it came out of the sky

today was a normal saturday. Saturday is our productive day, sometimes it's spent in extra service to people around us, some days it's spent tinkering around home doing odd jobs. Sunday is family day.

Today was a normal day like any other. I was tinkering in the living room when suddenly the clear sunny sky turned grey and the heavens opened up.

Water poured from the sky and Kendal said, "you know what this is?"
I pulled my head from under the corner I was in tinkering, "what?"
"this is a perfect opportunity to test my new rain boots" - a present from home.

A tick went by and then I had a thought... RAIN TAG!!!

We ran outside, shedding our socks and shoes, except Kendal who put on her boots. The kids were outside already playing with friends, I found Calvin stripped with clothes under the overhang running around without his shirt.

Suddenly, something we had never done, but everyone understood "Rain TAG" began.

We ran all over the yard, me, Kendal, Calvin, Sydney, the neighbor kids, and other gathered friends. We had about 9 people, of which 5 were running around, the rest were watching the "Crazy Whiteskins" running around under the protection of the roof.

Soon the grass was all underwater, the water tanks were flooding into waterfalls, I had a drink. We splashed, kicked the

ball around, and then as we finished, almost like from Rockwell painting, Kendal pulled fresh baked chocolate chip cookies from the oven, and we each huddled under the porch roof eating them and smiling.

It was a purely spontaneous wonderful moment. AND.. bonus, I had needed a shower anyway. Ironically as we came in to dry, the song on the radio was "It Came Out of the Sky".

It has been a tough and busy week at work. There have been conflicts and biblical resolutions (this is a hard discipline to foster, but I'm glad we all made wise choices this week). It has been a time of hard work, and accomplishment. It was one of those weeks where you really earned your paycheck if you know what I mean.

I tend to be tenacious when I come across a problem that needs solving. If it last multiple days, then for multiple days

I'm focussed on solving that issue. Sleep doesn't come easy until it's been solved. Friday I solved an issue for the entire center that has been bugging me for about 6 days. I was very relieved as I solved it at 5pm on Friday.

Earlier today I had looked around and realized that this is truly what contentment felt like. I live in peace knowing that my life is spent in service, that there are those who agree and support us as a team, and that during the tough times God is there with us. We have the assurance of a support family back home, we have the comfort of a God who loves us personally.

This isn't a bad life at all.

Calvin's face is healing very well, he's somewhat sad because people have stopped asking him what happened to his head.
The big challenge for me this month is that it's going to be a very busy month starting on April 1, and we will be short staffed for 1 week of that.

Kendal will be a kindergarten teacher next year as the primary school really needs teachers there and the ESL teacher is returning. She's fine with that as she knew she was a stand-in, and she's excited about teaching kindergarten.

You know Kendal so it doesn't bear me mentioning but she's a pretty nifty lady, and she really puts a lot of priority on early school teachers preparing students so that later in school they are well prepared to do well.

Easter 2008

Happy Easter!

This is our second Easter here now, but we celebrated with another first. We all woke up at 5am and went up the hill to a

sunrise service. Although the fog kept us from seeing the sun, it was nice to awake early as Mary did 2000 years ago. We

sang songs, prayed for each other, the community and the country, and remembered Christ's sacrifice. HE IS RISEN!

One of the traditions here is to transform the symbol of death and pain (the cross) into a symbol of life, by putting

flowers on it. Around here there are no florists so the flowers you see come from our own personal gardens. In fact

keeping up nice flower gardens is very useful as it is used for arrangements and boutineers etc during times of celebration.

If you notice, I got tired of standing in line so I went around back and reached up top and placed a red carnation at the

very top as only I was able to reach that place.

We then went to some acquaintances house and ate Easter ham. We dyed eggs yesterday with our Finnish neighbors and we hid

them inside the house as it was pouring rain outside.


Then we ate some homemade pie Kendal made. Very good work on the part of my wife, and finally we celebrated by having

Calvin's stitches removed and spending time together in the evening.

