Feunekes Family in Indonesia

We've moved!

2011-04-30T19:07:00.003+07:00

No, not physically, just the blog has moved...
After being increasingly frustrated with various aspects of Blogger, I've decided to give Wordpress a go...
Our new address at Wordpress (at least for the time being...)
http://feunekesfamily.wordpress.com/
See you there!

Easter Weekend....

2011-04-24T18:33:00.011+07:00

Good Friday we went to church in the morning. After we came home Y came and told us that he was being baptized right then. So Hugo, Brynne and I hopped on Hugo's motorbike and headed up to the river where the baptisms were going to happen. The night before Y and a bunch of guys had laid a tarp in the river and put a dam of rocks behind it to creat a spot deep enough for immersion.

The kids gathered on the opposite bank to watch. Many of them are wearing clothes that we've donated...

Then we sang a song led by a guitarist and a guy on the tamborine. (having issues with putting photos in the proper order and not "losing" them on blogger... ugghh...) Anyways, then then pastor went in to the water and prayed and then Y went in and he had to say why he wanted to be baptized. Poor guy was very nervous and talked really softly so we couldn't hear what he said. Then he was baptized. We're happy for him as he is obviously choosing to live his life for God. Following the baptisms, the kids were told they could play in the water, so they did! Of course, some of them were "baptizing" eachother...

Easter Sunday we had the church service at our house and afterwards the kids formed teams. They had to name themselves as one of the disciples of Jesus. Then as a team they had to search for plastic eggs that Hugo had hidden that morning. Once all had been found the kids could exchange them for hard boiled eggs. Which all the local kids immediately ate and our kids put theirs in the fridge... Except Brynne... Each team also received a prize box containing snacks and little toys. Then we all ate lunch together. We grilled chicken as per usual and there was rice, fish, a green leafy vegetable dish, fried noodles, krupuk, an Indonesian salad, and fruit. Yum! It's so nice to get together as a church and fellowship!

Bits and Bites...

2011-04-19T16:45:00.013+07:00

A couple weeks ago the interior village of Ilaga received Bibles that had been translated into their mother tongue. Delivered of course, by MAF airplane...
So glad this popcorn is food quality... is there any other kind???
Apparently, flour is power!

It's been an insanely long time since I last posted... I've tried to post, but have been unsuccessful in my efforts to keep you all up-to-date on the happenings down here.

A week and a half ago I went with the grade 2 teacher (who has a degree in teaching the deaf and hard of hearing) to the the school for the deaf and hard of hearing in Abe. We met some really fun and enthusiastic kids that morning! We were like celebrities... The school hasn't changed since my last visit about 1.5 years ago. There's still not one single child with a hearing aid.

This past weekend we had a student from a school here that has a discipleship and training program. Each year the school accepts eights guys and eight gals to stay in the dormitory. There's always a lot of applicants but only those who have a bit of a basis of English already and have a clear goal are accepted. By the end of the year they can speak quite decent English. Each year around this time all the students get to stay with a Western family for a weekend to experience the Western culture up close and personal and to practice their English. We had a really fun time with our girl and she was very enthusiastic about her first time ever staying with Westerners.

Hugo continues to be super busy in the hangar. There's always a ton of paperwork. Next week he hopes to go to an interior village where our broken airplane is sitting waiting for a replacement engine. Hugo and some of the guys will install the engine and run it through its paces before the pilot flies it back.

Last night we went to Jayapura for drinks and appy's with the Dutch embassador to Indo. It was an interesting evening and we made contacts with Dutch folks we had no idea were living here! Fun times!

Last month we were all very hopeful. Some of the guys were fixing the potholes on the road. Then suddenly the work stopped and hasn't started since. As it turns out, one of the guys who lives up here and considers himself above the law, has stolen the funds and cement that were given by the gov't to the people to repair the roads. He now has a nice new driveway and porch... In addition, he has begun selling strong drink from his home... Sunday he gave "I's" husband a free bottle and he naturally consumed it and became inebriated and punched I and her mom. They ran to her sister's house where they took refuge until he broke the door... Since the event, he has disappeared and not returned...

2011-04-13T18:24:00.002+07:00

10 days since I last posted! You'd almost think nothing exciting ever happened out here...
I've just been trying for an exhorbitant length of time to post some interesting photos and it isn't working...

So this post will be a bit boring...

Our church has been "fixed" and so we were able to use it again on Sunday. They have cut down nearly every single tree on the property rendering it looking as though a bomb went off... Clean up is well on the way though so that's good.

On Sunday night both Marc and Brynne came down with a nasty virus which caused fever, sore throat, stuffed sinuses etc... Marc went to school today just for the morning. Brynne has yet to go to school. This virus has left them rather pooped... I just hope no one else gets it!
There are work permit issues with some of our teachers so some are not teaching right now and it is SAT's week... no fun...

The volleyball tournament has yet to resume. The organizers are waiting for police approval to start up again.

Bits and Bites...

2011-04-03T19:42:00.002+07:00

There was a bit of a riot in town yesterday. There's been a volleyball tournament going on at a field in the middle of town. There are 30 men's teams and 30 women's teams participating. Hugo is on a team of white guys also taking part. So far they've lost both their matches... Anyways, last night there was a local team playing against a team of guys from the mountains. The ref was obviously favouring the local team in all his calls and the mountain team and fans took offense to this (justifiably) and decided to let their displeasure be known. So a bit of a riot broke out and things were being thrown and people being beat up and windows were smashed... A friend of ours happened to be at a salon across the road when the whole thing began. She finished up her appointment and was brought by police to the MAF compound where she waited for her hubby to pick her up. Thankfully she had not parked her car or motorbike in front of the salon or it most likely would have been stolen/vandalized. Brynne has malaria. Thursday evening just before supper she complained of a headache and had a fever. I made a blood slide and started her on meds. The recovery time is much quicker the earlier meds are started so I decided to do so before even having a positive result. I received the results Friday evening. She's doing much better now! Today we had church in the bottom of our pastors house due to the damage that was done to the building we normally meet in. We also met in our pastors home because some mountain people had been causing problems this past week. About 6 years ago an expat missionary had an accident with one of their people who was laying drunk across the expat's driveway. That expat lived at the old dorm. An obscene amount of money was paid at that time to the man because he was rendered paralyzed following the accident. The family of the paralyzed man has periodically returned and demanded more funds in spite of the fact that there is a signed document stating that everything has been paid and no more will be paid. They often resort to threats. Now that trees are being cut down, there's a rumour that the land will be developed so people think there are funds to be had. Not true! Just cutting down trees that posed a risk to fall in a wind storm.

2011-04-02T20:13:00.002+07:00

The Dutch Organization Ceveo owns the property where the building that our church meets in is located. Years and years ago my aunt and uncle were dorm parents in that large building in the center of the photo below. Just over half a year ago people managed to get into the house and have since vandalized it and stolen parts of the building. So Ceveo got in a bunch of guys to take the roof off to make it a less inviting place to "party". Also on the property were a large number of very tall trees. It was time to cut them down before they fell down on someones home... This has rendered the property looking as though an explosion occurred... And whoops, one of the trees hit our "church building"...

This Yokben, our faithful guard/yard man. He was born without all of his right foot. Recently he went to an orthopedic doctor in Jayapura and inquired as to what he could do about this. As things are now, he can get around just fine, but he can't wear shoes. The doctor told him that a prosthetic foot with a pair of special shoes would cost around 6.5 million rupiah (roughly $750 CAD). We'd like to help him, but we can't fund that entire amount... if you are willing/able to help out, contact me at the email address listed on the side of the page.

2011-03-30T17:05:00.004+07:00

There are many delicacies in Singapore... Of course, some are more appealing than others...

Christiaan and I flew there with Garuda Indonesia. On brand new planes the whole way I might add!! Yes, there were little tv screens, but no, there wasn't much to watch. The only thing watchable was "Just For Laughs Gags".

This is on the tarmac in Makassar. The plane always stops in Biak and Makassar. On the flights during the day, everyone has to get out and go into the terminal, go through security and wait in the waiting room for a few minutes, maybe use the restroom, and then walk back out to the plane. When we were going back home, a flight that leaves at 11:00pm, we could stay on the plane thankfully.

We had a good trip. Christiaan's appointments went well and I was able to get new glasses. My prescription has been reduced again! Yay! We also enjoyed eating North American food there and we did a bunch of shopping... There are a million malls in Singapore and many are connected by underground tunnels to the subway system. Pretty amazing! But it is good to be home again!

