learn through proverbs, music, poetry and especially stories

Page 9 of 20 As mission leaders, we must rethink how we are delivering our evangelism, discipleship and church planting strategies. We need to follow the pattern of Jesus from Mark 4:33-­‐ 34, which records that ␣he did not say anything to them without using a parable [or a story]␣␣
There are 41,000 denominations throughout the world and 4,700 mission agencies.19 We need to begin training them in how to teach the scriptures using stories from the Bible. When people are trained effectively, they will see every person involved in a Bible study able to repeat the story without error to their family and friends. One of the best ways to build pastors effectively for the millions of house churches will be to teach them how to tell stories from the Scripture. The staggering thing about Orality is that even in media-­‐sophisticated countries, the majority of people want to get their information through oral means: films, radio, television, and the I Fifty-­‐eight percent of high school graduates in the United States say they will never read a book voluntarily after they graduate. Forty-­‐two percent of university graduates say the same thing.20
1) We all need to learn how to share the Gospel through stories.

-

I'm excited about this because this strategy taps into two of my interests:
-technology
-video/audio production

I should share with you the story of my friend Chris, who thinking it may not amount to much, recorded the New Testament in his village's language onto some mp3 players called Megavoice. What happened is that over the coming months the village passed around the mp3 players for story time and gathered around and listed to the Gospel in their own language.

Three little mp3 players, reached a large group of people with the Word of God.
It required:
-the Word be translated
-the Word be spoken and recorded
-the Word be played back

imagine the amount of work gone into producing a device like the Megavoice that could be used in this way? Imagine all the people working to translate the Bible, to record it?

You need skilled people is so many dozens of areas to accomplish it.


GOD will accomplish His work. WE are honored to be along for the ride.

I am very excited about His asking me to use my skills in this area.

I am excited about the missions world understanding audio/video as a strategy and deploying it.

I am very excited about the leaps in technology allowing us to do it more effectively and affordably.

I'm SUPER excited to be bringing back a demonstrated kit I've built of different technologies to show people in PNG about how we can make it ultra portable!

Lunch deal

Relationships

Someone asked us the other day, 'have you been successful in culturing new relationships this visit home?'

What a great question that is.

Our financial support comes mostly from individuals. Individuals who partner with us primarily because we are friends.

Why do you partner with us financially?

We would LOVE to know the answer to that question, seriously. It would help us to know why people in the future may desire to partner.

For some we think it's friendship, for others a common interest or goal. One side effect is a deepened relationship and shared purpose.

Because of that, it is important to us at ALL times, not just when visiting back in the U.S. to have those relationships continue and to grow.

MANY missionaries in the field fail to maintain contact with friends and partners. We hope we do not. If anything we've felt like we've over communicated at times saying things that possibly we shouldn't say. (-;

But our face to face, in person time has been extremely limited. The result is that when we do get face to face time, it's impact is enhanced. It is really good to see people face to face and spend time.

BUT, how do we make new relationships? If our financial partnership needs to grow, then we need to meet new people, find new churches.... how do we do that?

To tell the truth, we had no idea.
We simply asked God, 'please guide us'.

As a result God brought people into our lives and all we had to do was be open to sharing and making new friends. We're thankful for the new friendships we've built and the new relationships we've built.

We've tried to balance our time well between all our responsibilities without losing our family identity or getting the 'must do's ' done. We view our relationships with you all as a responsibility.

So please, email us and answer the question 'why do you support us?' and we will take those answers to heart.

Tonsorial Artist

So today I decided I needed a haircut, but I'm nowhere near my regular barber, and so I go out seeking a new one. I found this little sign above and walked in.

Instantly my senses told me to flee.

But my desire for adventure told me to stay!

The room was as small as a large bathroom. All the furniture and decor was water stained wood, and the smell of cigarette smoke filled my nostrils quickly. Sitting one of the two chairs was an old, balding man by the name of Dennis.

His eyes were large, droopy and red, and I could tell by the smell of alcohol on his breath that he was not completely sober at 11 in the morning. His suspenders barely moved as he turned to look at me. He didn't say anything.

No 'Welcome', no 'Hello'.

So I stood there.
Looking around. Finally I said, "I'm here for a haircut."
Dennis blinks at me, as if to say 'well of course you are, idiot.'

I asked 'how much do you charge?'
"18" was his only response.

Again I thought 'LEAVE NOW' It was too pricey, and this man did not look fit to cut my hair. But part of me said 'this looks to be a very interesting story developing'.

I stayed.

Dennis moved very slowly, got up and walked to the old, but not charmingly antique, more like 1960's torn-up-mistreated-orange-pleather, barber's chair.

He again didn't say anything.
So I stood there.

He said 'well, What are you going to do?'

I replied, "I'm going to stand here until you ask me to sit down in that chair."

"That's sort of like going to a restaurant and asking to eat isn't it?"
I came back quickly, "No it's sort of like going to a restaurant and waiting to be seated."

"Well,..." his eyes indicated I should sit.