Yesterday we spent time making an Easter craft. I thought the kids would enjoy a more interactive time talking about the

Easter story, as well as spending time in "daddy's shop". I had some spare Kwila (hard wood) and I cut a few notches and we

made crosses while talking as a family about Christ and the symbolism. It is remarkable how much they understand and know

already. The depth of their understanding isn't your typicaly sunday school answers.

I asked "Why is Easter Sunday so important?"
"Because Jesus came back to life."
"why is that important?"
"because if he didn't, then we couldn't be saved."

on Good Friday a thought someone shared struck me.... for the disciples 3 years of living with Jesus came to an end at His

death. For those experiencing separation, this is the extreme. Imagine spending time with Jesus for 3 years, and then Him

being gone.... that resonated with me. That type of separation. I can see why people describe Hell as separation from God,

and I wonder sometimes if that is why leaving friends and family is so hard... separation is seemingly the opposite of what

God created us for.


Jesus is alive, He is risen.
We will be joined with Him some day!

From all of us here, Happy Easter!!


pictures here

1 / 29

Yesterday was our 1 year anniversary of arriving in PNG.
Thank you to all who are involved in this ministry, for all who have been praying for us, for all who have been financially supporting us. It's been an exciting year!


Today is my 29th birthday. Well, my "spiritual birthday" as we call it around my house. At age 5, 29 years ago, I made a decision to turn my life over to Jesus. Since at that time we're 'born again', it's our birthday in a way.


Happy Easter to everyone! This weekend we celebrate by attending/serving in a Good Friday and Easter Sunday service. We'll decorate eggs with the kids, and hopefully have the Finnish kids next door over to celebrate a fun tradition.

Each year at easter we take our family photo so we'll post soon.

This is our second Easter here in PNG.

Grease

tonight Calvin and I were doing dishes and he read the dish soap label aloud

"dad, if it's tough on grease but soft on hands, I bet it's pretty tough on greasy hands."

I had to laugh.

Stitches

At the top of a rocky hill, Calvin decided he wanted to go down the
hill. He didn't use brakes, and I heard he was pedalling. He lost
control, and fell.
He had his helmet on, and Kendal was there with him, amazed that he
tried it, and wondering why he did, she thought for sure he would get
off and walk it but he took off before she could stop him.

He got a little road rash, on his chin, elbow, knee, back, etc... the
worst of it was his forehead hit a rock and he wound up getting 8
stitches (3 deep tissue, 5 in the skin).

Kendal picked him up and made him walk home while she pushed his bike.

He was crying etc... but then took him to the clinic.

Dr. Jeff at the clinic stitched up Calvin who was extremely brave on the
"surgery" table, I sat there and watched the little guy as he would
squeeze my hand.
About 5 stitches into it he asked "when are you going to put that needle
in me?" to which the doctor replied, "it's been in you 5 times!"
He was relatively brave the entire time, so that was good.

IT was his first time riding his bike to school. Later he asked "hey
dad, how does sydney go down that hill so slow?" "she uses her brakes
son." "oh." he says.

After he was checked out and stitched up, the doctor prayed over him.
That was a new experience for us and really a blessing.

On the table to get his mind off things we asked him
"Calvin, you know how the Bible says to give thanks in all things? I
know this is a bad time for you but can you think of some things to give
thanks for?"
"I'm thankful that my head didn't split open" he said,
"and I'm thankful my bike isn't ruined" he said.
"and for the medicine that makes you not feel the needle" the doctor said.
"and that didn't break any bones" I said.

It was need to have that conversation with a doctor and a nurse present.

And we're very very thankful for the staff here at the clinic, if it
were not for them, we would have had to travel a very long way to get
him stitched up in a not-as-sterile environment.



We were very blessed by the medical staff here and the supplies available here. It can be tempting at times to not be thankful for the limitations. For example a broken bone means you may have to fly to Australia. But we are very thankful for everyone involved and that includes the people back at their home places who have sent them here.