2011-03-20T19:04:00.002+07:00

On Saturday we hiked up the mountain to the base of the water fall. We started the walk from our house, followed the road up until we came to the jungle. Then we entered the jungle and walked up a path until we were able to get down to this little water fall. About 45 minutes later we were joined by at least 50 school kids who had just planted plants and trees somewhere else on the mountain. It got a little crowded there... By then Mikah and her class had climbed up higher to a cave found under an incredibly large rock. I did not lug my big camera up the mountain so we only have these two little photos from our phones as proof... Fun times on the moutain!
Tomorrow morning I am planning to go to Singapore with Christiaan for his annual hearing check-up and new ear molds. Looking forward to some hamburger consumption... :-)

Mikah's birthday....

2011-03-14T18:15:00.002+07:00

Today Mikah turned 13. We offically have our first teenager... yikes... But we love her and are very thankful for God's guidance and protection in her life!As per tradition, Mikah requested a trifle for her birthday cake and I was more than happy to fulfill that request! I've been saving chocolate pudding, dream whip, and some caramilk squares from Canada for this very day... YUM!!Mikah with two of her good friends L and E.

Correction: Yesterday I said that the child who passed away was the young couples first child but in actual fact it is their third child. Hugo attended one of the funeral services yesterday. There are usually a couple services when someone dies, before and after the burial. Apparently the boy died of cerebral malaria.

There was a wave that hit Jayapura on Friday night at about 8:30. It caused damage in an area farther up the coastline from where we were. About 15 minutes drive. You can see photos here
The day after the tsunami, a group of guys from the high school went to the beach and swam in post-tsunami waves. Apparently the water level went up and down dramatically every 10-15 minutes.

2011-03-12T18:30:00.002+07:00

Yesterday one of our aircraft experienced a landing accident. One of the tires was blown and the plane veered into the ditch alongside the runway. The plane was only travelling at 10 knots when it hit the ditch. There were no injuries sustained by any of the 9 passengers or the pilot. The plane however, sustained significant damage and will be out of commission for some time. We are thankful for God's protection! Please pray for our pilots out here who fly in crazy areas all the time!
Yesterday myself and three friends were in Jayapura to spend the night at the Swiss Bel hotel to celebrate a birthday. We heard before supper time that there'd been an earthquake in Japan and that there was a tsunami watch for Papua. We decided to go to our rooms and retrieve our valuables and clothes and head for higher ground to eat dinner and wait out the watch. As we were leaving with our stuff we observed a group of people meeting in the lobby of the hotel. We didn't think much of it. Later we found out that our entire hotel was evacuated and some people were sent to the very restaurant we went to. The manager of the hotel met us there after we'd eaten supper and told us it was not yet safe for us to return. After about 15 minutes he told us we could return. So we did and as we were exiting our vehicle we heard a warning siren and it was rather dark and quiet at the hotel. Some people went by and told us that we had to leave again. So we did. We drove up a ways and watched the harbour from there and we saw nothing. There was no noticeable wave. Thankfully... It was however, another adventure... No trip to Jayapura is completely void of adventure!
One of our group is a woman from Japan and her family is safe but are experiencing after-shocks. Our prayers are with the Japanese victims and may they find hope with the only One within whom hope and comfort may be found.
Yesterday the 10 month old son of one of our loading guys passed away. He'd been sick for a little while and they thought he was getting better but he took a sudden turn and passed away. Please pray for this young couple who lost their only child.

2011-03-08T18:24:00.002+07:00

So our yard man/guard came back to Sentani on the weekend. It turns out his brothers didn't really know the real reason why he went up to Pyramid. "Y" went up there to finalize his divorce from "M". When he married her, he paid her family 13 pigs. Now that they are divorcing, his family is supposed to pay back the dowry. However, they did have a son who died at 3 months of age so the family took off 5 pigs from the re-payment.... I assume Y left the pigs in the care of his relatives there. Currently, large pigs are worth (according to "I") 15 million rupiah ($1,500). They used to be worth 10 million rupiah but because the price of rice has gone up, the price of pigs has gone up by 50%.... seems a little extreme to me... Y said that his (ex) wife was crying and asking him to take her back but he refused... I wanted to say a lot to him, but it wasn't the time or the place as I was getting eaten alive by mosquitoes and had food cooking on the stove. He brought us a big bag of vegetables from Wamena. It's very touching that he does this. He told me that he really missed us while he was gone...
There was a widow with three young children living with I and her dad. This woman is quite the character and had basically chased away another widow with daughter who had also been living with them. This woman is addicted to beetle nut and seems to care not a whit about her children. A couple years ago I first saw her older son. He had a very large open wound on the back of his neck. I asked the mom if she was able to bring him to the doctor. She said yes she was, but a health worker had already given him a needle. She didn't bring the boy to a doctor. Eventually the wound healed up. However, a few months ago he began to swell up. She did not bring him to the doctor even though "I" encouraged her to do so. Finally, she brought him to the Catholic hospital in Waena. The most expensive hospital; and she has no money or insurance. I and her husband went there to visit and they brought rice and drinking water but all the mother could say was, "Do you have money for beetle nut?" and "I went to the witch doctor and he told me who made my son sick." When asked if the doctor had given her son medicine, she ignored the question and asked for money to buy beetle nut. When the hospital realized she was not going to pay, they took her cellphone and sent them to the public hospital in Jayapura. On Saturday night the boy passed away. The mother decided to bury him in Jayapura. A strange decision as his father is buried in the graveyard near our house and that is so much closer. A group of people from the community here went to Jayapura on Saturday. They wanted to talk to the mother about her decision and tell her not to come back to live here on Pos 7. The people here are sick of being used by her. But when they arrived, the body had not yet been buried and as long as there is a body, they cannot discuss anything. So I told me that tomorrow when they do the final funeral service (4 days following death) the people plan to tell her their decision. Throughtout this whole ordeal, the 5 year old twins were living with I... What a sad, sad situation...

Bits and bites....

2011-03-04T11:52:00.002+07:00

The other day I opened a bag of mentos that I'd bought and we won 100 rupiah!!! That's like 1 cent!!! Whoohoo!!!

The other day the boys participated in world math day and competed against kids from all around the world. I think they held their own!

Doesn't that flavour just sound soooo tasty???

This is the bug that interupted the kindergarten PE class.... justifiably so...

Coconut...

2011-02-27T19:30:00.002+07:00

I needed grated coconut for my granola the other day so I made my way to the little market. It's been recently renovated. Someone with funds paved the road and helped the vendors build wooden stalls out of which they can sell their goods. It's so nice, I can drive by the stalls on my motorbike and stop at the ones that look promising and simply pass by the other ones. I decided to buy coconut from this fun lady (mostly cause she's the only one selling it there...). She's from Manado. I asked her to peel most of the brown stuff off the coconuts before grating them. She first "washed" them in that bucket of water... Once they were ready she started the motor of her grater. It's a pull-start, like a lawn mower, I love it! A few seconds later I had three grated coconuts in that black plastic bag. I had a fun chat with her while she was working. She has 2 children and 5 grandchildren. She asked me if I had grandchildren too...

International Day at the International School...

2011-02-23T19:04:00.004+07:00

Mikah explaining some of the interesting things about Peru to a couple younger students visiting the display in her class.

Marc's class presented about Canada. Apparently it is to the North, is very Cold, gets Dark early, has a variety of Animals, and is for Anyone!

And there's four seasons! People could have a mini pancake with maple syrup in Marc's class. One of Marc's classmates is a local boy and he thought it was so cool that Canadian's have fireplaces in their houses!

Throughout the morning the Fact Finder person was quizzing students regarding interesting facts about the different countries being presented.

Christiaan's class presented America and they served a lot of junk food and "soda" and had a stickball game going on in the tennis courts. So fun!

Brynne's class did South Korea and as one of the boys is from there, his mom was able to get enough costumes for all the kids! So stinkin' cute!

Aidan's class presented Indonesia. They sang the national anthem for us. As you can see, some of the kids didn't need to read the words! Aidan did a report on Sulawesi and here Marc is checking it out. They served some tasty Indonesian snacks too!

Bits and Bites...

2011-02-22T08:23:00.004+07:00

Birthday parties are cultural experiences. Invitations here are sent the day of the party. All guests arrive and sit down. The birthday girl sits in a central location and someone (in this case, her mother) will be the "master of ceremonies" (for lack of a better word). She will go around the room and ask everyone to say his/her name. Then she may quiz one or two of the children to check if he/she remembers the names. They will. Then a few songs will be sung with the last one being happy birthday. Then a knife will be brought out and one piece of cake will be cut by the birthday girl together with her mother. She will usually give a bite to her mother. Then her mother will ask if there is anyone else she wants to give a bite to. She chooses her best friend. Then her sister will pray to close the "ceremony" portion of the party and ask for a blessing on the food. Then we all proceed to the "buffet" table and get some food -rice, fish, curry chicken, cucumber/carrot salad, bean soup, and fried noodles and of course, a cup of water. Like bottled water, only in a cup. Tastes like plastic... You eat and then go home.

