Banana Boats

This is a banana boat.

It’s a small fibre glass passenger boat, with about a 60hp outboard motor on it.  They are used to go between islands.  This particular picture is in Buka, where I have been to help with VSAT and ridden on one of these.  I’ve ridden more than a few of these in my time here, it’s as common a mode of travel as a bus in the U.S. might be.

 

But when you’re on water, there is danger.  Part of my job for the next few weeks is keeper of the water safety equipment.  You’d be really interested in some of these gadgets.  We have GPS’s we have emergency beacons, we have strobe lights, shark bags (these are bags meant to seal in your odors so sharks don’t sense you from afar and come hunting), all kinds of nifty gadgets for safety, packaged in nice bright orange.

 

I got an email that I’ll paraphrase for the sake of brevity.  My friend Peter and his wife decided to go out to a remote island to encourage local leaders to get involved in Bible translation.  The trip normally requires an overnight on an island, then a 3.5 hour boat ride to the island.  But, on this particular trip, they got lost at sea, and the boat safety equipment came in rather handy.

 

[quote] After a simple meal of bananas and fish roasted in the coals of a small camp fire we tried to sleep. Fortunately it was a clear night with no rain. Small crabs played with our feet and we dozed off from time to time. At 3:30 am we were alerted by the skipper that it was time to pack up and go. By 4:30 am the five boats were slowly pulling out into Queen Carolla Harbour and the convoy was assembled. We passed Kesa Point by the light of the moon, stars and a few small flashlights. As we met the open ocean I quickly realised it was very important to hold on tightly. One had to pay particular attention to the waves and seeing them in the dark was difficult.

 

The sea was rough with the wind coming directly from Nissan. The skipper used his skill and experience to dodge and weave a bit for the best ride and highest speed possible given the conditions. Fairly often though he got going a bit too fast and we were airborne at the top of a wave only to come crashing down into the teeth of the next one. One such wave came over the bow washing us good but fortunately nothing was carried overboard. Sometime in the first few hours we lost contact with the convoy and proceeded on as a two boat group.

 

[Peter pulled out the GPS, found the proper direction, informed the captain, who ran out of fuel, thus using the emergency 25 liters of fuel…]

 

We arrived on Nissan Island after being on the open ocean for over seven hours instead of the 3.5 hours it should have taken to make the crossing. We came ashore sun burned and sea-sick but overjoyed to be on dry land again. We found out later that the all the boats in our original convoy made it in safely that day – three boats several hours before us and then our two boat group by noon.[/quote]

 

 

Adventure always comes unexpectedly.

 

Dental

so I'm sitting reclined, while a dentist is drilling at one of my teeth,
listening to opera and I have this thought
"I am in the middle of PNG!"

God is an awesome God. He's so awesome that he puts it on the heart of
a dentist (a good one) from Korea to uproot his family and move to PNG
to do dentistry. And I get good dental care at a low low price, and my
kids do too, for as long as he's here.

You know that whole bit about considering the lilies of the field....
God provides. Dentistry is a luxury out here, I'm so thankful to have a
dentist here! If you're out there wondering 'wow they have to do
without so much' it's true, we do, but we get by and it's all because
God provides what we need when we need it.

Paratext

In June we’ll be hosting a training session here to teach what we call MTT (mother tongue translators) how to use the paratext software to do translation and formatting.  The terminology over the years has changed.  It used to be that the ex-pat who had the linguistic training came and discipled people from a village as he learned their language.  The ex-pat was called the ‘translator’ and the nationals the ‘helpers’.  Now the ex-pat is called ‘translator assistant’ and the nationals are called ‘mother tongue translators’.  As a result I never know exactly who is being spoken about when we say ‘translators’ because there are so many people over the years involved in the job.  The personal confusion for me is a result of terms changing over the years to try and reflect the nature of the work, and yet some people use the older terms and some the newer.  But under it all is a focus on the work of translating the Bible more than what we call the work.  It’s people sitting in hot rooms, in tropical environments, together, pouring over God’s Word and how to translate it into the local languages.  It’s computers working in hostile climates. 

 

Pray for the training workshop starting June 6^th. A little learning goes a long way.  We need to equip nationals to do as much of the work as they can.

 

I can't be a missionary

I've heard this story a lot. People who arrive here new start their
story out with 'I figured I'm an ________(fill in skill/job)____ no one
needs me as a missionary. But then I heard about PNG."