The chain works. People send us here, you send and keep us here, we keep kids taught, servers running, network operating. Translators us the network to relay information back and forth across the world to help with their translation. If I had to fly to Australia, it would be harder for them to accomplish that task should problems arise. So the doctors and nurses here and their support team who keeps them here, allowed me to stay, which allows me to work, which allows translators to work, which allows translation to get done which allows someone very soon, to have a Bible in their language. We're on the eve of 2 or 3 dedications here!

The other way it could have gone, would have been much worse, not to mention the stress on everyone around had we needed to leave for a hospital.

Thanks to God for working in SO many lives to allow the people and supplies to be here to accomplish His work!

Dust

Today I was going around the center, and I saw a group of people who instantly stood out in my mind as "they're new!" I couldn't figure out why I thought that. There is plenty evidence to support the idea that they simply are people I haven't met yet returned from furlough.

And then it dawned on me.

Their clothes were still white and bright. Their shoes were shiny.

If you looked closely, the elastic in their socks still had some stretch.

I thoroughly enjoy that I can not worry about having short hair, fashionable clothing, or even clean pants.

Can you keep a secret?
I have a still-in-the-bag set of socks and underwear that I've been saving for that time when I would really like to wear something new.

It's my emergency underwear.

The thought of that makes me laugh to myself.
Imaginary scenarios come to mind...

"man it's been an "open the new socks" kind of day."
or
"quick, where did I hide my emergency George Forman's!!! A man's life depends on it!"

Still, there is something about a nice new clean pair of socks. I was wearing a pair that was new only 3 months ago, now stained beige from the mud I got stuck in and in an awful state.

I noticed someone look over at my socks while I crossed my legs and the odds are they were thinking:

"wow, those socks are pretty new!"

Monday

birds chirping, dogs barking... yawn.. wake up... hearing my wife hiccuping.

I get up, sneak into the kitchen and startle my wife. She does NOT appreciate my efforts. NEVER go with your first impulse when you wake up on Monday morning (-;

We laughed about it, about 30 minutes later.

The kids head off to school, I head off to work, my wife instructs the yard Meri and works around the house (monday is her day at home).

At work I find three couples who are in dire need of their email being changed. People fly in and out all the time.

Discussed reconfiguring the network, wrote a script to help me do so, then checked my email. More work needing done. Was able to fix the new XP desktop for the telephone manager. Back to my desk.

Talk with someone about server configs... lunch time.

WOW this monday is going really well, work is getting done, problems aren't coming left and right like last Monday.

Lunch was nice, went home, ate home-made pizza with my wife, came back to work.

Passed the autoshop, they're closed for stock take, waved hello on the way to several friends.

Back at work.
I turn on a song while I work...
"I am thankful that I'm incapable, of doing any good on my own."

And it hits me, it's a good day, sunny, productive, everything is in harmony... and I'm feeling pretty good about life. And none of it is from my own capabilities. Reminding myself that any good that came of today is from God through me.

Through me.

It's a good day.

Mushbeard

tonight, I worked a little late helping the telephone manager bring his computer online.
I got home and another person called me apologizing for calling at home, and had email issues. He had jsut gotten back from Australia on medical leave, his wife has been diagnosed with cancer.

I typically draw the line at after hours work, but in this instance, I gave him all the help I could, not because of my job, but because we are brothers in Christ and he was in need at the moment.

For those who have ever worked in professional ministry, it can be hard to know the lines between your job, your ministry, and your private time. Drawing boundaries is important, knowing when to make exceptions is important too. Being good neighbors, for example when our neighbor had to fly to Australia with his son to have his broken arm mended, his wife was at home without her husband.

She was nervous, and scared, and we had her over for dinner, I kept an eye on her and her house for her... to add that extra bit of ... someone is caring.

We are unable to express the gratitude we have for living here because the opportunities to serve God by loving other people are plentiful! You don't have to try hard to find a way to serve in worship. I think the bigger challenge is to maintain a glad heart when you do serve.