*There's a salt shortage here. Don't know why, but I'm starting to run low and beginning to feel the beginnings of panic... What would I do if I couldn't get any salt??? I NEED salt. Can't bake bread without salt!!

*The situation with the man that had a relationship with the married woman who said I's name was "resolved" the other day. "I" went over there and the man looked at her and said,"I have no idea who this woman is." Whew, "I" was off the hook... Then all the people present discussed with the man what had happened and he admitted to taking the woman somewhere for a week. He gave her a Blackberry phone because he had no money to give her. The people gathered there decided that he would have to pay the woman's family 40 million rupiah for his actions. That's $4,000. Lots of money!

*Our guard went up to Wamena with his brother-in-law. We had been helping him save up for a motorbike that he could use to get to school when he starts again in August. Well, he came to Hugo and said he needed all of his savings so he could go to Wamena. He didn't say why. Yesterday his brother told me that it was to resolve a problem with a man who had bothered Y's wife (well, former wife actually) and had not yet paid the fine he was supposed to pay. The guy lives in Jayapura but his family is in Wamena. Y also had to pay for his brother-in-laws ticket-apparently he has some other ceremony or something to attend to and as he doesn't have a job but Y does, so guess who has to pay for his ticket??? There's no getting ahead here...

*Apparently there is also a shortage of finger-print ink around here so the police can't issue any driver's licenses right now...

Christiaan's birthday supper and more...

2011-02-18T06:05:00.002+07:00

Homemade hamburgers on homemade buns... fries... purchased.... but home-fried...

Funny story... The first day that Ice had her new teeth she went home and went into the "living room" where her younger brother and his buddy were watching TV. They looked over at her and said,"That looks like Ice, but Ice doesn't have that many teeth. Must be satan." And they went back to watching tv. So Ice left the room and took out her teeth and returned. The boys said,"Oh Ice, there was just somebody here who looks just like you but with teeth. Must have been satan ya?" As Ice was telling me this I asked her if they really believed that it was satan the first time they saw her. She said emphatically,"YES!" hmmm....
A couple days ago a woman who was sick with malaria, and had been having an affair with another man, was talking a little crazy and said that Ice knew why. Why what? I don't know, but the point is she mentioned Ice's name. Ice says she knows the woman but has never hung out with her so has no idea why she said her name. The sad thing is that even though this woman was in a malaria delirium, there will be people who will believe her and will therefore cause problems for Ice when in fact she's done nothing. So that meant that yesterday Ice's dad and some other family members went to deal with the problem. Ice had to go as well. I guess I'll find out today what happened.

Happenings...

2011-02-12T18:11:00.002+07:00

On Tuesday I took Ice to get her new false teeth. She's pretty stinkin' happy with them! Like most people here, she had a lot of problems with her teeth. Good dental care isn't really encouraged and good dentists are as rare as ice rinks here. But there is an expat dentist here and for the past 1.5 years or so, we've been working on fixing all the issues in Ice's mouth. And the final step was for her to receive her fake teeth. They look great! Of course her mouths a bit sore and she bit her cheek the other day while eating... I keep telling her she just has to stick it out and the pain will go away. Hopefully she does!

Today we celebrated Christiaan's upcoming birthday with 8 of his friends. We started out with a game of barefoot soccer while waiting for all the boys to arrive and then we moved onto cake and pop. After that we launched some water balloons and then they had a water fight. Fun times!

Seen while out and about...

2011-02-07T18:31:00.004+07:00

This is a store in the mall... It actually sells accessories...

Apparently that's the flag of Australia... This is a FIFA headband that we got for free in a bag of frozen chicken strips.

No hygiene police here...

I did buy this, I just had to try it!

Hmmm.....

Haha...

How would you like to have a spare tire cover like this!

Table lamps are really hard to find here but if you're not picky....

Not sure what this building is about or why there's a fancy statue on it...

Not sure what these are...

Would you buy bulk potato wedges or bulk anything for that matter in a third world country??? Eeewwww....

Jayapura...

2011-02-07T17:51:00.008+07:00

Hugo still had two days of holidays left from last year and we decided to use them to go to Jayapura for a few nights without kids. R, was willing to stay with the kids for which we were very thankful. We stayed at the Swiss-Bel hotel:

It's that castle-looking building on the far left of the first photo, centre of the second one. It's located on the waters edge along the bay. It's like a little piece of cleanliness in a very dirty city. We enjoyed a few days of relaxing, shopping, going to the beach and not cooking... :-) We were also able to visit a friend of mine on the Chinese New Year (IMLEK). That was a fun cultural experience. You need to shake hands with everyone in the house when you arrive and everyone who's there when you leave. We also got to eat some yummy food.

One day we ate lunch at this swanky place called the OK Cafe (sounds like it comes out of an old Western doesn't it?):

Hugo had Shrimp steak (or so the dish was named...)

I had Ifu Mie (vegetables and chicken over fried noodles).

We ate all of our suppers in the hotel restaurant because it's quiet and no one bugs you there...

One morning we drove to the beach known as Base G (a name given during WW2). It was a nice cloudy day so the temperature wasn't too hot. I still burned...

A couple guys fixing their fishing net.

2011-01-28T17:45:00.002+07:00

I'm pleased to report, that while our faces our still rather whitish, the boys and I are on the road to recovery. The medicine that we take for malaria does not have the nasty side effects of quinine but does lower ones blood sugar level to dizzy-spell inducing levels and leaves a rather unpleasant taste in ones mouth. We are all looking forward to feeling energetic again!

Funny story.
This morning, not having much energy, I spent the little energy that I had in reserve, visiting my two good friends who are horizonalized with dengue fever. Yes, for some strange reason all three of us became afflicted at around the same time, me being the first to fall. Well, not so strange as we all camped at the beach at the same time.... Visit number one occurred at my neighbours house. Before heading over I informed "I" that I would be going next door. I had my visit and went back home to discover my house locked up tight and me without a key in my pocket. Arrggg... I was on a tight timeline as I needed to visit friend number 2 yet and then pick up Brynne from school so I walked down to I's house to ask her to open the door. She was there and we walked back together. I thought nothing of it all. This evening "I" came back to pick up her washed blankets and told me that my "visit" had prompted much discussion amongst her father and neighbours. Upon her return home her father immediately told her to sit down at the table. She assumed he was angry about something. He asked her why I had come to their house, what had she done? She must have broken something because she's sick of working and wants to get fired. "I" explained that no, nothing had happened, just that all the doors had been locked. Then a neighbour came by and asked her why I had come. Then another, and another.... She was ruing the fact that I had come! I joked that I should come more often as it obviously gives some very bored people something to talk about.... "I" was horrified...

Sick...

2011-01-25T06:25:00.002+07:00

Well, tropical diseases have hit our family hard this week. Christiaan has malaria tropika +2 and Aidan has malaria tropika+1. I have either malaria or dengue fever. I started feeling sick on Friday already but thought I'd just overdone it at basketball and then shopping in Abe. On Saturday I should have done a slide but didn't. Early Sunday morning I woke up shivering and sweating yet freezing cold. As it was Sunday I decided to just start taking malaria meds instead of waiting to have a slide read. But it appears that my symptoms may be more on the dengue fever end of things. Blah... So I have to drink like a fish and wait for the telltale rash that should appear on day 5 to confirm. I feel very weak, my knee joints hurt, my head is dizzy and I feel nauseous off and on.
I'm sick of being sick so lets move on from that...
Last Friday was the third anniversary of the death of R's husband. click here to read the story. She now believes that he died of a stroke or heart attack. She really loved him and he was her best friend but his family caused her nothing but suffering. Last Friday his entire family came to her house to have a big meal together. Everyone brought food but R feels that this party was unusually large and wonders what is behind it. Because R only has a daughter his family has been making comments about how she shouldn't be allowed to continue living in the house as it was her husbands parents house. Boy decendents are very important. R hopes to be able to hang on there until she is done school in about a year and a half.

2011-01-21T16:17:00.002+07:00

During Hugo's week off he and I's husband built a swing set in the backyard. While on furlough we'd found some heavy duty swing seats with chains at Value Village for cheap and brought them back with us. Hugo made the set out of iron wood so it should last a while... This also gave I's husband some work which is always a good thing!