I gaurantee you, there is a 99% chance your skills would have a place
here serving Bible Translation.

We need managers.
Right now we need a short term technical writer/trainer who can come
into departments and right out policies and procedures from our 'oral'
tradition, and put them down on paper or in a Wiki.

Yeah, I know.. teachers, doctors, carpenters. The top 3. Pilots...

I thought years ago, 'they wouldn't even have a computer in the middle
of the jungle.' But then I saw a rack of Cisco switches in the highlands.

Butcher? We need you.
Travel Agent? We need you.
Software Developer? We need you.
Linguist? We need you.
Museum Curator? Well need is a strong word.... but we can use you!

(-;

2010-2012

Today I whipped up a little graphic, with the help of others, to show
exactly what has been the difference in communication here in the last
year plus.

in 2007, dial up was the only way in many locations to get to the
internet or email. Email is vastly more important when telephone
systems aren't reliable, and it helps to feel less isolated. This map
can show you why folks may feel isolated.

In 2010 we had GSM modem, so faster, but expensive per/mb.

So we began to get VSAT's to each of the regions.

here's a picture of the progress.

Sat night

It is the night before mothers day and I'm helping run a youth event. Activities revolve around making muffins and cards and gifts for our mothers.

What I see though are a lot of kids without their mothers around this mothers day. Some are away on medical leave. Others on business outside the country. Some are in the village.

And it hits me. Family transition is a constant reality for kids in this lifestyle. Everyone who comes here needs to bring a little extra love to share with the youth.

rubber melts

In the first picture, you'll see what happens to rubber and foam based products here. I do not know why it happens. Rubber bands, if left out of the box, will either melt, or become brittle. Perhaps it is the sun, but they aren't in direct sunlight. The earphones pictured here were brand new when I arrived. But only a month later, they looked like they were ten years old. The rubber based coating around the ears now flakes off and leaves black speckles all over. The pair my son is wearing here, I have 'repaired' . We use this headset to skype with family occasionally, and the rubber had all flaked off. After trying hard plastic against the ears, I decided to "fix" them. The white material is that stuff you use to line cupboards, I found some in the house when we moved in, and thought 'wow, that is soft and foamy too, why doesn't THAT disintegrate? ' Well, I wrapped the earphones with it, and taped it in place over a year ago, and it's been working fine. But it gives the visual effect of almost a lacey type doily. Ear doilies!!!

Anyway... point is... jury rig #115

the future of telephony

I am the only CCNA level trained network technician here in Ukarumpa.
(I'm not a CCNA, as I haven't passed the test yet, but I have the
capacity to pass the test).

Yesterday we had to make a decision to install a new telephone switch
and I think we decided to save money and go with a voip system called
Asterisk. If you've heard of it, you know what it is.

I pause for a moment to reflect on my time with Latitude Communications
(bought by Cisco), and then my time at Cisco. There God chose to teach
me about telecommunications, voip and networking. Why?

Could it be for such a time as this?

Currently I'm a network engineer, a windows server engineer, a linux
server engineer. I'm the acting Director of Regional Centres, and the
manager of the ITS department. That's 5 hats. 5 hats which are less
important than father and husband. Not to mention my part time hats
(like volunteer fire fighter, satellite troubleshooter, and helpdesk
supervisor)

In the near future, we will be migrating our POTS telephony system into
a voip system, which means... that another critical communications
system will be my responsibility. It means the network, which before we
came here, was historically unreliable, will be a single point of
failure for almost all of our communication here.

Which means... if a phone goes down, someone will come knocking on my
door to wake me up.
It means if the network goes down, I don't get a phone call like I used to.
It means... that the stress of my job just doubled if not tripled,
during emergency events.

I will need prayer. I don't do the job alone, I have a team of people
helping me. But we desperately need network engineers here.
I do not know how long my mental strength can hold out being the primary
person responsible for all forms of communication. I just do not know
that 1 man can shoulder that burden for an entire small town such as this.

we'll see.... I suppose, what God intends to do.

encouragement in time

I don't know about you, but the way my walk with the Lord has been has
followed a pattern. I understand a conviction on my heart to act and do
something that would not otherwise come from my normal selfish self. I
then pray and ask God for help. And do the thing. Often I face
discouragement, and then, after trusting and waiting, encouragement
comes. Usually in the nick of time.

