Routine

Greetings,

        After living here for a while things quickly become routine.  Making writing updates a little more difficult as we don’t want to boar people with our regular everyday events that become normal like; the common power outages that interrupt skype calls with family, navigating pot holes on the road that could eat small children, driving within inches of other cars and/or motorcycles, navigating conversations that are only half understood, nursing children in public with no covering without shame, kids running around the neighborhood with no clothes on, buying fruit we have no idea what it is, having a window sill filled with fresh pineapples some from our own yard, waking up at 4:00 to be ready to take-off by 6:00, ants taking over the bathroom floor etc.  All that to say we are getting somewhat settled into daily life to the point things that once seem strange are normal and excepted.

As we look ahead we are still waiting on our base assignment here in Papua.  I think it is likely down to 3 choices Merauke, Timika, and Wamena.  There are some large picture factors that management is wadding through before making the final decision.  We did however learn recently that our current house will no longer available to MAF after the end of June.  The mission that is renting the house to MAF requires the use of it again in July, which means we will be moving somewhere by then just not sure where yet.
On the work side of things the flight checkout/training is moving along probably about ½ way through it now.  I’m getting comfortable with handling the aircraft in normal ops with good weather.  Still struggling some during more challenging weather and terrain are mixed together.  It still amazes me that we can take a Cessna Grand Caravan into some of these places safely with margin.

Kids and Julie are doing well with the school and home life mix.  Isaac is taking after his mother reading up a storm.  Jaclynn is also started to catch on and read to me often in the evenings.  Franklin continues to make progress with his reading and learning challenges.

Health wise I think and pray that we are entering a season of better health as a family.  Over the past months Julie has faced some new health problems, I’ve just spent the last 5ish weeks trying to rid myself of a parasite, amoeba or something.  On the plus side instead of gaining weight over the holidays I lost some due to my lack of eating.  Yesterday was the last pill of my most recent round of meds which I think did the trick as I seem to have my appetite back. The kids have had some small health things but thankfully they have been pretty healthy since arriving in Papua.

More recently we've started to get out and see some of the sights here.  A couple weeks ago we as a family hiked up to a waterfall that is above our house.  Wow talk about cold refreshing water. It quickly became evident that we still had a little Canadian blood in us as we fared a bit better in the cold refreshing water than our Southern friends that joined us ;-).  The next day a couple of friends and I also ventured to another river/waterfall about an 1.5 hour drive to scope it out before taking the families there.  What a blast that was as well.  Hopefully soon I can take the whole family or one at a time take the kids there to swim and play in God’s beautiful creation.

As we continue to live in a state of transition please pray for us that we can still be effective share God’s glory while in this state.  As well for management as they consider where to place us here in Papua.

Our First Christmas and New Year Papua Style

     This past month has been such a blessing to our family as we prepared to celebrate our first Christmas and New Year on the Island of Papua. We had heard stories from our teammates of what it would be like but sometimes words are just not enough to prepare you for what you are about to go through. So I will try my best to share with you what our family has been experiencing these last few weeks.
     Here in Papua people start to prepare for the holidays at the beginning of December with Christmas music playing in all the stores. And around the same time the stores start selling Christmas trees (with some very interesting colors) and all the decorations that go along with the season. A lot of the music was in Indonesian but surprisingly you did hear a lot of English as well. It actually reminded me of Christmas back home a little bit.
     Next as you start to drive through town you would see groups of people building what looks like small houses built up on poles of bamboo. After the house was built they would then start to decorate the house (just like most people back home would decorate their house outside) with lights, plants, garland, and other Christmas things. Some even have small manager scene's as well. Then after this would come the sound system/speakers that they will use to play Christmas music loud enough for the entire neighborhood and may be a few other neighborhoods (depending on the wind) to hear the music as well. Thankfully, our neighborhoods music was not to bad and the kids loved hearing the music and even got to sing along to song like Jingle Bells and Father Abraham in English.
     About the same time as the music starts to play we could head in the direction of the mall and start to notice them building wooden booths that would allow people to sell their fireworks. My guess that by the time New Year's arrived there might have been over thirty little stalls all over town (that I noticed) where you could buy fireworks. So you can imagine that the noise level grew at night time as people prepared to bring in the New Year and Celebrate Christmas. Our family even went and found a small booth the day after Christmas and bought some fireworks so we could join in the fun.
     When you combine all of this together it did get a little loud at times but our children loved the holiday traditions that they got to see for the first time here. I think that it reminded them of home a little more then last year as Java celebrates very differently then here. Then came the long await Christmas boxes from my parents in Michigan about a week before Christmas. Plus Christmas parties at their school, an MAF hanger party, and even a nice Christmas dinner with four other MAF families on Christmas day.
     It was a great Christmas season learning about how the people celebrate here, adding our own family traditions, getting to talk with family through Skype, and then receiving all the wonderful cards and emails from beloved friends and family.
     All that then lead up to what we got to experience last night as we celebrated bringing in the New Year. For our family the party started down on MAF's base where we had a barbecue/potluck supper with all our teammates that were still around. Once it got dark different families started lighting off fireworks which the kids and parents had a blast setting off.  Now I was greatly looking forward to this night as we had heard from different teammates that this was going to be an experience of a life time when it came to what we were about to see and hear. OH MY GOODNESS were they so right about it as we have never seen nor heard anything in our entire lives like what we did last night. Now I know that some places around the world big cities normally do a big firework show that can be pretty impressive. However, when you watch an entire city of people shooting up every kind of firecracker that is around all over an entire city for at least three hours (that was probably the most intense time of it) words can not do it justice at what we got to see and hear. At the peak while we were sitting on our front porch (probably ten minutes before midnight here) my husband had a great idea. He said, "let's phone our parents so they can at least hear this as it is just unbelievable." So a few moments later I am yelling into my phone to my parents as they laugh at what they are hearing in the back ground. It really sounded like I was standing in a war zone with a million different booms going off.
    After ringing in the New Year all my kids wanted to do was find somewhere a little quieter to sleep which meant that they all landed in Franklin's room for the night. Right before Isaac decided to sleep in his brothers room he asked me a very serious question. He turned and asked me why the firecrackers were not stopping since it was already ten minutes past twelve? Trying not to laugh I told him that it probably would go on for another couple of hours. His response was, WHAT!!!! So with tears in his eyes he heading to his brothers room for some sleep. Thankfully everyone did get some sleep and we did maybe get two hours of quiet but they are once again shooting things off every now and then this morning. Jaclynn even came out this morning and asked me with a very worried look "are they going to do that again tonight?

All I can say is that it was a very memorable Christmas and New Year. We feel blessed beyond words that God has allowed us to be part of it with the people here on the Island of Papua. May you all have a blessed and Happy New Year.

                                                                  Who wants to play?

                                                                 Our new pets

                                                                   Girl Lego's !!!!

Julie (and the rest of the clan)