The Time Draws Near

Greetings,

Coming soon to On His Wings of Love, "The Grand Unveiling"

The time does indeed draw near for us being able to unveil our future home here in Papua.  But in the mean time here is a map of Papua with the 4 possibilities so you can be placing your bets.  Well maybe not but you give it your best guess.  The blue is our current place of residence and the 4 red are the possibilities.

Have fun guessing, we hope to give out the answer shortly, meaning sometime this month. Blessings we wait with excitement along with you.

MAF Papuan Video

The following video doesn't contain any footage of our family.  But it does contain footage of a missionary I have personally flown supplies to the village for him where he lives, and have had the honor of enjoying a cup of coffee with him and his wife in their kitchen.  As well the pilot in the video is the pilot that is currently helping me adjust to flying safely here in Papua (my instructor pilot).  This story took place only a couple weeks before I started flying here.

Finding Joy Doing the Small Things

     I think that when most people climb on the plane for the first time and head to the field the expectations of doing huge and great things for God is strong. I know that for myself that was what I was hoping for because why else would God call my family here, right?  Then when we actually landed and started to live among the people and get to know them I began to really notice things around me. What the people viewed as big and important things in their eyes was very different to what my North America view was. That first year of language school was so eye opening to me as I saw God allowing me to learn how to witness in a very different way. I learned about the power of a smile, the importance of always looking someone in the eye, and that I could show love by just walking into someones home and being completely comfortable even if all there was was a small rug on the floor. On saw people eyes light up when I let then take a picture with me as it seemed that I have just given them the greatest treasure around. That first year I saw a group of people who really just wanted to be noticed, cared about, and that they just wanted to be loved.
     I felt like God was showing me that there is great power in the small things (not that big things don't matter) and not to stress out about trying to always tackle the large items. For you see even though He was showing me this that first year I was still stressing myself out by trying to do everything all at the same time. When I arrived here to Papua is where I finally let myself go (which is not easy for me) and follow His daily schedule and throw my list away. I found myself looking for those small things that would pop up through out the day that I could do for someone like allowing children to my berry bushes, talking with the local people who come to my door, keeping in eye on Facebook to see if any of my teammates where having a bad day. You would not believe the power of joy until you see first hand the smile on a child's face because I gave them a treat. Or when you surprise a teammate with a snack for their family and a coke to help them make it through the day. Or offering to drive someone around so they could do some shopping instead of having to walk all over the city.
     So most days I find myself looking for the small things that I could do with my family, friends, and neighbors. I find pure joy out of surprising someone with a small thing that just really helped make their day better. I love going to the same stores over and over and getting to know the people and watch the small relationship grow. They start to relax around you and then start asking small questions about your children, and last week I learned that one lady actual speaks very good English even though we had just been speaking in Indonesian. I have saw my relationship with my children get stronger as well which has been a neat to have.
     It makes me wonder about how many small things did I miss back home as I was rushing through the grocery store as fast as I could. And who could I have blessed by just looking them in the eye and greeting them that day. I hope that this is a lesson that I never forget because there is great power in the small things and I can share Christ's joy around my world when I slow down and really look.

Monkeying Around

Today marks the 2 week point of monkeying around in the hanger.  Well maybe not quite but I've been a little more grounded these past 2 weeks compared to other weeks here in Papua (pun intended).  Over the course of these weeks I've had the privilege of making some good progress in my maintenance training/checkout.  I started with leading my first Mini inspection on PK-MAE the Caravan which I've also done most of my flight training in, to date in Papua.  This inspection went well getting the aircraft back in the air in timely fashion. Next up was helping a fellow mechanic under instruction (Luke) with his first lead role during an inspection on PK-MAF a Kodiak.  Our newest plane none the less, with only 200 hrs since new, one would think myself included; "what could one possibly find broken, worn out or out of place after only 200hrs".  Well it turns out that new airplanes can come with problems too, and not just minor ones either.  I found the aileron autopilot cable and main control cable twisted with the cable clamps positioned in such away that made it possible for them to snag with each other.  Not a good thing to have a main flight control system lock up in flight.  And later in the inspection as things were getting closed up Luke  noticed some strange wear on a couple main control cable pulleys in the tail area and discovered that the bracket holding the pulleys had been manufactured wrong and if left alone the pulleys would have worn through and again a main flight control system compromised.  Lessons learned don't take an inspection lightly even with a new plane. Next up was helping on a Phase 4 inspection on PK-MPF which is a more detailed type of inspection for the Caravans.  Today PK-MPS came in for a Mini inspection which I had the privilege of leading was well.  The next few days I think there will be some odds and ends that will pass through the hanger.  Mid week of the coming week I get back in the flight rooster and continue on with the flight training/checkout. Only a couple more items on the checklist and I'll have MAF approval to conduct a Caravan Mini inspection on my own.  Oh ya one small but important detail, an Indonesian mechanic's licence.  Which I think I should have in hand sometime in April.  A quick update on some of the recent technical tasks we've been called to be apart of as we serve the Papuan People.

Blessings
Greg & Julie

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)

Medivacs, Breaktime, to Daily life.

Greetings Dear Friends & Family,

Looking at the date of our last post I realize we are a bit behind keeping you all informed in the life and times of our family so bear with me as I try and do my best to catch you up to date.  I'm going to work backwards from newest to oldest.

