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.