You can pray for that, that we would continue to serve with glad hearts, and that others around us who are tired of the struggles, could find some peace.

I'm told that when the one year mark hits, people start to hate life here. It is some sort of mental barrier that has to be broken through. I'm told by many people
"the culture shock hits a new stage, and after a year, you hate it here, after a year and a half, you love it more than ever." Some people don't make it that long.

We haven't hit the "we hate it here" stage, but if we do, we're prepared because we know it's a part of the adjusting.

In fact we still very much love it here.

Tonight, we gathered in our bedroom, the four of us, with the lights out, watching a lightning storm in the distance.

Professionally I knew that lightning is bad for computer equipment, but we were taking a moment to enjoy the lightning and God's creation.

When my daughter said, completely randomly
"you know what it's called when you have a mustache and a beard?... a mushbeard."

we all started laughing.

It was a great way to end the week. A week of ups and downs.
Ups - work is going well, new services are helping translators.
Downs - we would still like to make more friendships here, we have some friends who are getting discouraged and that weighs heavily on our hearts.


To spend the moments before bedtime, watching God's handiwork, and laughing with our kids was a special moment.

where we live

someone has taken the time to post many youtube videos of Ukarumpa.
this is a nice scenic example of where we live.

I saw a Giant!

Today, a co-worker pulled me aside, and speaking in a mixture of English and Tok Pisin he told me this:

The other day I was in my village and I heard a man telling a story in Tok Ples:
"I was sitting outside CTS (my work) and I saw a GIANT MAN. HE WAS TALL AND BIG! When he walked he had to duck under the doorway. He was so tall he had to duck under the roof when he walked outside!"

I heard this man telling this story and I said, "oh yes, I know him, his name is Chad."

Jesus Genie

Yesterday I had an interesting conversation with my kids..
I was sitting down and I said, "boy I wish I had a nice glass of lemonaide"
and Sydney said,
"if you have a wish, ask Jesus for it."
which gave me pause. My daughter has taken on two aspects of her conversational style that are similar to my own.

1) I can never tell when she's joking
2) she'll talk in circles jsut so she can't be proven wrong.

So I say, "What, is Jesus a genie? does he grant 3 wishes?"
Sydney - "He could if you wanted."
Me - "Syd, Jesus is not there to grant your wishes, He is our King, He is our Lord. If anything we are here to grant His wishes."
Syd - "Jesus isn't a king silly, He's God."
Calvin - "uh huh, he's King of Kings and Lord of Lords."
Me - "Glory, Alelujah!"
Sydney agreed because she recognized the truth since it came from a song.

I was fearful my daughter had a completely askew look at Christ and God but then realized quickly she was being facetious for fun.

She got me going though.

Culture moments

Cultural moments. These are the little things that sneak up on you and remind you "oh yeah, I'm in a different place."

Cultural moment #12 - Hearing an odd like screeching/talking and realizing your neighbors "Coki" (white parrot) is flying around the neighborhood yelling "Coki kaikai" (parrot food).

Cultural moment #16 - Pleasantly surprised when you find $5.00 in the pocket of a pair of pants you haven't worn in a while, and then realizing you can't spend it without converting it.

In the Air

This tower is 95 feet tall.
The man at the top of this tower is the manager of my department.
Yesterday a team of us upgraded the wireless connection to aviation.
Aviation is a mile down the road from the computer center, and we use a standard home wireless router, connected to a 16db antenna mounted 95' in the air to get them their network link.

I've never seen this before with ordinary household wireless access points. (linksys, from cisco for $75 at fry's). And they were running this way for over two years.

So yesterday we upgraded the antenna to 25db, and the WAP to a professional grade with more diagnostics. (translation, their network is much much faster and many pilots,mechanics and admin staff are much happier)

But to do so, we had to run new lightning resistance, new grounding cables, drill holes in this wall stuff they call "cement board", route new network cabling. And basically get a crash course in electrical wiring for networking in a heavy lightning environment. I learned that copper grounding should never touch galvanized steel!