This is a little video I took on my phone of a group of people doing a traditional chant on New Years day. It's a bit far away but they made such a neat sound I had to try!

2011-01-17T18:28:00.003+07:00

We'll start off with a couple pics just because they are so cute! It was R's birthday recently and I bought the girls matching Barbie t-shirts. I had also baked a chocolate cake on her birthday so she and her mom and aunt ate some with us. R just had dengue fever right after getting over the chicken pox! Poor girl!

R's mom with baby Joy who's just the cutest patootie ever!

Today the kids started school again. I think they were ready for routine again.

I've taken on kindergaten PE in addition to Grades 1-2. Should be a hoot. There's only 6 kids in K and 22 in the gr1-2.

We're so thankful for the teachers who've just arrived to fill the vacant spots!

Hugo's back at work and things in the hangar are busy as usual.

A couple weeks ago I's husband punched her again. This time he asked for money because he wanted to have his friends over for a meal on New Years. I told him that she had no money (mostly true because she'd had a motorcycle accident while borrowing someone's bike so she had to pay) and he got mad and punched her. When Hugo and I married, we joined our bank accounts and our possessions etc... That's the way it should be no? Well, here I have difficulty with that view. I works for me. Her hubby has no job. He doesn't seem to spend much time looking for work either and is easily bored. You'd think that he would feel guilty or something and at least take care of the housework and cooking, but no, he doesn't do that either. The older people in the community have told I that she should work for her husband, just like her mom worked for her dad back when they were still married. Nice. Way back when, I's mom's employer, a Canadian woman, helped her build a house. Apparently the only part paid for by I's dad was the zinc roofing. When they divorced, he got the house. Nice. I asked me if in a marriage the woman was supposed to work to support the husband or vice versa.... I gave her the Biblical answer. I have to admit, I do not envy her her life. I just pray that things will improve as they grow up and grow older. But I'm not going to hold my breath. Women are considered inferior to men and not really worthy for anything but birthing offspring and cooking.

Camping at the beach...

2011-01-12T18:26:00.002+07:00

Hugo has this week off of work. It is the first week he's had off since we returned from furlough waaay back in July. It was, we decided, high time that we went camping at the beach. Now, camping here is not like camping in North America. There's no booking your site online 3 months in advance. No option for hook-ups or RV sites... Here, you make a plan and pack absolutely everything you'll need for the duration of your stay and you drive down to the dock and hope there's a boat willing to take you. There always is... You negotiate a price and load up the boats. In our case, we went with two other families (Canadian families!) and so we needed 2 boats. One for stuff, and one for people. We told them which beach we wanted to go to and that was where they dropped us off. It's not a super long stretch of beach, but there are a few choices of where you'd want to set up camp. We picked what we thought was the best place. News travels fast in these parts and the lady who owns that section of the beach showed up and we negotiated a price per night with her. A rather reasonable price I might add. The advantage of camping on that particular stretch of beach is that there is a bathroom around the mid-way point. However, that bathroom is owned by a different fellow than the part of the beach we stayed at. During our three day stay there, he came to work on his bathroom and is enlarging it. It's quite the bathroom (I forgot to take a photo...). The hinges of the door are made from old inner tube. Someone put up a World Vision poster around part of the outside wall cause it was a bit holey. It's a squat pot of course. Anyways, in the end we paid him some money because some of us did make use of this toilet during our stay. He was happy I think.

Tarps are crucial as it usually rains at night. It only rained a bit during our second night. Plus, with a tarp you don't need to put up your fly which only serves to make your tent more oven-like... Thankfully by the middle of the night it cooled off a bit.

It is wavy season here so boogie boarding is the thing to do!

There's Hugo catching a big wave around the corner from our beach, the only place to catch a wave big enough to surf on.

This is what a man is supposed to do on his holidays!

The government decided to "help" the people who own the various parts of this beach and give them pre-fab shelters to put up. So we decided to use one of said shelters as a "kitchen" and were pleasantly surprised that we didn't have to pay extra to use it! (See right hand-side of photo above) We had to bring all our own drinking water and we did dishes with water from a fresh-water pool located near our camp. We cooked on little stoves that use little cans of butane. Very handy!

It was a fun time at the beach and we definitely want to do it again!

Nona's Birthday...

2011-01-09T08:38:00.002+07:00

Yesterday was Nona's 8th birthday. She really wanted to have a big birthday party. If you are a regular on this blog you may have seen some of the photos from Indonesians birthday parties. Lots and lots of people come and you receive lots of presents/money and you have a "program". Nona doesn't understand that this isn't possible for her mother to afford. Nona's father left Nona's mother long before she was even born. For a number of years Nona, her brother and her mom lived with her fathers parents on another island. As you can imagine, that wasn't the optimal situation. Ibu Y decided to come here to Papua (where she had lived while married and had friends) to start a new life for herself. She was forced to leave her children behind until she had established a life here. There were issues with the in-laws, they wanted money and then they didn't want to take care of the kids anymore etc... Last year while we were on furlough, Nona's father died and Ibu Y actually accompanied his body back to his home island. While there it was decided that she would take Nona back with her but the in-laws wanted to keep the boy (or so I understand). It's been hard for Ibu Y to suddenly be a parent again and it was hard for Nona as she'd been allowed to do whatever she wanted. So the two of them have been going through an adjustment period. They have rented a little house of their own to live in which is great. Ibu Y works very hard to provide for her and Nona. About a year and a half ago I was able to help her find a job as a house helper and she also helps out other people with ironing and such and she takes orders for specialty cakes and treats.

Anyways, Ibu Y thought it would be nice to have a party with the kids from church to celebrate. So after Sunday school (before the service) we decorated the room a little and then after the service all the kids went back there and we sang and prayed. Nona's mom also asked her to obey her better and not be naughty and try her best at school. Then Nona sang a song for us. At the end Nona gave everyone a plastic container with nasi goreng and a little bag of krupuk. We gave her a gift bag with lots of girly stuff in it. It was nice to do something special for this little girl.

Visit to Ifar Gunung (Mountain)...

2011-01-08T18:40:00.002+07:00

The kids are still enjoying their holidays and we still have another week left! On Friday afternoon the kids and I went to Mount Ifar with our friends the J's. To visit Mount Ifar you need to enter a military complex and report at the entrance and leave a piece of official ID. You are required to remove your sunglasses and drive with your windows down at all times. First we drove up to a spot from which we could hike down to the river. The hike is about 15 minutes or so through the jungle for a bit. There are cocoa trees, although none had any fruit. Then we played in the river for a bit before driving up to the McArthur monument from where you have a fabulous view of Sentani. There we had a picnic supper. Fun times!

2011-01-05T17:10:00.004+07:00

I love my Blackberry and I love that I can take photos without it being super obvious that that's what I'm doing... Especially while shopping... Following is a small sample of what's for sale here... And while I'm on the road, this is who's sitting beside me:

One evening, being too pooped to cook, I bought chicken and rice from this little place for the kids... Hugo, Mikah and I love Nasi Kuning (yellow) and the flavourful chicken that comes with it but the younger kids palate has yet to be able to accept such full flavour... This is a pretty classy joint eh?

This is my favourite brand of baby gear...

Fireworks anyone?

Haven't tried these yet...

This is just YUCK!!

Looking for a "Little House on the Prairie" look?

Happy New Year!

2011-01-05T16:42:00.003+07:00

I can finally post properly again! Thanks to my bestest friend P for posting my last post for me. Our internet guardian is really rather fickle...
Where do I begin!! New Years Eve of course...
We celebrated with our Canadian friends and let off fireworks at around 8:00 in the evening, before the kiddies went to bed. We've combined our funds to enable us to purchase some larger more impressive fire works. And they didn't disappoint. It's so much fun here! No pesky laws regarding the purchase of fire works... :-) At least an hour before midnight the celebrations began in earnest. All of Sentani was letting off large fireworks. It was non-stop for that hour! Unbelievable! Unfortunately, due to our location and the surrounding trees, we didn't have the best view. The power wasn't so continuous. It went on and off a number of times and eventually stayed off until 11:00 the next morning. It was oliebollen for breakfast!