This past Saturday MAF Papua celebrated 60 years of service here in Papua combined with a celebration of Christmas.  It had a large turn out which was great along with some great food, my favorite being the fresh catch of the day (best fish I've had since arriving in Indonesia).  Also earlier in the day I had the privilege of being included on the flight schedule.  Why would this be different well it happened to be the 5th day in a row to fly, normally on a full week of flying is 3-4 days depending on the situation.  The reason for the extra day was, I was nearing the 40hr mark of flying here in Papua and it's good to have a second set of eyes take a sample of how the training is progressing and it just so happened our Chief Pilot was flying Saturday so I hopped on board to get the seconded opinion.  The reason I even want to mention this particular day of flying from the rest is what we were privileged to do on the way home from our first outbound of the day.  On the way to our first location we received a request for a medivac from Soya which was about 40 miles from our destination.  Soya in the past has a reputation for making up medivac emergencies which make things difficult to know if the situation is real or just a ruse to get the plane to their village for business purposes.  The decision thankfully rested in the hands of Tim who I was flying with.  After some quick calculations and processing info he had about this possible situation earlier in the week he decided to go over to Soya after we dropped our load in Angguruk.  And it turned out to be a good choice to go as the emergency was indeed real.  The girl we picked up was about 6 years old and reasonably tall for her age but only 12-15Kg (26-33Lbs).  She was very ill but not sure with what.  Upon arriving into Sentani it was difficult to tell if she had even survived the flight (and not due to my flying for those that might have thought that :-| ).  It was a great relief to hear her cry shortly after her father had carried her off the plane.  I still haven't heard how she is doing hopefully I can get some more info in the next day or two.  Please pray with us that this girl will be able to return to her family and village shortly.  The other flights from earlier during the week were routine cargo and passengers in and out of different villages interior.

The previous week we enjoyed the week off as a family.  We didn't venture to far from home, one day we took a short ride around part of the nearby Lake Sentani.  Which of course we forgot our cameras but we did remember to take them on our family shopping trip to Abepura which you can see from the pictures my wife is doing remarkably well handling her scooter fully load in Papuan traffic.


During our shopping adventure we saw a few things that seemed unusual to us, which is common to happen for us foreigners.  First was a very colorful Christmas tree ( which Jaclynn loved)  for sale and it was only 4.25 Juta which is about $400.00ish.  The part that is even crazier to me is the locals buy new every year, they don't store their Christmas stuff like we do.  Christmas just got a lot more expensive.  I think we'll keep storing and reusing our stuff.

The other odd thing that stuck out to me and made me think of my dad, was what seemed to me to be very large cans of sardines.  If you are a sardine fan and can't find a big enough supply, come for a visit and I can hook you up. I'm not a connoisseur of sardines so maybe these are normal size cans, they just seem really big from what I could remember from back home.

You can take this farm boy away from the farm
but you can't take away the farmer tan.

Day one of our break I started to do some overdue repair work to the motorcycle we bought to fill in the gap while we waited on paperwork for our bikes we brought from Salatiga.  My darling wife let me turn our front porch into a bengkal aka repair shop. It's still sitting in pieces 2 weeks later, it did get new tires but that is as far as I've gotten  maybe the week over Christmas break I'll make some more headway.

While I was busy tearing my bike apart Jaclynn and Julie had a great time decorating the house for Christmas.  Still getting used to the idea of Christmas while it is +30 (86) degrees, this is by no means a complaint just something that I'm not used to yet :-).
The boys were off playing with computer or PS2 etc.

Franklin figuring out his new I touch device.

We also enjoyed some family chilling time watching Dukes of Hazards and Gilligan's Island during the break as well. If you look close my eyes are open I'm not sleeping.

Isaac got his share of PS2 time as well.

I pay extra for a good looking Ojek driver (scooter taxi driver)

Prettiest looking gal in Papua taking care of her family

This picture is of a surprise we had one evening in our bathroom.  Those are ants in case you were wondering.  Julie as she is so good at going Chuck Norris on them with the raid can and the aftermath had about 3/4"deep x 3/4" wide x the length of a typical broom of dead ants.







Overall we had a great week off as a family just hanging out around the house doing a little bit of sight seeing and swimming.  I heard about a beautiful river to swim in about 1 1/2 drive which I hope to take our family to during the Christmas break.  We'll be sure to remember our cameras for that trip.

The last few pictures are from a couple different runways I've been at recently.  The first one I won't be landing at solo for a while it has a slope of 14% in the touch down leveling off to gentle 8% then rising again to 24% up to the parking area.  The pictures taken outside the airplane are from the parking area which is 200 feet above the touch down area of the runway.  I'm approx 150+ feet above the group you can see around the mid point.

The same runway coming into land.  The runway is the small light brown line just above the nose of the aircraft.  This runway is also up at almost 6000' ASL. The family we were dropping off here were retired CMA couple returning to their house after being away for 1 1/2 years.  They came back as volunteers this time to help finish the Bible translation they helped start many years ago.  You are never to old to serve as a missionary.

Runway behind me.

Turned around looking back at the runway.

These next couple pictures are of Pagai which is a lowland strip that is next to a river.  I will say I felt much more comfortable with this runway then the Bugalaga which is the one above.  It is flat and long enough for me to feel relatively comfortable operating a C208B here.  However the river which is just off the south end of the runway is not a river one would want to slide off the runway into.  A friend of mine who is also currently being trained to fly a Kodiak here in Papua recently flew a load of crocodile skins out of this village.  I let you figure out where they came from and why ending up in the river might not be a pleasant experience.  Please feel free to continue to pray for my friend (Luke) and I as we both continue to gain experience and skills required to operate here safely.

We again want to thank each one of you for walking with us through this journey of service with MAF.  We count it a great privilege and honor to serve the people of Papua, and we know that we couldn't do this without you.  We want to wish you all countless blessings as you prepare to celebrate the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Blessings

the dole clan.