It was a full team event for an entire day, and it was some work.
The men on this tower are over 50, and they are trained telephone workers. Why is being over 50 significant? Well because one of their wives said, "can't they find anyone UNDER 50 to climb this tower?) He was up there for 4 hours!

Do not worry, yours truly would never have attempted climbing a tower like this.

But it was exciting being on the ground team and getting this job done.

See, I don't always sit in an office! In fact, I rarely get to simply sit in an office, I'm constantly doing odd and interesting things like this.

In the Midst

in the midst of an otherwise stressful time, I got a fun quote.
I'm working on an older translator's laptop and I'm trying to repair the modem.
He happened in, gave me a very firm handshake and said, "the sound hasn't been working since I spilled coffee on it, but the modem is fine."

and then I asked "was the modem working recently?"
"oh yes, it was working as recently as a year ago."

I would have chuckled if I thought he was joking.
It highlighted the difference between those who have been here over 20 years and those who haven't yet been here a year.

Update on the Water situation:
Our water has been dismantled by a man who has done so illegally.
As a result his entire clan have been made ineligible to work here. Every department has lost many employees until this water issue is resolved.

It is the culturally appropriate way to handle the issue, let the clan deal with it amongst themselves.

Currently, our work load has doubled since we've lost half our staff in our dept. Kendal's school is getting no maintenance or janitorial work done, neither are we.
We've been asked not to use the bathrooms at work because of no water, and at home, 1 of the two bathrooms is working.

But it has been raining a lot.

Still, disputes over water rights went out in the 1800's in the U.S. didn't they? It is a very interesting new twist to living here, and it will be educational to see how it works out.

Mending the Bridge

Yesterday was one of those memories I'm never likely to forget.

There are three "crisis" happening around here at the moment. But the most urgent one is that a bridge between our center and the rest of the world is sinking due to the river eroding the bank. The water has been high during this rainy season and the bridge has been there for 30-40 years I've heard tell.

The administration has been urging the department of public works to repair the bridge, meanwhile the surrounding communities have been upset at us for not doing more to repair the bridge.

We had men in bulldozers and dump trucks trying to save the bridge, we were asking people not to drive over it, etc. It is important to know that the surrounding communities view us as an organization as a respected group, but also a rich people. Our entity has always put community outreach and relations at a very high priority, so as a result, we have a good name, well respected, but also we are depended on, and looked to when things get rough. It can be an awesome responsibility and burden at times. But enough of that.

One end of the bridge has broken and dropped about two feet into the weak corner. So only 4x4's can cross, but armed guards are not allowing vehicles across now. So the public vehicles stop on one side drop off all their passengers who walk across the bridge to the other vehicle waiting to pick them up.

In an effort of good faith, to show we were in fact trying to do something, the call went out for all able bodied men to show with shovels and start filling sandbags.

And we showed in a major way.


I'd like to set the scene for you, but honestly, this is something that'll stick in my mind alone I think.

We arrived in a pick up truck, short shovels in hand. The bridge was sunken down, the blacktop cracked. Three hundred papua new guineans were standing around the line of vehicles, under them, wherever they could get protection from the rain.

Another fifty PNG men were standing on a hill of gravel, along with 50 or so from our center. People were standing, talking laughing, smiling, waiting. Crowds and crowds of people, watching this spectacle, and people walking across the bridge, being dropped off, walking. I met several people I knew heading back and forth.

Then a dirt bike pulls up and drops off 300 sandbags, leaves and goes for more.
We get to work.
Dozens of us shovelling, bagging, dragging, dropping bags over the hill to the men below in the river packing them under the weak corner of the bridge.

It isn't long before the 300 bags run out.
I'm shovelling shoulder to shoulder with men from here I haven't yet met, and men from PNG whom I may never see again. But it was good, hard work, honest work, and work shoulder to shoulder with the community.