I sat, while stating "I don't know about you, but I don't sit in another man's chair unless I'm invited to."

Dennis seemed to respect that. He spun me around and I was facing myself in a large mirror with an engraved nameplate to the right that read:

"Dennis - Tonsorial Artist"

The room was so small, that a claustrophobic man would have gone running. The dust on the old newspaper clippings was thick, and I could barely make out some news about a fire decades ago.

"Well, what can I do for you today?" he said very slowly... I began to think Dennis might be a turtle.

I gave him detailed instructions about my hair and after a long pause he replied,
"So a lot off the sides and a little off the top? Got it"

His hands moved around slowly and I thought 'this is going to be a while'.

Up on a shelf were several carved masks. I couldn't spot where they were from but my guess was south pacific, so I said,

"Do you travel a lot Dennis?"

At this point I should say that between each sentence or response, Dennis was a firm believer in pause. He would wait a good 15 to 30 seconds before beginning a new thought. So what at first seemed like an awkward silence, became more of a contest of wills, I would try NOT to speak, and give him time to respond. I would also NOT react to the things he said so as to let him continue without undue pause. So imagine this conversation taking place in your head. Then replay it in slow motion... that's about the speed we were going.

"I've been around" he replied.

"I see these masks up there on the wall, where are they from?"

"oh here and there."

long pause.

"I would travel for the rest of my life if I could. Have you been anywhere?"

We spoke about Papua New guinea and how I was there for 3 years.

"You mean like in a religious way?" I instantly knew Dennis and I weren't cut from the same cloth here, but I felt an odd connection to him. So I simply told him the easiest version of the truth, which is that I was there helping linguistic work and translation. Every time someone asks me a question about what I do, I battle my desire to either keep it to myself, or to tell them too much. Often times I figure people don't truly care TOO much and so I have developed a quick version that I tell when I think people are simply trying to make small talk. I feel society in general is too disconnected, and so I force myself to be open with people so that we can forge some sort of connection in the limited time we have together. Still, with Dennis I used the short version because I was becoming concerned with how long this haircut might take.

Soon Dennis began to unfold for me stories of his travels to the Philippines.
As he neared me I smelled his breath and was trying to guess which liquid lunch he had had today.

He began to regale me with stories about how a pint of Gin was only 50 cents.

AH GIN! okay,...

Or how he bought a snifter of Whiskey and a steak for a buck fifty.

okay Whiskey? both?

I expected soon Dennis might tell me stories of prostitution and other such dealings... he had that 'vibe' about him and the story was starting to feel like a movie cliche, but before I could head it off.. sure enough he said..

"and the women there.... every ten feet a new woman..."

which is when I cut in, and mentioned my wife and kids.

Dennis caught the hint and dropped it.

He spoke to me of how affordably one can live in Thailand.
I mentioned that air fare to PNG was $10,000. He was shocked.

He then began to tell me how to go as a courier. And told me a slightly dodgy story about how you can go at a discount if you area courier. I inferred he meant something a little more shady but he actually threw a DOT COM reference at me.

I liked Dennis for some reason. This room was an odd place, full of mystery and aromatic puzzles.

So after Dennis finished telling me about these places he had been and the things he had drunk, there was a longer than normal pause.

And I said 'So Tonsorial Artist eh?.. are you going to make me look that word up?'

'Ah.. no.. anyone can be a hairstylist, but you're in a Tonsorial salon right now, it's from the Latin meaning 'Barber' '

And that's when it hit me, why I liked Dennis so much. Why I was willing to put my hair in the trust of a rather odd man in a rather odd place.

He had an unusual way of saying things.

That's it.

He pauses, his slowness in speaking (no doubt brought on by his inebriated state), and his choice of words, all intrigued me enough to sit in that chair and spend time with him.

I doubted I would go back, it was time to go. I stood, took one last look around and as I left I said:

'Dennis, here's a 20, thanks for the stories and the tonsorial care."

It was a perfectly odd 40 minutes. Very rarely can anyone say that they had a perfectly odd yet enjoyable experience. I wouldn't call it an adventure but it sure turned out to be one interesting haircut. The best part is, while my hair isn't exactly how I like it, it actually is a pretty good cut.

December Dedications

In PNG:

On 11/12 December the Malei (Hote) people of Morobe province will be celebrating the dedication of their New Testament that John and Amy Lindstrom, Elisa and many others translated.

On 24 December the Takuu people of the island out beyond Bougainville will be celebrating the dedication of their New Testament that Abraham Vaeleni and Sue Anderson and others translated.

Please keep these events in prayer, that the power of God’s word in these languages will penetrate their hearts as they read their scriptures.

We just got this bit of email news and thought we would share it! What a great December this will be with 2 dedications! A dedication is the celebration and prayer time that celebrates the completion of a New Testament and the delivering of it over to the people whose language it is in. In December 2 new people groups will have the Bible in THEIR heart language for the very first time.

Answering the question 'How can God love me? He doesn't even speak my language?"
YES..He does.