A Video to Share

http://www.gimpel.tv/ftp/charlieborman_png.m4v
(be kind this is my website, try to download it only once)

This is a 1 hour documentary airing on BBC and I think Discovery called “By Any Means”

This episode is very much a typical PNG experience. Several of the things Charlie experiences, we've experienced or know folks who have. To his credit, he's not a dummy, and picks up on things quickly. I'm hesitant to share it for fear you might get the wrong idea, but they do such a good job accurately presenting the country, that it's worthy of showing.

Warning: partial nudity and some swearing.


2:56 Lae is about 2.5 hour drive from where I live. Charlie goes right passed where we live and even picks up two high schoolers from here for his trip.

3:31 Goroka is 2 hours the other way from me.

4:36 one of the best stretches of road anywhere in the country

5:51 the peanuts are good, but all they are is garden fresh and boiled.

6:14 people only throw stones if you do something to anger them, which truck drivers often do.

11:25 This man gives an insight to the culture you don't normally hear from men regarding men vs women roles.

20:10 Tourist attraction... hehe not a lot of tourism here, but when these guys come at you (mudmen) they come pointing spears and arrows, and it's a bit awkward if you're trying to eat lunch.

14:25 we've been to a few mumus.

17:40 Daniel is a cool guy. A friend of a friend. The expat blonde kids here are friends. Luke and Brett.

18:24 I don't know where they got all this nice CLEAN new equipment, you almost NEVER see a bike that that in the highlands.

19:35 The crowd around the bikes, is common. Often times they try to high five you or throw flowers..which don't feel great passing at 60kmph.

20:00 This road is typical, however the route they're taking to Madang is not the route we typically take. We take a much more safe road when we go.

25:50 Typical of highlands culture. These men didn't do any work on the road but they own the road and want payment. I was actually surprised that they were able to negotiate not paying anything. Bribes DO cause problems for locals.


29:13 Remember all that news about our bridge out. I'm glad they included this, because the other bridge they crossed was too nice. This is more the typical bridge here in country.

33:00 We're down on the coast now. PMV's are popular everywhere, but the culture on the coast is a bit more friendly in most places. Most PMV's put english names on but they almost never make much sense. My favorite so far is "I'll be back".

34:00 This man shows us how the men view the women. The woman is telling you one of the many differences between the highlanders (where we live) and the coastal culture.

43:35 This stuff is HARD to digest. It's very thick and heavy, and sits in your stomach for a while. Much of their food is this way, but it helps you to understand the difference between food for survival and food for enjoyment.

56:48 You NEVER know when going to a village or on a trip if you're going to have to wait, if the road is washed out, if the bridge is out. Often times you have to wait or make a decision to turn back.

57:40 Don't let this concern you. Compensation is a VERY large part of the culture. This man is saying "i want you to pay me because I built a bridge over my land 30 years ago. The government needs to make a new bridge, and pay me for the right to build on my property." This is why the road infrastructure here is so sketchy, this concept of compensation. The heat building up, we ex-pats know these signs and often get out of there in case anything ocurrs. Often times though it is simply men yelling and talking and turns into nothing. Don't let this concern you.


Thanks for watching it. Charlie's experience might be very similiar to yours if you came to visit!

The Red Carpet

This was an important weekend.
1 - We dedicated our new plane the Kodiak! It was a big official ceremony that took place in the nation's capital and a small group of people (not including myself) went.

and

2 - A couple who have been translating for 52 years returned from their village for the last time today. A small ceremony was pulled together (the couple dislikes a lot of attention constantly declaring to give the glory to God).

Someone lent a red piece of runner that we used as a red carpet, and had the helicopter land, prayers were said, a hymn sung, and verses read.

52 years of ministry, and it isn't ending, simply the village living portion of their ministry is over. They're still going to be working on dictionary and language items.

We gathered to honor them. We give them honor but God the glory.