For the past 2 weeks things have been looking a little grim.
My wife was unable to breath well,
Medical bills are going up,
Vehicle failures are tallying up,
Work seemed like I was stuck in a neverending line of things breaking
and not working.

And so we turned to God in prayer and asked you to pray.

In the last 24 hours:
-Someone wrote us to say 'how can we help?' - this is a huge encouragement
-I was able to sell a piece of electronics I've had for a year, which
covered the cost of a new car battery.
-We got a surprise financial gift that helped cover the cost of the new
crankshaft pully.
-This morning Madang and Buka both came online with internet service
(again after a lightning strike) (projects long in the making)

God really sends encouragement in the nick of time doesn't He?
yesterday was a day of pulling my hair out, having FAR too much work to
do, unable to keep up with the demand.
Couple that with the news that my position here is going to become about
ten times more critically important than it was a day ago...

and the stress was building up quickly.
But today, God encouraged us with little things, and it is a reminder
that He's with us... not giving us more than we can bear.

Good day for connectivity

It's 10am. That's tea time here.
at 7am I got the news that our Wireless Internet connection in Madang
came online!
Since that time I've been negotiating 2 telephones and speaking VSAT
geekery to get the new BUC in Buka online.

It is online now!

So... before the tea time whistle blew, we had 2 remote locations on
reliable internet connection.

This is a good day.

Rising Price of Meds

As you may know, our son is taking regular medication to avoid damaging his heart.  He has been diagnosed with Rheumatic Fever and as a precaution to avoiding rheumatic heart disease, takes several medications.  On top of that he takes inhalers to keep his pulsox and peak flow up as low oxygen in his blood was why he was medivac'd last year.  A medivac is a very pricey thing, and we do appreciate all of you who helped us recuperate from that financial hardship.

We have been informed by our local clinic that their are new laws regarding medications which limits our availability to important medication for our son as well as increases the cost of getting them. 

One such medication is his Seretide Inhaler.  This costs us $67 per month.  But we were informed yesterday that this one medication (of his multiple medications ... poor kid has to take a lot of pills in a day)... will increase to $110 per month.

That is an additional $516 USD per year, or $43 USD per month.  That is a solitary medication.  We're still waiting to see how my wife's goes up, and the other of my son's go up. 

We would appreciate prayer specifically, what I would love to see is a miracle of one type or the other, or to have God do something totally outside my vantage point and wow us.

Two things can happen,
-Someone new joining us for financial support and partnership for each new medication increase.  This would be miraculous because you almost never gain new financial partners while in the field. 
or
-Somehow the price of medication dropping or staying the same.  I do not know how that will happen, but with God it's possible.

Would you join us in praying in this manner? 
Right now our medication budget is second only to our grocery budget.  Each time the medication goes up, we decrease what we eat.  We have made several sacrifices in this area lately, and are doing everything we can to be good stewards.  It would be so encouraging to see God work through your prayers.

thank you for praying.

Land Disputes

In the Highlands here, land disputes are common. I will describe a
typical one in a moment. From a manager's point of view, land disputes
are the bane of our existence.

Either you want to put something, say a telephone pole or a ditch, to
run cable... on someone's land... and it's a huge hassle.
OR, an employee mysteriously does not show up to work for days on end.

Land disputes can get very violent, very quickly.

A few days ago one of my friends and co-workers asked to go help his
mother, and then was gone mysteriously for three days. His work left
unfinished, and I began to worry. I knew he was going to aid in a land
dispute and when he didn't come back as scheduled I began to pray. My
wife began to pray, my friend began to pray. Because people end up dead.

Sparing too many details, here's a typical scenario.

A man buys land from another man and builds a home there and lives
there. Then the landowner dies, and having married a new wife or having
a young of-age son now, suddenly the new landowners want their piece of
the pie. It wasn't enough to buy the land you live on two decades ago,
because now there are new landowners who don't get any of that previous
money. So they come by and demand money for some reason. Sometimes
claiming you no longer own the land, sometimes claiming you've always
been renting and now owe back rent. Whatever the reason, the new land
inheritors want money. The land occupiers then have to somehow prove
they don't owe it, pay, or things get violent.

What often happens is one party says 'PAY US a LOT OF MONEY!' the other
party says 'NO!' and then they either haggle, or fight. This is a cycle
that unless someone gets smart and documents who owns what, and then
that is enforced.... will repeat itself every time someone dies.

