Goodbyes, Pineapples & Birthday Parties.

Hello again from the tropical town of Merauke, where you'll find the sun almost always shinning and almost always hot ;-).  These past couple weeks our family has been busy with a oodles of different activities.

Shortly after we celebrated my (Greg) first Amphibian Caravan Solo flight, we jump on a jet plane to Sentani where we spent sometime with friends of ours that are being called back to their passport country.  It was a wonderful/sad weekend of visits and memories made for all of us especially the kids.  It's been a bit different this go around as in the past it's usually us doing the going as we said goodbye but this time, we are the stayers. Which I'm learning has a its own set of emotions and feelings to navigate as we again say goodbye to friends.   

During our visit to Sentani we also acquired some pineapples, which we ate then planted.  Well we ate the good stuff and planted the top, just encase that needed clarification.  So far a after almost 2 weeks the first of the plants seem to still be alive.  This morning I planted the last of our pineapple top supply.  Hopefully in a year or so we will have nice pineapple hedge out front that will treat us to a fresh pineapple now and then.  Not sure if a mango tree or papaya tree will be next on our "to plant list", maybe even a banana tree.  

This weekend we also celebrated Jaclynn's 10th birthday.  Wow no more single digits in the family.  Sunday evening we had a small gathering to celebrate.  Julie whipped up some home-made pizza pockets that seemed to be a hit.  

In the next blog post I hope to have a couple short video montages of some recent flights.

Blessings The Dole Clan

New Milestone of God's Faithfulness in Our Family

     It has now been over twenty years since I (Julie) first felt the Lord calling me to missions. I remember feeling so excited about doing this one moment and then the next becoming totally terrified the next. For I new God called me but I never felt a clear call to doing translation work, medical work, or teaching at the time which was about all I had ever heard about women missionaries doing. It was just that simple call to go that began to take me down a path that has been so amazing that words can not describe it.
     This path led me straight into meeting my husband over 18 years ago and opening my eyes to a new world of missions that I never really knew that much about.  In fact my first plane ride only happened three weeks before I met my husband. Even though the world of mission aviation was new to me there was a draw from the very beginning. I enjoyed going up in the smaller planes and I loved seeing the passion in Greg as he went through his flight training. Little did I know or understand how much flight training or years of experience that it would take for him to reach where we are today.
     Which is why I find it to be such a blessing that Greg passed his flight test this week giving him permission to fly the float plane by himself. And yesterday our small team here in Merauke had the privilege of watching him complete his first solo flight. It was a cooler day here but the kids and staff enjoyed soaking him never the less.
     As I watched my husband climb out of that plane I could still see that same kind of passion that I saw inside of him when he was in college. He just loves to fly and he loves to share his love for flying while reaching out to the people  here in Papua.
     Here are a few pictures of his special day here at our Merauke hanger.

   

Neighbours

Greetings,

The month of April has flown by figuratively and literally.  I've made some good progress on the final stages of my Caravan Amphib checkout.  Next week I'm scheduled for my first PFR (Proficiency Flight Review) in the Amphib.  At the completion of that flight if all goes well I'll be given the green light to start flying solo.  I'm sure there will be pictures in a following post of me dripping wet again.  It's not a bad way to celebrate the mile stone in the tropics as I'm often soaked with sweat anyway so a nice cold water soaking isn't so bad.  Back home in Canada however I'm glad I missed out on that tradition during my initiate pilot training ;-).

Anyway lets talk about the title of this post.  I've been struggling with concerns about how to connect with our neighbours here of late.  It's been heavy on my heart and one of the main reasons why we were so excited to be assigned to Merauke, was the idea of being apart of an Indonesian neighbourhood.  As I've been praying for ways to connect.   Which can be hard in many facets, logistically not being an exception, with the sometimes long work days, process of learning new skills, operating in a different culture and language, and life in general brings you home tired and exhausted.  How an I going to build these friendships with my neighbours?  It's a slow process which I often forget, wanting things to happen fast or instant.  Anyway I want to share specifically about an a cool experience I had one evening early this week.    As I was heading out to lock our gate for the night which is a nightly routine item here.  Our neighbours across the street saw me and called me over.  At first I was thinking, ah I need to get to bed it's getting late.  However, as I walked over in my bare feet I quickly noticed that there was a whole lot of people sitting gathered around their front door, sitting on whatever was available drinking tea and eating peanuts.  My need to go to bed quickly disappeared as they handed my a plate of peanuts and a cup of tea as I sat down to listen and share stories with them.  I can't say that I understood all of the conversations as I still struggle with the language if I don't know the context or subject of the conversation.  I was able to laugh with them as I messed up some of my Indonesian and they messed up some of their English.  The story telling/conversations last about 2 hours as we moved from their yard to standing in the street for a while then going our separate ways back into our respective homes.  It was an exciting thing to be included in their spontaneous neighbourhood meeting.  Please continue to pray for our family as we desire to become part of this community and be able to shine Christ's love and light here.