1 Timothy 5:17 (New International Version)

17 The elders who direct the affairs of the church well are worthy of double honor, especially those whose work is preaching and teaching.

We are rather new to this part of our lives and our ministry, having been here for coming close to 3 years now. This couple has been living in the village since long before we were born.

A funny joke he told,

"When I first left for the village in 1956, half of the center was there to see me off. The other guy went to the wrong town. Now it seems as we leave the village, half of the center is here to welcome us back. Thank you."

Back in 1956, there were but a handful of people here, and now, in 2009 there are over 500.

Why I'm Here

or maybe better titled "Why Trees are Here"

This is a pretty neat story, I'll try to make it concise.
Yesterday was a quiet day, so quiet that I decided to leave an hour early so I could go home to prepare for the evening dress rehearsal of the community play my daughter and I are in.

At 3pm I had a visitor touring our facility and he talked about a spiritual attack where lighting struck his network and took it out for 6 weeks during a translation project.

At 4pm the phone rang, a server in our aviation department was offline and they needed my help. I suddenly realized I was at risk of missing my dress rehearsal.

As I was on the phone, it began to rain heavily and within 15 minutes, practically no warning, a loud CRACK made me jump out of my chair. The lights dimmed, the phone hissed. Lightning had struck something nearby.

We have lightning storms often, but in my 2.8 years here I haven't see it touch down. This time, it struck a tall tree down the road.

So as I went to tell my aviation friend I had to go, instead the solution to the issue jumped out at me... we solved it.

Before heading to my rehearsal I decided to look at my network.

Sure enough a switch was killed by the lightning strike (or residual EMP). Guess which department? The only one currently actually printing a Bible. Coincidence?

I don't believe in coincidence.

I rush down in the pouring rain to look at the switch
(remembering for the rehearsal we were instructed to keep our hair dry).

I ran into a low door jamb and hit the top of my head... and fell over. I didn't black out, but I thought I might.

Soon I was up and working on the network issue. The switch was gone, and I had to drum up a replacement. This could wait till morning since it was quitting time for everyone anyway.

I went out in the rain and couldn't start my bike.... so I was fuming now. I mean... stressed and upset and.... when you have a very full plate, to have it doubled is a lot to bear.

So I stopped and prayed and calmed myself. GOD, this is your equipment, everything, I pray against the enemy, heal it, calm me, help me not to home and be gruff.

Suddenly my bike started up, and I went home.

God reminded me He was there... and caring for us.

But wait it gets better.

The night before I woke up in the middle of the night and said "hey, the set we adjusted is heavier now, I better warn folks."

So sure enough, I warned everyone "the set is now top heavy, it may fall."

And it did, but no one was hurt because no one was behind it. I felt bad for predicting the problem but having no feasible solution.

That's a side note.. but another reminder.. God is watching over us.

So this morning, I'm running around fixing things. People are telling me stories of having felt the static. Children were near the very tree that was struck and felt a tingle in their feet, that's it.

NONE of our server equipment was killed but the 1 switch. (a very old one).
AND... one entire department went down, and the fix was a simple surge protector and a dsl filter. TOTAL cost for them, around $3.00!!!

The harshest strike I've ever been witness too, and tons of stories of "well my surge protector died, but that's it." come rolling in.

GOD, thank you for that visitor that reminded me to pray, and thanks for answering the prayers and sparing the more expensive equipment.

I woke up thinking "today could be really really bad news, lots of expensive damage might be." but instead.... I'm hearing "well a $2.00 piece failed to spare a $150.00 peice"

GOD is the GOD of technology too.

Encouragement

well, I've been busy, working on my own in here for a few weeks now.
Also next week my daughter and I begin performances for the community theatre production of 'Fiddler on the Roof'.

We've been rehearsing with about 30 others for 7 weeks now to give this gift to the community and have fun together doing it.

Today I helped put out a grass fire that was threatening our water supply pump building.