I've seen it happen repeatedly.
Knowing this, I understood that when my employee didn't come back to
work, he could be dead somewhere, or in hiding after having been in a
fight, or... perfectly fine but in a village with no phone or radio to
notify me.

As a manager you have to make a hard call between understanding the
culture, and being left in the lurch by an employee who doesn't show up
to work for several days. It's a hard position to be in. I choose to
err on the side of grace, as do many managers.

Which bites you later. There is the possibility that after several such
instances of applied grace, nothing is documented. Which means at the
tenth instance of this happening, and the employee is let go, there is
no record as to why. So it's no surprise if the employee decides to
turn around and sue for wrongful termination.

So... if you apply grace and forgive, and don't document the instance
because it goes on their employment record as a blemish... then... boom,
later things could really come back to haunt you.

Double whammy.
Being a manager of people in a foreign culture is such a difficult
minefield to negotiate. Especially when you're not using the same
standards as corporate America. The bottom line for us isn't profit,
it's Bible translation, and we invest in changed lives, not amount of
books published. So how do you label yourself successful? What
measurements do you use? And how does that temper your decisions?

Is there any wonder we need a lot of prayer and God's guidance?

-chad

2011 Report

This is what we did together in 2011 in PNG.
You'll notice there are still some black areas.... pray that we can get
language projects started in those areas before 2025.

Also, the reality is that in some of the green areas, while people do
have some Scripture, they still need it to impact their lives. So we
need not only to increase literacy, but also to employ creative methods
(like MegaVoice) to get people to HEAR the Word, and have it change
their lives.

Just because a Bible gets completed, doesn't mean the people are changed
forever. It's a long task of discipleship that happens over decades...
the Bible is the beginning of conveying God's truth. We are praying
against the enemy's hold on this country and praying for revival in
these Green Areas.

Some of them have had incredible and encouraging revival, others are
still resisting. Pray.

Megavoice

the BUC stops here

This is a BUC. It stands for 'block up converter'. It is responsible
for the TRANSMIT side of our internet connection. So .... it does the
'sending'.

This one is 10 watts. The ones we deploy in our remote locations is 5
watts. Today, I upgraded this 10w to a 20watt, and then sent this
10watt to Buka, PNG to replace their 5watt. I will be taking the 5w BUC
and shipping it back to our nationals capital Port Moresby, to help with
another regional centre.

Why all this BUC shuffling?
Because the BUC in Buka was cooking. Kookie!?

It was getting so hot, you could fry an egg on it, because it wasn't big
enough to handle the task.

So conduits are being dug, power lines are being laid, grounding poles
being installed, and the task of carrying this 11kilo package to Buka
falls to.... the next person to get on a plane.

Sadly, that is a mom traveling alone with her baby.... but you take
whatever couriers you can get here. I hate to burden her more, but
she's willing because it means her center will have good upload speed.

How much does a BUC cost?
It costs K18,000 ($9,000 USD). Wow, say you. That's a lot of money
for an internet connection 1/20th the speed of my current DSL which
costs me around $40 p/month.

Yes... yes it is. It's a lot of work too, but the cable guys haven't
gotten around to installing the DSL lines out in the jungle yet, so this
is a sort of work around. (-;

If you're ever in the Jungles of PNG and you look up and way up in the
air draped from branch to branch is some coaxial cable, or maybe some
cat 6 ethernet cable..... you can feel free to think from yourself that
Chad has gone over the deep end, and become the networking equivalent of
Tarzan... swinging from tree to tree, decidely trying to wire the entire
country up any way he can.

So... I suppose the BUC doesn't really stop does it... it keeps going on
and on....

oh fun note.
you see that dust and cobweb collection on the BUC? That is what I've
dubbed 'BUC wheat'. (-;

Do you KNOW what this MEANS!?

What you see here is new network equipment.
the bottom switch is a Cisco SF series 100mb with 4 GB uplinks.
On top of that are 2 cisco 8 port Gigabit smart switches
and on top of that is a Dlink 2553 wireless access point.

What does that mean?
It means several things:
-Someone contributed to a project to fund getting a remote regional centre online.
-I ordered the equipment, which was shipped to supporters in the U.S. who shipped it to my dept.  It came by boat and by plane.
-I trained a co-worker in networking so that if something happens to me, he can do this, and this is his setup.
-We have multi-ssid WPA2 enterprise going over 2 vlans to support translation AND guests of translators who come.

It represents financial contribution, teamwork to get it here, training to get it configured, shipping to get it relocated, and technical support to get it installed.