I felt like I was really doing some good. I'm not sure if the bridge will hold, but working along side the men of the area was a very satisfying event.

And who doesn't like working on a bridge?!

Soon another 50 bags came, rocks flew into bags. Someone brought by a few cases of coke which was fun, the png men dove into them!

Waiting for more bags we talked about the bridge, got to know some folks, I played and joked with some of the kids. Almost everything we did was better than television for them. When I walked on the scene they seemed to murmur and whisper in awe. It felt like a challenge, "can he work twice as hard since he is twice as big" is what it felt like. I worked harder than I had in a very long time because of the extra urging.

Ironic to me that only two weeks before I had been shoveling gravel for my own driveway. Today I am not even sore. Perhaps it was conditioning and God's timing!

The bags filled up and went away. Some people arrived across the bridge who had been out of town. The call was put out that day "come home now, or you wont' be getting home" so we lugged their luggage across the bridge into new vehicles and got them home.

The river was rising, and we covered the sandbags with chain link fence, and drove it in with spikes. Under the sandbags was special protective fibre cloth to hold back erosion.

None of us were sure all the work did any good for the bridge, but we were all pretty sure the work did good for the community relationships as well as our own personal relationships with each other.

I was glad we went, I am still glad we served, I don't think I shall ever forget that day. I hope that I do, I hope that there are so many more alike events that this one will become blurred into all the other times when I'm working side by side the nationals here to accomplish an important task.

But for now, this one is burned into my mind's eye, and I am very encouraged and blessed by God to have been in that situation.

How you can pray:
emergency #1 - the bridge - without this bridge we can not get groceries trucked in, fuel for the airplanes, or any other such supplies. We can not leave except by plane. The plane schedules will take another drastic hit as they decrease passenger weight for fuel weight.

emergency #2 - our water supply is out. Someone in the night (we think) dismantled the water pump system. We are now completely on rain water, but it is raining a lot!

emergency #3 - this one is all but over soon, but work permits and visa renewals are still in progress, meaning no one can leave or enter until this paper work is approved by the government.


PRAISE GOD that we have planes to get out, we have rain to give us water, and that recently the Work Permits were approved and they began on the Visas.

Things may sound tough right now, but if you look at it a different way, God is providing!

Steak

animals don't often get fat here.
pigs are kept lean until months before slaughter
beef is sometimes milk cows that stop producing

the beef here has very very little fat in it.
Which sounds healthy, but the result is very tough meat.
Also it's rather gamey.

Burgers don't taste the same.
Hot dogs as known in the States, do not exist.

One of the bigger culture shocks here for folks from the States is that of the beef. Hamburger and hot dogs simply don't taste like they did.

And then, there is steak.
I wasn't a slouch in the grilling department before moving here.
But I have yet to make a decent steak.

I've attempted 3 times, on special occasions.

The first time, I didn't know about the toughness, and we got a gamey tasting super chewy plate of rubber. I only used a dry rub with spices we had brought from home.

Then I tried tenderizing and marinating. Back home, if you tenderize with a spice or a salt, you normally give it at max, 3 hours to soften the fibres. So I marinated then tenderized with some meat tenderizer spice from Costco.

Still super tough, but good taste.

This time, I decided (last weekend) to tenderize the tar out of it, and soaked it fo 2 days in tenderizer, vinegar, lemon.
But what I didn't realize was that my tenderizer had salt in it.
And I marinated in teriyaki.

So... I essentially made beef jerky.
Super dry, super salty but wow.. not so tough!

I think, try four (sometime in the next few months) will prove more favorable results.

I'm on the verge of giving up.
Your diet here is a challenge for variety. Chicken and rice constitute a large portion of our meals, but my wife is incredible and has flourished as a cook here.