On Sunday we were forced to meet as a church in the bottom (spreading to outside) of our pastors house. The lock on the door of the building we meet in was broken and refused to open. At the bottom of our pastors house (an old ZGK home) are double doors opening to a small room. Outside and above that room is a deck so the people outside were shaded from the sun. That's where all the early-comers sat of course, more airflow out there. We ended up inside... As our pastor was recovering from malaria we had asked a guest to preach. He had a nice sermon on grace. On the wall behind him there were two anti-HIV posters. Keep Papua free of HIV they proclaimed... As our collection bags were in the "locked" church, we used one of those little store bags made from recycled goods. This one was from some salon. Afterwards we had a nice time talking with the church members. One of them had just come back from a trip to Israel. He is a videographer and was asked to go with a group of 150 people. Groups like these receive government grants and use them to go to Israel and Palestine to see the places Jesus lived and worked. The majority of the people on this trip were Papuans, many from the interior. The only non-Papuans along were those with jobs like, nurses, a doctor and our videographer friend. They stayed in 4 star hotels the entire time. It was rather comedic at times because many of the Papuans from interior had no idea how to run a bath or flush a toilet as such luxuries are not usually found in the interior. I have mixed feelings about these trips. Straight-hairds from other islands also get government grants and come here and start businesses and make a living. I wish Papuans would do this too! There are precious few Papuans who actually have businesses here.
We as a family have had a very blessed year this past year. We had the opportunity to go to Canada and see many family, friends and supporters. Our children could experience their homeland and get reacquainted with it again (or for the first time!). We were able to spend time in Holland with family and friends also. Hugo was able to complete his studies for his mechanics license and also pass all his government exams. He also began a new challenge as the Maintenance Operations Manager for MAF here in Sentani. We as a family were blessed with good health for the most part. Never something to be taken for granted! We were also able to grow in our knowledge and love for the Lord. We wish you all the Lord's blessings in the New year!

Christmas 2010

2010-12-31T01:53:00.008+07:00

On Christmas Eve our entire church came to our house for a service. We decided to have the service and dinner following at our home for a number of reasons. One being that we planned to start at 5:00 and by 6:00 it is dark here and the naughty folks come out to “play”. People have been going into the old dorm beside our church and engaging in naughty behaviour (I’m being very polite here...). The other reasons are that the church is very dusty and dirty (not much we can do about that...) and there’s no bathroom or running water.

It turned out to be rather providential that we were at our home because an hour and a half into the evening, the power went off and stayed off until very late at night. You guessed it, no generator at the church either (it would get stolen if we did have one...). It also began to pour buckets during the service. This was a welcome downpour as we hadn’t had a decent rain in a long time. However, the roof of our church is very holey so again, good thing we were in our house.

After the service we rearranged the furniture and pulled the table of food out and enjoyed an Indonesian meal. Beforehand I had bbq’ed a whack of chicken pieces which is always a hit here! There was also fish in a curry sauce with sambal on the side, a kind of banana that had been cooked, a green leafy vegetable cooked with spices and coconut milk (yummy!) and of course, rice and krupuk. After the service everyone went outside on our front porch where we lit off a few fireworks while people took turns getting rides home in the two cars that were available. Fun times!

The next day we had a lovely Christmas dinner with our friends here. We even had turkey with all the trimmings! Hugo and I collaborated on that mountain of mashed potatoes of which the leftovers made lovely potato cakes... Each Christmas season guys around town will make Christmas booths. Many people are quite creative. The point of these booths is to blast loud music for hours on end. Sometimes it’s Christmas music and sometimes it’s just ... music... This fancy one was built near the MAF office and on the road leading to the booth they had put bamboo poles arching over the road with lights up them and hanging from the middle they had made crosses out of water bottles painted white. It looks really neat at night!

Tis the season...

2010-12-21T18:15:00.002+07:00

For sugar cookies!

Wamena...

2010-12-20T11:40:00.005+07:00

Last week Hugo went to Wamena (see map). It's the largest city in the world that has no roads going to or from it. Everything is flown in. Everything... One of our planes had experienced a serious engine problem in Wamena requiring that the engine be removed and sent to America for a small overhaul. The loaner engine arrived last week and Hugo and his sidekick "E" went to Wamena to put it into the plane so that it can be used again. Doing this job allowed Hugo to complete some more tasks for his logbook (which he needs to fill in order to get his Canadian AME "M" license).

Just thought I'd show you how I get gas for my motorbike. The only official gas pumps in town are at the other end of town (where we rarely go). Thankfully there are enterprising folks who bottle up the gas and sell it by the litre by the side of the road. They even filter the gas as they pour it in... :-)

Bits and Bites...

2010-12-12T09:25:00.000+07:00

I have been neglectful in updating here more often. Unfortunately I cannot upload photos today from some unexplainable reason... blah...
* This morning our church service had to compete with a nearby Christmas booth blasting out music... We also witnessed the baptism of a cute baby boy. The baptismal "font" was a glass bowl of water on a plastic chair.
* Life for "I" returned to normal following the events of a couple weeks ago. I think most of us would be traumatized, but for the ladies here it is a fairly "normal" part of life. They expect it to happen.
* Hugo is heading to Wamena tomorrow to help re-install then engine of one of our Cessna 208's. It's been stuck engine-less in Wamena for some time now. He hopes to return home on Friday. We hope so too...
* We've had a bit of rain here and there but really not enough to replenish wells. It is so dry here! I've spoken to "I" about how the people should put out pails when it is raining to catch the water as it is quite clean. They believe that you can get sick from rain water so they don't do it... Baffling...

Parties!

2010-12-07T20:27:00.004+07:00

Saturday morning we had a combined birthday party for Marc and his buddy S. We had the party in the gym and played games! Fun times!

Marc and his buddy S.
Then that evening we had a dedication for our two newest aircraft. Following that we had the annual MAF Christmas party with all MAF'ers in Sentani. There were speeches, singing, a sermon...

The boys kept entertained with their candles...

A slice of life on Pos 7

2010-11-27T19:22:00.005+07:00

It's the end of they day, like 4:00 or later, and you head up to the soccer field across the road from our house. There's 4 games each day. One for boys and one for girls and one for women and one for men. The females play last when the light is dying out and the spotlights are turned on. Unfortunately there are only lights on the one side/end of the field. You sit alongside the road and cheer loudly. Then a guy selling bakso goreng comes on his motorbike. For 1,000 rupiahs you can buy a stick. The children begin to clamber around.

Bakso is made from bone marrow and tapioca (I think) and comes in sausage like strips which are cut into pieces. As you can see he puts them in egg and then fries them in some oil in what looks like a poffertjes pan. There's a little burner underneath the pan.

Then you dip your stick in the spicy red sauce and enjoy!

And go back to cheering for your favorite team.

Thoughts...

2010-11-27T18:58:00.004+07:00

Photos from when we had our church over for a potluck bbq.

The girls on the boat ride home.

The boys managed to get a sea cucumber...

- A number of weeks ago a boeing 737 landed really hard in Wamena (interior city). The plane taxied to its normal spot and the workers began unloading it. The plane was going to proceed to the runway to take off again (they cannot leave loaded as the runway is too short for that) when a couple guys noticed that there was a large crack behind the cockpit... Then a couple guys from Boeing came to Wamena to quote on the job. They said that the hotel there is the worst they've ever stayed in and it's the best one in town...

- Each Friday a group of seniors from the seniors home up the road go for a walk. They wear matching outfits and walk until our road where they stop and turn around. The walk down is probably 400 meters or so...

- I have to say that I'm sick of expired food. I've had bad orange juice and expired margarine that I've had to throw out recently.... ugghh...

- Every now and then the police decide to do a sweeping in town. They gather at the stop light and start directing traffic (which totally confuses people because the light will be red but the policeman directing traffic will tell you to go...). The other police will stop random motorbikes and sometimes cars and check to see if they have a proper drivers license and registration and if they are wearing a helmet. If just one of those is not in proper order, the motorbike is confiscated and taken to the police station where they hold it until you come and pay a fine. I don't think that they even make sure that you've fixed whatever it was you had your bike taken for. The last time they did a sweeping, only 5 motorcycle taxis from our hill came away unscathed.

-We found the dead lizard that was stinking up our bedroom for a time. He was a little dried out...

- We are desparately in need of some serious rainfall. Wells are drying up.

-Tonight we had a farewell potluck bbq for a great family that's moving back to the States. We say good-bye a lot in our line of work... not fun... The potluck was fun though...

-The kids have had the entire week off school due to a teachers conference. It's been a nice change of routine. Less stressful... Hugo took Wednesday off and we headed to the beach with our friends (minus P because he's a teacher and was at the conference) and we were the only ones there! So nice!

Catching up...