I helped a single lady fix her alarm.

I helped a visiting couple get internet

as if that wasn't enough
I also got this encouraging email

Chad,
I just wanted to drop a quick note to say thank you so much for the video of the dedication that you put together. We've been back in the US for six weeks and have shown it over 20 times.
Every time we've shown the video someone in the audience has cried! Every, single time. It is a huge blessing to us and to everyone who has seen it. Thanks for your creative contribution to our 'victory lap'.

Cheers,
[translator friends of mine]

EDGE

I know it's hard for you to understand, but today I am celebrating the EDGE network capabilities.

Our cell service went down for a few hours last night and when it came back on the EDGE network was online and GPRS was not.

THIS is great news since we're playing with many different devices for cell networks, EDGE is significantly faster than GPRS. (about 2-3x faster here)

The sad news is I may not be able to go to the village soon to present this, because of vehicular issues.

The good news is that I'll be able to present this nifty new device to fellow computer geeks here who may find it useful, if nothing else, will be able to support it.

It does feel odd celebrating something that is "new again". It was new to me, back in what.. 1999? But it's new again!

Pick me Up

We've probably mentioned the miracle of owning a car here. Short version, someone was selling a decent 1991 Isuzu Trooper Diesel, and asked more than we had budgeted (2 years ago) and so he said, go pray. We prayed and the next day someone sent us an email with money without being asked.

Things like this happen all the time in the service of God.

Today I was a little tired. Not sad, not down, tired. Because over the weekend a few things broke. The biggest was our car. The clutch went out. We have a trip to the village scheduled for this weekend. The blessing we can be to others is two fold.

1 - Single ladies find it hard to travel about the country, so we would be able to give a ride to someone to visit the village for a day trip

2 - if I were to get there with my equipment, I could measure their gprs signal strength and tell the translator family that lives there, if they could get email in their village and how to do it

But then Saturday our clutch went out. Sure I could drive everywhere in first gear only, but I could get to the village that way. So we had to cancel the trip, knowing full well that it takes weeks to get car parts here.

Silly me, I know how to do small maintenance on a vehicle, I decided to check the fluids, and the clutch cable. Oddly the clutch fluid was very low.

I called the auto-shop knowing they might have to take apart my transmission to look at the linkage, and they said "we're very busy, maybe tomorrow" then called me back and said "we have a guy who can look at it quickly today, but he won't tear it apart because we can't have another car torn apart in the shop, no room."

So I dropped it by the auto-shop today (thank God for their services). And in 2 hours it was fixed. The Clutch cyllinder (they call it a fluid cup) was cracked and leaking... they didn't have an IN stock part, but they had a similar one that they fashioned to work until the after-market parts can come. The BEST possible scenario was that they got it in TODAY and fixed it TODAY but that is very difficult to do here, so I'm excited.

And Bingo, before lunch we weren't heading to the village, and after lunch we were.

Stuff like that energizes me. Little things, notes from home, someone sending us a dvd, a note, things that aren't HUGE but they are reminders to us that God is looking out for us.

I was so very tired only a few moments ago, and now I feel as if new life has been breathed into me for the day!!

Modem

This is a usb GPRS/EDGE modem for the local cell phone carrier here. It turns cell phone signal into internet connection at the rate of about 33 cents p/mb which is not a bad price.

Having this in my hand is awesome because it means I get to play with making it a solution for translators in the village to get email FASTER and more affordably.

If you go to the village, you need a radio and a radio modem.

To use it, imagine it about 1/4 the speed of the OLD dial up modems.
Now imagine the modem costs $1000.00 (and the radio costs a lot as well)
NOW imagine that due to weather it disconnects frequently.
NOW IMagine that you can only dial up during night time hours.
NOW IMAGine you have to pay $80.00 p/year for this service.

Sounds frustrating? It is, BUT most people are VERY glad to have it and very thankful for the service we provide.