We have been here long enough to adjust to most of the "odd" tasting meats.
One of our favorite breakfasts is spam and eggs now. (-;

Busy Sunday

It's 3pm on Sunday and our yard is full of children from the neighborhood. 2 Americans, 3 Finnish, 8 Papua New Guinean.

there's a line at the trampoline my neighbors have (we share a yard) there's a line at the basketball hoop, there's a line at the tree swing I made.

It is Sunday and our yard is chirping with activity. I enjoy all the children but there are times when you would like it to be still outside.

No blessing is without its price.

Yesterday Calvin gave a bag of his old clothes to a friend he made across the road. A young PNG boy. That boy left the bag out in a field, and when you leave things out, the general idea is that all can come take what they want.

Add to that there are two children with a slight reputation for taking more than their fair share, and you have a formula for upsetting the neighbors.

Today there was a knock at the door.
In Tok Pisin the man told me, that my son had come to his house, gone inside and accused his son of stealing.

The man was calm, we sat down and brought the children around and discussed this serious issue.

Apparently, the boy who took some clothes, assumed it was free for the taking, and once CAlvin handed over the clothes, it shouldn't have been our issue. But his friend came to him, explained that he never got any trousers, and Calvin got mad.

So mad he walked down the road to the boys house, went inside without permission and accused him of stealing.

So now I found myself sitting outside with this neighborhood man whom I only know a little, having a calm conversation, getting all the witness accounts (all the children weighed in) and we determined that there was a misunderstanding followed by a wrongful act on Calvin's part.

So Calvin and I went inside, and we talked about how it's not right to accuse people falsely, how to control temper, etc, and he went down the street this time to apologize.

IT's not that cut and dried, but that's what happened.

I found myself in a sort of kangaroo court, everyone was looking to me to resolve the issue, and I'm desperately trying to understand this super fast Tok Pisin. Thankfully, I held my own and it was resolve amiably.

I half admire Calvin's gumption, but I wish it hadn't resulted in a cross-cultural conflict.

So for those keeping score:
Number of cultural close-calls with the neighbors:
Calvin - 1 (trouser incident)
Sydney - 1 (watermelon incident)

As Kendal and I chatted this afternoon she noted, "Sometimes, parenting is exhausting". So true... so true.

Our kids are getting older, the parenting challenges are getting to be more and more unique.

Today my daughter decided to paint her bedroom floor in blue paint.
She thought it'd be fun.

IF you're praying for us, pray that we be given an extra amount of wisdom and patience regarding parenting, because these kids are REALLY keeping us on our toes these days.

Success

Email is to missionaries as blood is to the heart.
It carries our messages throughout the world and it communicates to us from our families.

For this reason, the #1 priority of the network staff here is to keep email up.

Processing email, protecting email, quarantining email, forwarding email, takes up a HUGE portion of our time.

Believe it or not, missionaries move around a lot! (-;
So then their email has to follow them.

We came up with a vision "what if your email worked, wherever you were, without having to change settings?"

We began this project months ago. Pecking at it over time, with technology I was not fluent in, completely ignorant of, or simply had never even heard of before.

I'm a unix guy at heart, but we use Microsoft mostly here.
So, today, I'm pretty excited and mostly only geeks will understand why.

I got exchange email to work securely through a netscreen firewall via ISA2006 publishing!

What does that mean? It means that email won't break when people move around.
It means that very soon (when we go live with it) the missionaries here won't have to have their workstations re-configured when they get here before email works.

This means a drastic reduction in the amount of work we have to do daily, which means that staff can spend time on all the other things there are to do,
and it also means that there will not be the odd, 3 day window where someone gets here on a friday and their email doesn't work until Monday because CTS is closed.

I'm pretty excited about this success.

One of the things I want to do here is not only keep things running smoothly, but improve systems so that there is less time "in the shop" so to speak for the folks.

So far, I believe we're doing a pretty good job of it.

Thanks and praise to God for somehow giving me the smarts to solve the issues we ran into.

Changing a Tire

come, have a laugh with me at my expense
Before we get too far into this, I need to say, I am NOT inept at changing tires. I have done so plenty of times.