Blessings

The Dole Clan

The Up's and Down's of Starting Over

    When you move to a new area it can be a time of excitement and wonder but also a time of confusion and stressful moments. I (Julie) like to refer to this time period as the foggy stage of a move and find that it takes me about two months before I start coming out of the fog and feel more normal. During this time I find myself busy beyond words as I am trying to unpack and organize the house. Keep the kids focused on setting up their rooms and not just playing with all their lost treasures that they have now found. Also there always seems to be one or two really important items that we thought we had packed in a great spot this time but are still always missing when it come to the unpacking stage. And most important of all trying to stay on top of those important things like knowing where to buy food, toilet paper, locating sheets for the beds, and towels for showers. Since moving to the mission field this would be about the time that I really miss have a local superstore around the corner that we could just pop into for all those little things.
    Since I have finally come out of the foggy stage of life I am feeling a lot better and have confidence that I will not go crazy after all. Despite all the work and stress of moving to a new city it can be a wonderful time of discovery and learning. The city of Meruake seems very spread out compared to the other places that we have lived in since arriving in Indonesia. I will also admit that I was really surprised when we got our first tour of the city. Most stores seem like mass chaos but here they are all organized with nice and neat shelves where you can find things. And most importantly when they restock the shelves it actually all goes back in the same place. Which is very helpful when you go shopping the next time. Then there is one entire street that is full of fruit stands on either side as you drive down the road. They are normally always selling the same kinds of fruits so you just kind of pick one and continue to go there an work and building a relationship. We also have veggie stands mixed in all through town here. Oh, then we have all the locals who set their fruits and veggies along the roads through out town plus there are two different pasar (markets) that you can find things in as well. Personally I was a little over whelmed at first but also thankful that we have so much here in this city compared to some of our other bases. And I am happy to report I have found a great fruit stand, two different veggie stands, one store that sells great chicken and eggs, another store which I can find bread and baking items, one store that we buy most of our other items, and a few that we just check out once in awhile that can normally bring in those hard to find items like tomato paste. As you can see this is not a shop at one store kind of town like back home but I get to meet a lot more people this way.
    The kids seem to be finally settling down more now that the house is set up and we have gotten a good school routine in place. It has been a year of constant moving so having a normal school routine is kind of nice. The kids (along with Greg and I) had a hard time adjusting to the intense heat but we are starting to find that they are getting use to it. Isaac by far had a hard time and was sick for about a month until we discovered that he had a iron issue which the heat was not helping. Now that we are getting him a little more healthy he is enjoying life more. They all enjoy the fact that we are only about a 5 minute bike ride from the beach and we have made it out a couple of times. Even though this city has a very small expat community (only 7 families at the moment) we find ourselves always getting together with the other families which helps with being so far from everyone.
    At the moment we seem to be healthy and Greg is preparing for a full 5 day flight week next week so he could use your prayers. A couple of those days are overnight trips which means that while he is gone I am busy keeping life going here at home. Please also keep Isaac in your prayers as we work to bring up his iron levels. And we are also about to meet our new pembantu (house helper) and see if it will work for her to come one or possible two days to help with house work. It has been about a year in a half since we have had a house helper so it will be adjust having someone in the house again.
    Thank you for all your amazing prayers and encouraging emails that you have sent us over these past weeks and months. You are all amazing and we feel so blessed to have you walking along side of us through out this journey.
 

Inspection Time

Due to battery life of my camera I was only able to catch first 3 hours of day 2 of the inspection we are currently performing on PK-MAO


Phase 9 Inspection Day 2 from Greg on Vimeo.

Float Flying

Greetings, wow so much for getting another post up on the blog before the end of February well maybe it will still be February in parts of the world if I get this done in time ;-). February was a fairly busy month of flying for me as I transition into the world of float flying. Some of the major differences I'm learning about between operating on wheels versus floats; On the ground with wheels, besides the weather, the surrounding environment is pretty constant. On the water however, it is a very dynamic place. For example the river currents here are greatly effected by the ocean tide and rains up river. It's not unheard of to have the water levels change while waiting on the water or current direction to change. Wind also can play a stress adding role to a pilot as you plan; how and where to dock and then how to depart the docking area safely. The current can bring debris from up river that can create hazards for the aircraft and personal. Boat traffic that we share the same space for taxi, takeoff and landing. Their concept of safety is quite different than ours. Some of the things that are constant with landing on water versus runways or grass strips; the braking action, slipperiness and firmness of landing water is the same every time rain or shine. Most times but not always runway length is not an issue using rivers.

For us the busy time requiring our full attention is from the time we circle overhead to evaluate the landing area until we have taken off again with climb checks complete, than we can relax a little bit during cruise. Previously it was after I had shut-down at the top of an airstrip, I could relax and decompress a bit. Now that happens in cruise flight if the weather in nice. Lack of attentiveness while on the water even with the engine off can end up with bent metal or someone hurt. We have a couple locations where there is no place to safely dock, but because of the size of the river we can float down the river and have speed boats come along side and transfer passengers on and off the aircraft. Even though these rivers are big there are a lot of thinks to keep a very good lookout for particularly if the current is strong. If the winds are light and the current is neutral it's not to bad. Mix in some current and or winds and then things can become very exciting quickly. Hopefully Bade will have a dock again soon  as their previous dock which is in the following picture was run over by a large ship and is no more. This being one of the places we are drifting in the river with speed boats to do the passenger exchange now.

Bade from overhead.

Bade's former dock

Bade's former dock

Agats

Here in Agats is the other place that if we can't find a place to tie to we will drift.  We prefer tying to a mooring point here if we can find it.  Speed boats are used here as well for passenger transfer.

Agats

Speed boat approaching in Agats

Local Tink Tink boat.

Many places were we can, we just pull along shore.

Esrotnamba

The following video is a good representation of why we are here and more specifically why we have a Caravan C208 Amphibious Plane in our fleet here in Papua. This is one of those unique places that our unique PK-MAO can go and serve. Which is also a place that I will be privileged to serve in the not to distance future.