2010-11-25T19:34:00.000+07:00

Again it has been a while since I've posted... Due again to a overzealous internet guardian... I can't upload photos yet though, not sure why...
So last week I's husband punched her in the head. Apparently I had broken his cell phone and he was angry about it. He said she had to buy a new one or he would break her stuff. She doesn't have money for a new one. So myself and a neighbour went to I's house and took her and her stuff (tv, playstation, and clothes) and brought them to our house. She spent the night. The next day her husband wanted her to come home and cook because all he had to eat was white rice... poor guy... then he really wanted the tv. He had gotten a satelite dish (really...) but it ain't useful without a tv. So she gave it. She ended up going back home that night to sleep because he had friends over and she knew he would have them sleep in their room. He tried to kick her out but she wouldn't go. The next day we had them both come and first Hugo talked with the husband, "T", and then the four of us talked. He later told I that he thought every word that we said was against him... that's how you feel when you're guilty isn't it? Anyways, we did our best to help them and hopefully can sit down with them next month again... if he'll agree to come...
On Sunday we had our entire church over for a potluck lunch. The day before one of the ladies had gone to the market to get chicken and I marinated it and we bbq'ed it after church. It was a lot of fun having them all over! Everyone brought some food and it was neat to try different things. (well, the kids didn't think so but we did...)
Tonight the third kodiak aircraft arrived safely after flying over the ocean. We're thankful for God's protection of the various pilots who flew the plane.

We're Back!

2010-11-09T19:09:00.003+07:00

It's been a while since I posted here... For some reason our internet Guardian blocked blogger for a while. But now we're back! So what has happened since that eventful trip to Jayapura?
Fun night! Once a year the school hosts fun night. Each class up to grade 8 has a booth or two and you can win candy or pay to have people soaked with water or forced to sing into a microphone. All the school children plus the children of any national school employees participate. Fun Times!

Mikah is the goalie for the junior varsity Futsal team. Here they are playing a team from a local junior high. They won 4-3! Mikah was pretty excited and did a great job in her first game as goalie.

Hugo's been super busy in the hangar. Lots of decisions to make!

I've been enjoying teaching PE to the Grade 1-2 class. Last class coincided with pajama day at school. Made for some interesting PE "uniforms". One cute boy wore his short pj shorts with matching shirt and knee high camouflage socks...

Today I brought Ice to the dentist to have impressions made for false teeth. She unfortunately lost a lot of her teeth at a young age and is left with one molar and her front teeth. I really hope that new teeth will help her eat well and feel good about herself!

Jayapura

2010-10-29T20:38:00.005+07:00

Yesterday Hugo took a day off and we went to Jayapura together. It sure was nice to spend some time together just shopping and looking around and talking...

This is a spot on the road to Jayapura called Skyline. It is here that you have a great view of the ocean and you can buy a coconut drink from one of the stands alongside the road.

Going to Jayapura is always an adventure. The drive is not that many km's, about 35 km, but it takes more than an hour to drive because the road is very winding and there's a lot of traffic. On our way we passed 3 demonstrations against the military presence here in Papua. Half way to Jayapura we stopped to buy new cell phones (cheaper there) and once we'd bought them we had to quickly leave because the demonstraters were coming our way and the stores were all closing their metal doors. We managed to get out in time and didn't have any trouble. We got to Jayapura and had a nice lunch at a cafe there that sells sandwiches. You should know that that's not normal. Most places here sell only rice and noodle dishes... This is a rather Western style place. Then we shopped a bit and headed back up along the coast to visit the fish market in Hamadi. We had a bit of an adventure finding it but eventually we did.

As we were trying to find it, we passed by this public phone. It's broken of course, but this is the first time I've ever seen a public phone, or the remnants of what was a public phone, here in Papua.

The fist market had fish of all sorts. We were looking for a fresh makerel and the only one available was the small one in front of Hugo. They wanted too much for it so we didn't buy...

This is where I stepped in some nasty sludge as all the people were looking on. The man drinking on the far left kindly gave me some water to clean my feet and shoes with. We felt a bit like a freak show there as everyone was calling to us and watching us...

Saw these marlins laying there for sale. They tried to get us to buy one... Like what are we going to do with one of those???

These boats were moored near the fish market.

At the entrance to the market were some stalls such as this one selling a variety of fresh fruits and veggies.

One of the great views of the ocean from the road out of Jayapura.

Another view of a village on an island.

Because of the sludge I stepped in, my sandals were wet so I bought these lovely pink, and terribly uncomfortable, flip flops at a little stall...

This guy along with his neighbours was for sale in one of the grocery stores... hmmm....

Finally, we ended our day with supper at a local restaurant. We had hoped to visit a newish restaurant on the lake but it was strangely closed... So we tried another one on the edge of town, it too was closed and so we ended up at this place right in town. Hugo had a chicken steak and it came with gravy, in a gravy boat... :)

2010-10-25T19:52:00.003+07:00

V and hubby J and their now one month old baby.

After a busy week we thought a day at the beach was a good idea. As you can see, the rope swing provided much entertainment for the kids. It is such a beautiful place to spend a day!

Stuff...

2010-10-21T18:59:00.003+07:00

*Yesterday and today a bunch of guys from on the hill here decided to get some cement and fill some of the pot holes in the road. So they go out and mix some cement by hand and fill the holes and then put tufts of tall grass around the spot so you won't drive over it (no such thing as safety cones here...). Then there's always one guy with a carboard box collecting money from whoever drives by. This morning the guy holding the box, who also appeared two sheets to the wind, tried to convince me to give far more than the norm. I tossed my already generous donation in the box and kept on driving... And after all their hard work, they barely touched the tip of the iceberg that is pot holes on this hill...
*There are lots of ways that people try to trick you out of money here. Many an interior person has been tricked by people saying to them, if you give me your money, I will go to a machine and put it in and then it will make more and you will get more money back. So many people believe and will wait for hours for their money to be returned. Other people use more insidious methods. Today a friend was viciously tricked. She received a phone call saying that her husband had been in a bad car accident and had been brought to the main hospital in Jayapura and had bleeding in his brain and before they would do anything she needed to transfer money to the hospital account. They wanted 29 million but when she said that she only had 2, they said that was fine for the time being. She did not try to call her husband because there was no power all day and her hand phone was dead. The people calling were very convincing and had her call the "doctor" and talk to the "police" and everything. When she went to the bank to transfer the money the people at the bank said, wait a minute, we've heard this story before. Why don't we call your husband and check. So they did and he was of course, fine and totally ignorant of all that his wife had been going through for the last hour... YIKES!!

Bits and Bites...

2010-10-19T18:39:00.003+07:00

Me an my beautiful daughter... Aidan wants all his friends to know that even though the Canucks have gotten off to a rocky start, he's still rooting for them!

Mikah at her last volleyball game shaking hands with the opposing team which consisted of girls who live up here on Pos 7.

The safety bash at Mickey's, yes named after that famouse cartoon mouse...

So I thought I'd do another listing of facts/news in no particular order...

*It's been super hot and dry here as of late. It's a bit draining really...

*Our road is so bumpy that by the time I reach the bottom on my motorbike (which now rattles like crazy) I feel like I've been wrestling with a pile driver for the past 5 minutes...

*We had an MAF safety luncheon last week to celebrate another year of safe flying. Thank you Lord!

*I've been organizing the craft for Sunday school each week (which is held at the wee morning hour of 7:30 am before the church service...)and this past week's craft of crowns decorated with sparkle dust from Canada and beads from here was a rousing success!

*Sunday night there must have been a big party down the road cause there was LOUD music into the wee hours of the night... So thankful for the white noise of our a/c and glass windows...

*Ice bought our old playstation 2 off of us and has been making some money letting kids play it for 5,000 rupiahs/hour. Unfortunately her family thinks she now has all kinds of money to give to them and have "borrowed" every penny (rupiah) she's made on the machine! Ugghh... I told her that she should keep a portion to "lend" out and then I would hide the rest for her... It's the only way for her to "get ahead".

*Someone stole the lock for our gate. Who steals a lock without a key? Blah... And new ones are at least $20... double blah...

*Sunday morning one of the water pipes on our tank for the public came apart so the system was inoperable. It was fixed by Monday afternoon but there were many people complaining to Ice about it... I think they re-appreciated the water all over again... :-)

*MAF has been able to do a couple relief flights to the flooded area of Wasior. It seems some local churches and businessmen from Jakarta are working together to provide some supplies and counselling to those affected by the flooding.

Sad...

