Settling into Merauke

    As I sit down at our computer to write this post I hear the sounds of cow bells shortly followed with seeing a couple cows, well actually bulls, walk past my office window.  My office happens to be situated at the back side of our house.  Yes, the livestock feel very comfortable in our yard.  I like the idea of our grass being kept.  However, not so sure I want the extra fertilizer that will likely be left in our yard, also they are not eating the weeds, fussy eaters they are.  Last night we go a good hard rain that should help the farmers here.  Merauke has been experiencing a very long dry season  this year, many wells are dry and the grass is sparse.  Because of that I don't mind so much sharing the little bit of grass we have with the local livestock.  We are very thankful for the rain water collection and storage system that was install with the house.  When the tank is full we have somewhere around 6,000 US gallons (23,000 L) of water.  The last couple larger rain falls our tank was overflowing which was a beautiful site.  We also have a well for the dry season when the rains don't come, right now it is very low due to the longer than normal dry season.  Because many wells are dry in town and people are having water trucked in from a lakes in the surrounding regions.  We thank the Lord for this rain last night and continue to pray for the rainy season to get into full swing to fill those wells up and allow the grass to grow again.

    Yesterday I officially started my transition training in PK-MAO.  Happy to report the flight went well and I think I'm going to enjoy this type of flying right up until I slip and fall off a float into a river.  Lord willing that will be a long time down the road and a very rare event ;-).

   Julie and the kids continue this week with finishing up unpacking and organizing the house and next week they will start back into school.  Last week we bought the kids their own desks for each of their rooms which they were pretty excited to be able to pick out themselves.

   The following pictures of our new home are taken at different points of our unpacking, which is still ongoing but nearing the end I think.  Will try and post a few pictures when all unpacking is completed, might be a while, it's amazing how quickly the novelty of unpacking wears off :-\.  Lots of pictures, but hey it's basically free to post and view them.

Empty Hall

Christopher showing us around our new house.

Office

Dinning Room

Welcome sign

Kitchen

Living Room

Bikeport

Hall Bathroom

Jaclynn's Room

Isaac's Room

Master bedroom/Office 

Office with stuff

Gudang area/Laundry room

Hall with stuff.

Living room/dinning room

Living room

Franklin stashing stuff in the attic

Front yard

Lawn mower "temporary I hope ;-)"

Jaclynn's room with stuff

Franklin's room with stuff

Hall with organized stuff.

Living room/dinning room almost complete

Kitchen almost complete as well.

Viewed from our front yard.

Backyard