But it's a new age, and some of these villages are able to pick up cell signals.
And maybe also able to view websites because the speed is faster!
And being able to do this 24x7 whenever their schedule suits them!

It's a huge win and I'm so very excited to begin being able to offer this to people now that I have one in my hands and am playing with it... and using it.

The trick now is to get it to work on Windows 7.

Flying Fox

When we visit Madang, these are always a fun thing to see. This young man has taken down this bat with his slingshot (it'll be a meal later).

Bat-quiz
The animal in this picture is a:

1. Spectacled Flying-fox
2. Pteroptus Conspicullatus
3. Spectacled Fruit Bat
4. Flying Fox
5. Bilak Bogis
6. flying mammal
7. All of the above
8. None of the above


answer 7 all of the above.


For those that may be worrying about one of these flying around our children, don't be. They are located on the coast and not up here in the hills. We rarely find ourselves down on the coast.

Another Job

Teaching preschool and running the network here are the jobs we have. But there are many jobs here, all working together to accomplish the goal of translating the Word.


This blog is one of our POC buddies (we went through training together) and she is a translator.


The couple she's mentioning getting commissioned is in our bible study group. We all link together in multiple ways, as we form a team.

The survey team adventures out, on hikes and helicopter rides and finds people groups that need the Word. It's one of the most adventurous jobs here.
The translators go there and learn the language and begin the translation.
The computer folks like me, stay here and make sure everyone can communicate.

I suppose if you wanted to romanticize it all, if this were an action tv show... I'd be the nerd in the van listening in and making sure the operatives in the field have all the necessary information.

Anyway, this blog entry sort of shows a bit of how we fit together.

Weekend

1 more week until I'm running solo in the network room. I might get a little crazy in the head during that time. You can pray that for the next 6 months, my time as solo chief network operations manager that things go well, and that I not get too stir crazy having no one else around.

I've been playing with cell phone technology here as it is giving some remote parts of the country alternatives to dial up internet and giving them gprs internet, which is more than double their current speeds.

My wife and kids are doing well, school is in full swing with the kids back in school, and Kendal teaching. We have begun furlough plans.

This picture above is one of the foggy mornings where we live. Pretty scenery!

The Video

Here is a video for you of the Gapapaiwa Dedication. You won't see me in the video as I was behind the camera most of the time. The quality is poor because I have to pay for every mb I upload so I didn't upload the high quality video.

Still when we come home on furlough in June, you'll be able to see it on dvd if you'd like.

I'm thankful for video because this dedication defied words. Watching this, maybe you'll understand more what your efforts mean. You are of the "there are people" mentioned by the translator in this video.

Encouragement

got a nice note today. A new arrival shot a video and sent it home. He shot it with his built in laptop webcam and it came to 4gb. That would cost him $800 to upload. So I said quickly "if you save it in a compressed format by clicking here and here it'll reduce the size of the file" and it did, to 25mb. His church received it, was pleased with the quality of the video, and the man's bill came to about $5.00

It was a simple thing really but this man had zero experience with computers or video and since I have experience with both, I was able to help him.

I like to keep the encouraging notes around.

I was able to download it and play it. The quality is good ... a lot better than I was expecting from a webcam! I hope the church can use it.
Many thanks to Chad for his help in getting the file shrunk and ftp'ed. Just goes to show how important it is to have computer support people on the field!

Another encouraging note we got the other day, that pretty much sums up why we are here:

"thank you for getting skype up and working. Being able to see and speak to our grandchildren really energizes us and enables us to stay here longer and do our work."

That's what we're all about.

I'm published

A few weeks ago, the director of communication here asked me to write up a little bit about a dedication. They asked me for 1 page, I gave them 3 and told them to edit it as they saw fit. Speed was the key, and so instead of deliberating over it I let it pour from the heart and did zero editing.