2010-10-17T14:23:00.003+07:00

Today I went to see Ibu N. I had wanted to see her yesterday but that didn't happen. We slept in and had a picnic lunch at the pool and then went home and I baked bread and muffins. This afternoon I decided I would go to see her only to find out that she had died yesterday and was already buried. I have mixed feelings. I feel sad of course, but I also feel happiness for her that she no longer has to suffer. Ibu N's family remained angry with her until the end. She, like all of us, has made mistakes and done/said things that she shouldn't have. Her family seems to have held everything against her and now in her death they aren't even willing to pay for her funeral; asking for money from her former boss. TB is an entirely treatable disease, but the one who has it must also have a desire to recover. Ibu N did not have this desire and seemed content to drift away and go to her Lord and Maker. I can't think of a better place to go to really but I also wonder about her young son who is now going to be raised by his aunt. I know there's nothing more any of us could have done, but it hurts to only be able to stand back and observe and of course, pray.

Bits and Bites...

2010-10-13T19:20:00.002+07:00

This week Hugo learned to start up a plane and "drive" it a bit. That's right, drive, not fly... :-) That way they won't have to get a pilot every time they need to start up the engine to test it and such. This is also another task that Hugo needs to complete towards getting his Canadian mechanics license.
Ibu N who has been sick with TB is doing even worse now. Her "loving" family has removed her from the hospital on at least 3 different occasions even though they do not need to pay anything for her care. She is now so weak she cannot walk anymore. Yesterday J and D from Holland went to the local Public Health Unit (sort of place) and asked if they could come and take her to the hospital. They came, but no one from her family was willing to go with to take care of her. You must have someone with you if you go to the hospital here. We cannot get too involved and make any decisions regarding the care of Ibu N. Should we do so and she dies, we are then responsible. It is very sad and disheartening to have your hands tied and not be able to physically do anything more for her. Prayer is the most important thing we can do, but us humans always want to be able to fix things ourselves...
Our nurse friend R who was taking care of Ibu N, has fallen rather ill herself. She was in the hospital here a couple times but has now returned to her homeland to get better care and a proper diagnosis. The labs here are quite limited in what they can test for.
Mikah played her last volleyball game of the season last Friday. She really enjoyed getting to know the game and playing on a team. She also showed great improvement in her play! Maybe the lovely green knee pads I found locally helped... :-)

Going to the market...

2010-10-07T18:29:00.000+07:00

Went to the market this morning. I usually go before I’ve showered cause by the time I’m back, I’m soaked with sweat. Brynne and I went on my trusty Honda motorbike. We drive in-between two rows of garbage to get to the entrance. Someone once put up a sign there that said, “Don’t dump your garbage here!” Yeah, that was totally useless... Costs me 50 cents to get in. Brynne and I walk down to the meat section and on the way she gets her arm grabbed a couple times. People can’t resist her skin. She also got called a Barbie at least once. The meat section consists of a long row of tile-topped tables where people sell chicken and then about 3 more rows of people selling fish. We walk gingerly over to the guy I always buy chicken from and place our order. They guy beside him is “cleaning” his chicken innards with water which runs off the “table” into the gutter on the floor. Stay clear so you don’t get splashed. People are coming up and touching the chicken and asking what it costs. No hand sanitizer to be found here... Behind us are lots of guys selling tuna and other fish. Some are busy cutting up their fish, others are just busy yelling to get peoples attention. Sweat pours down my back as I stand waiting. Of course I’m wearing my helmet cause who wants to see my bedhead!? Our guy is cutting up our chicken on a big ‘ole tree stump for a cutting board and is done quickly and we are on our way. We buy a nice papaya and a couple pemelo’s on our way back to the front. Then we go into another part of the market where I buy some fresh tofu, it’s still warm. On the way out I buy a couple lovely cauliflowers for tonight’s supper. I plan to make sweet and sour meat/tofu balls with rice and cauliflower. On the way back to the motorbike, some guy starts talking to me, not in a friendly way, in a language I don’t understand. I looked at him at first to show respect but after realizing that something wasn’t right, I turn away and walk to my bike. Someone has put cardboard on my seat so that it doesn't get hot from the sun. He's not around so it's a freebee this time and Brynnie puts the cardboard on another motorbike. I balance the heavy bag between my knees on the ride home. After bagging up the chicken I take a much needed shower... I stink and my shirt is completely wet with sweat... And Brynnie eats a cornetto as her thank-you for enduring the market with me... :-)

Bits and Bites from today...

2010-10-04T17:23:00.002+07:00

I thought I would share with you some random experiences I had today... (listed in no particular order...)
*This morning as I was going down the hill I passed an old lady wearing a Metallica jacket... hmm...
*I tried to buy something at the grocery store today but I couldn’t because they didn’t have a price for it yet...
*The power was out for a few hours this morning...
*Today when I was teaching PE to the gr’s 1 and 2, one of the children pulled out a tooth and proudly displayed his bloody mouth to me.
*This morning I was awoken at 5:30, far too early, to the wondrous sound of a tropical down pour. It has been so dry here that water was becoming a problem for many.
*I served lunch to a visiting pilot from our MAF program in Kalimantan.
*We ate bacon for the first time in months. I made nasi goreng and krupuk for supper.
*There’s a dead cheechuk (house lizard) somewhere in our bedroom, we know this because we can smell it, but to date we have yet to find it...
*I gave a pregnant Papuan lady a ride home from the school. I asked her where she planned to deliver her baby. "At home," she replied. "Does someone help you?" I asked. "No, I do it myself," was her reply...
*Ice told me that on the weekend she'd brought a friends son to the hospital and a corrupt nurse there cheated them out of 50,000 rupiahs...($5-or, a day's wage here)
*It was so "cold" today (25C) that I wore jeans and a hoody...

Found in our backyard...

2010-09-29T18:15:00.000+07:00

Bits and Bites...

2010-09-26T20:35:00.003+07:00

It's been another crazy week over here! Last Tuesday we (MAF) flew an expat woman from Wamena to Sentani. She'd been in a freak accident and her femur had been crushed. The accident had happened on Sunday and she didn't get to Jakarta until Wednesday (I think). She's been operated on and things seem to be going well.

On Thursday Brynne had her 5th birthday. She had a little party in the morning with her friends. She insisted that as it was her birthday, she should choose what we have for supper and her choice was to go to Papa Ron's pizza. This pizza place is in the mall here and wouldn't you know, as we were there, just outside the restaurant, they were having a bridal fashion show and then a rock band contest following... Yeah, it was a little loud... But Brynne enjoyed herself and received a free bowl of ice cream because it was her birthday.

On Saturday the second Kodiak aircraft arrived after a few days delay around Christmas island.
It's a long way from Nampa, Idaho to Sentani, Papua and we are thankful for God's protection of the pilot.

Bits and Bites...

2010-09-23T21:15:00.003+07:00

Here's a photo of our new entrance sign above our newly renovated check-in area. The middle photo on the left and the first girl after the words going to the right are photos that I had taken and submitted for the new sign. Pretty cool eh?

Anyways, things seemed to have settle down a bit for us this week. V is at home with the baby and things are going great. She's super cute! Her parents are so proud and excited! They asked my neighbour and I to name their new daughter. Yikes, that's some pressure... So we came up with what we thought was a lovely name and told them this past Wednesday. The tradition is that they will cook some food and have their close relatives over, eat and pray together and then give the child his/her name. So I can't tell you yet what the name will be as the ceremony hasn't happened yet...

Y has begun working for us again. Last Tuesday, the brother-in-law who had been getting all the money while not working, came to the door in the afternoon as I was preparing dinner. I was a little nervous about why he might be at the door, wearing an old t-shirt of Hugo's that we'd given a long time ago... He talks very interior-like so he's not always the easiest to understand. He looks like a city person, but he doesn't talk like one. The basic jist of what I understood was that he wanted to say thank-you, they're not offended (really??) and they're thankful that we chose his brother-in-law to work for us and not someone from outside their family. That whole statement at the end there gave me the idea he still thinks he's going to get money... The next day I told Yokben about the visit. We've agreed to keep his money at our house and he can come and get it as he needs it. Although I did tell him that if he keeps living with his sister and her husband, he should give them some money but certainly not all of it. Y is very excited to be working again and we're glad he's back!

There have been a number of strange events occurring here that just leave one feeling rather unsettled. I can't go into great detail regarding all of them but one is that the wife of a missionary interior got run over by their vehicle in a freak accident involving brakes that stopped working and broke her femur. The son of one of our pilots broke his leg. The new plane we've been waiting for broke down on one of the Christmas islands and now someone has to hand carry a part over there via Australia. A fire in one of our planes, thankfully not during flight... And there are more... It is especially at times like these that we are reminded of who is in control but it is difficult for us to give things over and simply trust in God's ultimate plan. Please pray!