This morning it was raining, and my daughter was staying home from school with a cold. Which means we now have the problem of how to get my son to school, dry and on time. No problem, we hop in the car. The car has a flat.

No time to change it, I'll do that at lunch.

Fast forward to lunch time.

It's raining HARD. I know if I don't change it now, my son will get SOAKED coming home from school.

So I begin the process of changing a tire on a 4x4 in the rain and mud.

Challenge 1: the jack was too short/too tall depending on where you put it. Finally using a series of blocks of wood, and jacking, lowering, jacking again, I get the tire off.

Challenge 2: my car has no parking brake. It rolled forward, the wheel went into the mud. NOT the tire, the wheel. I use blocks of wood, jack it up for the fifth time, and clean the wheel and brake after putting blocks of wood in place around the tires. Yes it was in gear. It was more the muddy ground that gave way than it was the gearbox.

Challenge 3: as I'm laying in the mud, and soaked to the bone, I feel sharp stings on my waist and belly. Oh.. they are black ants. Ouch. Only a few got me, that's good, keep working.
Black ant bites aren't as bad as red ants, but it's been over an hour and it's still pulsating sting. The stings come in waves so you feel like you keep getting bit every few minutes. Anyway, it's a nuisance only, but my first black ant bite here.

Challenge 4: the spare tire won't go on.. it's 1/2" too tall, I can't raise the jack any more. SO.. ironically I begin digging away the gravel and stone that jsut THIS LAST SATURDAY I had spent half a day shoveling and spreading into place to avoid ... MUD which I was now lying in.

All of this is going on and I look up and see 5 or so little Papua New Guinean kids standing ten feet away, watching me. I had an audience. I thought in anger "why are they staring at me? this isn't a show!" I wanted to holler, "GO AWAY!!!!"

but I didn't, I have come to realize whatever I do is like television to these kids, and they watch me all the time (envision Mr. Incredible at home with the kid on the big wheel staring at him).

So I didn't, my temper was up because of the difficulties and I wasn't really upset with the kids.

But then, he stepped forward and quietly said in accented english, "Can I help you?"

A ten year old boy, offering me help.

I laughed and said "no thank you" and realized, I must have looked the 3 ring circus I felt at that particular moment, enough to have this young boy feel I needed assistance.

Well, I got cleaned up and back to work on time. At this particular moment I feel like beginning an educational campaign around this place informing people of

"Why throwing nails on the road is BAD".

But I haven't, instead I decided to let you use your imaginations and have a laugh at my expense. I'm already laughing about it.

Saturday in the cluck

We treated the kids to a new place 15 minutes up the road.
"Higlands Chicken"
Imagine K.F.C. with flies and lizards, and the food takes 30 minutes to arrive, and scratch the variety. The menu has "#1, #3, #5" that's it.

It was like an oasis to us!

While were were there a man sold us a bag of his own grown coffee. Organically grown,picked himself and sold to us, ground already. I told him I didn't drink coffee
"mi laik dringim copi"

but I spoke with him a while and found his name and apparently his reputation is decent as a coffee maker, but he does tend to hound people. So I expect I'll be seeing him again.

Then he left, he had come into the restaurant because he saw us go in.
Next to me was an older gentleman who gave his approval of the coffee, and we talked.
It was hard to hear inside with the music being so loud, but he told me about his eye, and how it's "rotting". Older men here tend to have eyes go bad. I've seen it on more than half a dozen people but I don't know what causes it. The eye turns brown or black and they lose much of their site in it. I suspect it's related to diet.

He hadn't gotten to the point where he was asking for money, but he started to get there. This happens from time to time, but it happens everywhere.

We talked a bit, I shared some chicken and chips (fries) with him, and he was a very nice older gentlemen, sitting inside the restaurant for no real reason other than to people watch, he hadn't ordered any food.

It was a good time of simply conversing with total strangers.

I don't know why I blog it now other than to mention, it was an enjoyable outing.