They did the editing for me and posted it.

you can read the article here:

http://www.thewordislife.net/Stories/tabid/67/language/en-US/Default.aspx?id=1542&pg=1

(seems to come up better in a non-firefox browser)

Banner Day

Friday our centre received a new airplane. The Kodiak. Aviation staff are really excited about this plane for many reasons. Not the least of which is how it should be able to do everything our current planes do, but with more cargo capacity. Plus, it's always nice to receive something new. Very often what we receive to work with is a hand me down, or a donation. These are always appreciated greatly, as often times what is old to you, is new to us. But this plane is brand new... built specifically for us!

On Friday many of us went out to receive it and dedicate it to God.




Also today, some of our friends who have been gone 10 months on furlough return! This is a boon professionally as well as personally as the husband is our only radio technician on centre, which means my department can still continue to repair radios. Something we use a LOT of. Every person here contributes so much that when they leave, either their job can't be done because they were so specialized, or others pick up the slack. So people returning is always a blessing, and it lifts our spirits up again to see friends.

We have been here long enough now, that we have seen people leave on two year furloughs and return. We've seen people leave, have babies and return. We've seen babies have their third birthday. It's remarkable that we've been here 2.5 years already.

Bugs

I may have mentioned my son and friends going under the house a while back. The majority of our house is about 2 feet off the ground, supported by many posts. Many of the houses here are supported this way, it allows for a cooler house during the hot times, a dryer house during the wet times... and is a culturally appropriate way to make a house.

Ours was originally built by a family who dedicated the first Bible here in 1973, the year we were born.

God gave us the money for it miraculously and we're happy to have a home.

The other day though we were talking about bugs eating wood, and Calvin said "oh that explains the posts under the house."

and I said "what?"

he continued to tell me that while he was under there he saw many supporting posts that looked all eaten up.

Sure enough upon inspection I found one or two. So I called construction over.

They investigated, went under and came out saying "We're surprised your house is still standing."

Who doesn't love to hear that?

and then "have you noticed the floor sagging?"

no it's not sagging.

Short story long...
today they are under the house cutting treated posts and putting down cement. The problem was that back in 1970 when the house was built, concrete wasn't used and the posts were plain, untreated logs.

Thankfully however, the entire repair will run us less than $500 USD, thanks to the power of the US dollar right now and the cheap cost of manual labor in this country.

I'm really thankful Calvin went under the house that day!!!

a view from the coast

taken in 2007 from one of the translator couples that we support.

I don't live on the coast. It takes me several hours of flying to get to a place like this... but when I visit... ooooooh it's pretty.

This is evidence that sometimes, when God calls people to missions, it's not always to a dreadfully horrid place. Sometimes, He calls us to serve in some very pretty places.

One quote from another translator couple (friends) of ours.... "We retired from being architects at a young age and said 'God we'll go wherever you want' and He sent us to paradise, so we said 'wow, are you sure God? Okay we won't argue.'

Of course, living here has it's other challenges. In fact so many challenges that daily I go outside and look around and breath in the air and say

"yes, thanks God, for reminding me."

I think it would be near impossible to serve in a place I didn't find beautiful, because you see such ugliness, that my eyes need the medicine that is the beauty of this terrain.

Neighbors

For a long while our neighborhood was pretty empty. Most of the folks around us were gone. But for a few weeks now it's been back in full swing again.

The other day I set up 3 benches made out of a tree that fell in our yard over a year ago. I put together a little fire pit. Lit some citronella to keep out the mosquitos and then we had a nice little smores roasting, banjo playing fire.

We called the neighbors over who were at that moment, trying to make their own fire pit... and they dropped in. They have a young boy in my wife's preschool class.

He's an only child and loves Calvin, so he drops in all the time. Often times without telling his parents he's at our house. Today he said "Mister Chad, my pedal fell off". Well I took the pedal and welded it back into place on his bicycle.

And while doing that it dawned on me... that we have neighbors again. We really like the drop in, say howdy... type of environment. For so many months it has been only us down our lonely road... and now... it's full of people again.