Soon our friends in Wewak will have a wireless guest network so that they can share their VSAT internet connection with those who come to help translate.

How much money was spent?
Not much, around $500 in equipment and around $200 in shipping.
How much time did it take?
I ordered this equipment over 2 months ago.  We talked about the project and the plan for weeks prior to that.

It seems like something you might drop into your local electronics store for doesn't it?

The next time you drop into an electronics store, and buy something and are gone inside of an hour.   Think about me, and the people in PNG who wait months and months to accomplish what took you an hour.  Then rejoice!!! Because it only took you an hour!  If you have the heart to, spend a few seconds throwing a prayer this way, for the duration of our equipment.  That it might have supernatural life span and work in harsh environments for many many years and not need replacing.

thanks!

Kindle Books What they don't tell you

so I don't own a kindle.
I've been testing out the effectiveness of one by installing a kindle app on my phone.

What they do not tell you about the kindle, is that you end up reading more than usual... and thus spending more than usual.

I've always had a rule, if someone recommends a book to me, earnestly, I read it.
My reading style and pace is such that I often have 3 books going at once. A fiction, a biography, and a non-fiction, non-biography typically. This way I can choose which book to read depending on my mood.

At this pace, I finished a book about every 2 months. Often times reading myself to sleep at night.

But lately, I've been reading more like a book every 4 days. Why? Because it's in my pocket all the time, it's super available. I whip it out whenever I'm waiting, and read the book. I don't play iphone games or apps, I read the book. I don't text message, I read the book.

And so, a 400 page book is done in 4 days or less.

At $10 a pop, that's costly.

Yes I know kindle has a lending library free to prime members (I am one thanks to family), but that library isn't available to kindle APP, only KINDLE devices. OF course I'm now convinced a Kindle is good, but I prefer they make a much much smaller one the size of a cell phone... oh hey!!!

am I missing something?

I know there are free books, huge archives of classics. Oddly, many of those books hold no appeal for me, again, non-fiction and biographies .... not a huge archive of these that are contemporary.

Anyway, I can't go on buy a new book even at $5 per, that's still over $20 a month.
Ironically, the kindle is attractive where I live in PNG because we don't have to pay shipping.
But suddenly, we see these paperbacks at sometimes CHEAPER than the kindle price.... and it might soon be more affordable to pay for books to be shipped... which is ironic.

So... if anyone out there ever wonders what the perfect gift for us out here is...

Amazon gift certs!

... if I've missed something about the kindle, let me know, I'm looking for a way to read more often, and yet spend much less. Can you believe I'm actually deciding to fast from reading pay books for a month?

power

this is what a solar inverter system using car batteries

Time to Pour

This is what it looks like to have a fresh concrete foundation for a
VSAT in the village. This picture is the installation stages of our
VSAT in Aitape West.

Currently we're working on installing VSAT in Alotau and Port Moresby
because it brings with it, affordability and reliability.

Mud and VSAT

Ukarumpa, Eastern Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea, April 13 - 2012

 
This photo was taken as my friend (a Bible translator) was traveling from his village.  He was gone for 22 days, leaving the centre here where I work, to go to his village.  The trek in total, took him 14 days of transit time.  This is not rare.  Often times a husband will leave his wife and children at home because traveling to remote village allocations can be very difficult with children in tow.

During this trip however, he was able to typeset the Easter STory from Luke in 9 languages. They finished advisor checking the book of Acts.

This remote location, is one of the places where we have installed VSAT internet satellite connectivity.  So, once my friend Ben makes the trip alone, he's able to stay in touch with family over the internet.  Also he's able to exchange information and make backups of his data, so that he doesn't risk losing all his work when he makes a trek like this.

from Ben's wife Mandy

"Not only are we not able to use our airstrip (just outside of Aitape) due to it not being maintained, the rains have made the dirt roads into a mess of squooshy mud. Pictured above are the two cars that met half way to get Ben and the rest of the team out of the village at the big mud hole at the mountain. They spent 3 hours getting the white truck unstuck."

So you can see how, in a world where getting from point A to point B is almost ALWAYS an adventure, that having reliable communication is important. When your wife is at home waiting to hear from you, it's good to know that at point B you can at the very least send an email. Personally for me, knowing that somewhere past this huge mud hole is a place with reliable and semi-fast internet connectivity... is mind boggling.

To me it is like finding a swimming pool in the middle of the desert.