And that thought really lifted my heart a bit.
Thanks for that little blessing today God.

Also we were having network problems and I've been hitting a wall trying to troubleshoot them when suddenly this morning a flood of new ideas came to me, and I think, ... pray for me....

I think the problems have been resolved!

So, the past couple of days have been mellow but nice. That kind of nice that has meaning and feels good.

Sports Day.
This is a day once a year when the school (primary) is divided into two teams. Red vs. Yellow. the kids compete in track and field, obstacle courses, crazy inventive games, and generally compete against each other in a healthy environment that encourages team and individual achievement.

Our kids each game home with 3 ribbons of differing places. Most kids go home with at least one, as there are many team events.

The finale, is the tug of war. And although both my kids were on the red team, and behind the yellow, in the end, they won the tug of war, but lost the day.

Still they really enjoyed the day at school without book learning. Of course they enjoy the book learning too.

Pictured above is my daughter after her team won the base run (baseball diamond relay race with batons) and my son in the middle of the rope climb on the obstacle course.

Village House

a friend of mine is in the village right now building his house. he's a translator.

A translation project has a lot of work to be done outside of simply the intellectual work of translating the Bible. Setting up a new project requires you build relationships with the people you will be living with. It also requires eventually having a place to stay.

Some locations that are reachable by truck, can build kit houses. But if you live in a helicopter allocation where trucks can't reach, then it becomes VERY expensive to fly in all your own lumber. SO, you cut the lumber from trees. To do that you need to get someone to sell you their trees, or to lend you some help.

My friend has cut down the trees with a team, then milled them and made them into boards. Then he took a rest. For these three weeks he's out there building his house with the help of support workers like me. Construction skills, carpenter skills, building skills, even cooking skills, are all required to help bring together a house in the village.

Here are some of the pictures of the project, in its first week of three still

That final shot is the water tank being lifted in.

Fish Stories

Fishin' in PNG

I live in the Eastern Highlands so I almost never get a chance to fish in saltwater. I do live right next to a river but I don't fish there because a) the water is full of bacteria and b) the nationals depend on fish for meals. So I won't make a sport out of what is their necessity.

We were out on a boat however, traveling to a Bible dedication and we dropped a line in the water. The boat only went 7knots so it was a fast troll but not too fast. A little bit of frayed yellow rope on the hook.... and eventually we heard the telltale ZIP of the line. We hooked a 2 foot long barracuda and the captain's son reeled him in (10 yr old boy). I had never caught a barracuda before, nor had I ever seen one face to face. It had teeth! Nice.

Look at those choppas!

Often times along the coast (when we visit) we will see young boys out in canoes. They tie a bit of line and a hook onto a water bottle or something round they can reel the line back up on.

sometimes they use a bamboo pole.

Sometimes rope is a lure, sometimes a piece of banana peel.

Sometimes they aren't out on canoes but instead they're walking barefoot across coral. CORAL.. their feet are so tough they can do this.

They truly are skilled fishermen, without all the niceties that we hobbyists have. A tackle box? Why do you need more than 1 lure?

I spent some time chatting with one of the local kids as he was fishing and it simply seemed the thing to do. School was out, and he had nothing to do, so might as well do nothing with a line in the river. See if he could catch anything.


It is good to see folks out fishing. You know if there are a few boys in the water, that it's a safe place to swim, and you know if they jump and run, so should you. They see the fish and know which ones are dangerous much faster than we would. One time Sydney was out playing with some boys who jumped up on the coral and ran a few steps.

Sydney unable to jump to the coral stayed in the water, and I shouted "come out now!!!" Apparently the boys had seen a puffer fish... I asked them why they jumped up and they said (translated):

"A fish that gets bigger, very bad."

I'm assuming they meant the puffer or the blowfish.

Either way, it was a nice warning system to get my daughter out of the water.