2010-09-19T20:30:00.002+07:00

Just a quick update. V and baby are home and doing great. It is astonishing how little information is given to new parents. Like... none... V's neighbour in the hospital thought I was a nurse because of all the things I was telling them; things that any nurse in Canada would tell you while you are in the hospital with a newborn. It's actually rather frightening...

We let things with the guard situation settle down a bit and this past Saturday Y started working for us again. He passed on the final pay to his sister (wife of the guy causing the problems) as it was their son who did guard for the past month. Y is happy as a clam to be back and we're very glad to have him back. Hopefully there are no more problems with the brother-in-law...

2010-09-14T18:34:00.002+07:00

So the saga continues. Today I found out from Ice that the kid, N, who propositioned R, was "fined" by the tribe of a girl because he r*ped her 35 times (!). His family has to pay her family 64 million rupiah. Everyone in that area helped them pay and so no one is happy with them because all the pigs in the kampung (cluster of houses) are gone! (they pay fines in pigs as there's usually more pigs than money around. 1pig=10 million rupiah) The fine hasn't yet been paid in full so that would explain one of the reasons why B is reluctant to let go his "position" with us (in spite of the fact that the "position" is in his head only). They need the money. Well, I'm not interested in helping pay those kinds of fines... Y came and talked to me today and he said that when B got home last night he was saying the opposite of what he'd said to Hugo. He told Y that he could work for us and it was okay. That's weird. Ice informed me that when people talk one way and then a few minutes later talk another way, it means that there's a shrimp behind the rock (ulterior motive). I told Y to be patient and that we'd try to work things out slowly. But I told him that we may be forced to find someone else because I don't want to have trouble with B. Poor guy, he just wants to work!
Yesterday Ibu N came home from the hospital. Not because she is ready to come home, but because the doctors are sick of her not listening to them and the people with her not doing what they are supposed to do and Ibu N has been crying to go home. She's still very very ill and thin and has a hard time keeping her medicine or food down. Please pray that she will recover!
Today R's sister V was in full labour. I had told them to call me if they needed me to bring them to the birthing clinic by car. They called at one point but it was obvious that it was still too early. After I brought Brynne to school (she starts at 12:00) I stopped by to see how V was doing. She was in a lot of pain and the contractions were 2 minutes apart. So I whipped up the hill to our house on my motorbike and retrieved the car and drove down to get her and many of her extended family who all wanted to go along. The birthing clinic is a very spartan affair where only complication-free births may occur. This birth was not meant to happen there. The midwives were of the opinion that V was already 10 months pregnant and that the baby was about 4kg, enormous by local standards here. In addition, the baby's heartrate was 180, much too high and V had a low grade fever. The batteries on their fetal heart rate monitor died so they were forced to listen using a hollow wooden tube that they jammed onto V's tummy... They managed to procure an enormous oxygen bottle so that V could get some oxygen. That helped a bit but the decision was already made that she should go to the hospital. R stepped in and made the decision that they would go to the Catholic hospital 25 minutes away. (Our son Marc was born there 7 years ago) Then there was the matter of getting her there. They felt that an ambulance was necessary so V's husband was sent out to find someone with an ambulance who could drive them (for real! no 911 here!). He found Seth, a beetle-nut chewing roughish guy who asked 120,000 rupiahs for the transport. We got the cash together and he was happy to put on his siren. V had to climb into the back of the ambulance, no stretcher, and lay on the vinyl bed provided. A number of her husband's female family members decided to join them along with a student midwife (a full house...). R ended up going on her motorbike, and Rode came home with me. They decided to do a c-section at the hospital and everything is fine with mother and baby girl! I hope I can go tomorrow to see them! Thank the Lord that it all worked out!

Never a dull moment...

2010-09-13T19:17:00.002+07:00

I've written a little about our "guard" Y and his troubles...
Well, we'd recently come to realize that Y's brother-in-law (B), who was our guard first, still thought of himself as being in our employ and in charge of who was going to guard/work at our house... You can imagine how we felt about that!! B had gone off to Wamena about 1.5 years ago to try to become a government worker. He didn't tell us he was going, he just left. Apparently he didn't tell Y either but Y very aptly continued his good work for us as he had been doing most of the work already anyways. After a number of months B returned but didn't work for us anymore and we assumed that Y was receiving the money for his work as we were giving it to him. As it turns out, he felt he had to give it to B and B in turn gave him a very small portion of the money in spite of the fact that Y had done 80% of the work and B had done nothing, the sons/brothers having done the other 20%. You can imagine how we felt about that!! So we talked to the MAF guy who had found us B to begin with and he agreed that the situation was not good and that something had to be done. So tonight Hugo went down to talk with B and the MAF guy, P, about the whole situation. Compounding the whole problem is that since Y went to Wamena to deal with his wife's family, the son of B has been "guarding" here. He's a 16 year old guy, N, who also works as a motorcycle taxi during the mornings and goes to high school in the afternoon. I sort of trusted him but not anymore. As it turns out, a week and a half ago Hugo and I went to a friends house for the evening and asked R to babysit the kids. While she was babysitting, N asked her to come outside and she went thinking he wanted to show her something. He said, "Bapak and Ibu went out." He then proceeded to proposition her... YIKES!! R freaked out and went inside and locked all the doors. She didn't tell us when we got home because it was quite late. She should have told us earlier but she hadn't been to our house until today. Many of the men/guys here watch movies that they shouldn't. It's a serious problem here. So after R told us that story, we said to eachother that those guys need to be fired and we want Y to work for us. When Hugo went down to talk with the MAF guy and B about the whole situation, B really didn't get it. He basically said that he would work or no one. And Hugo informed him that he no longer had our trust and that we just want to feel safe. He didn't bring up the misdeeds of his son, although the MAF guy knows about it. R was there too and she said that B was being very hard-headed and seemed to not understand at all. He said to Hugo that he felt Hugo didn't like him... hmmm.... Sadly because of the crazy culture here we are left with two options. We can have B work for us with Y being his sub or have a completely new guy. This makes us very very sad because we really like Y and feel safe when he's working and we know we can trust him. As a Westerner we think, well, why can't he just work for us? Well, there would be constant problems with B, the brother-in-law. These are a very hard-headed people who are very slow to forget any perceived slight or misdeed done to them. We aren't sure yet what the fall-out from this will be but in the meantime, we have no guard or yard guy... (yards here take a ton of work to keep up as everything grows like crazy...) P's son, who guards across the road and our other neighbours guard are going to keep an eye on things in the meantime until we get things worked out. Please pray for things to reach a peaceful conclusion and that the safety of our family is not in jeapardy.

2010-09-08T19:57:00.002+07:00

Today I went to visit Ibu N again with R. We cut her hair today. First her sister lopped off the longest stuff and then I finished it up and made it neat and tidy. I've never cut such tightly curled hair before and never in front of such an audience... People came out to see the white woman cutting the Papuan womans hair... We did it just outside of her hospital room in the area where people who are staying with sick folks can wash their dishes and such. She was also happy to see her little son again.

Tonight we had supper together with Jaap and Dineke Groen. They've just come out of the jungle after being there for a while. They had no contact with the outside world while they were staying in their old village. Can you imagine!? It was neat to hear their stories.

Bits and Bites...

2010-09-07T19:40:00.003+07:00

This past Saturday Hugo and his right-hand man, national mechanic extraordinaire Evrin, hosted a bike repair clinic for the kids from the Papua Harapan School. There are 14 kids in the dormitory of the school and they come from a couple villages interior. They're a great group of kids who were very interested to learn how to maintain their bikes. It's a great skill to have!

Today our long anticipated crate arrived. It's just a small one (but still weighed 400 kg), but contained a few precious items. Hugo is, as I'm writing this, setting up our new barbeque. We sure missed having a bbq our first term and it will be so nice not to have to heat up my kitchen as often! As you can see by the photos, they have quite a professional team of crate delivery guys here who all where protective footwear... The neatly dressed guy is one of our great MAF guys.

The power has been a bit sporatic as of late. We are sure thankful to have a decent generator.

The kids are all enjoying school. Except Marc who still hasn't started. His teacher has arrived and he will start on Monday, which means I will begin teaching PE on Monday... Mikah is on the Junior High Volleyball team and is enjoying that a lot.

We've had some intestinal ailments over here along with some weird skin issues... Pretty much the norm for tropical living... This morning Brynne woke up with swollen hands and a scratched open bite on her arm had become infected. Today we tried soaking the arm in warm salty water. If that doesn't help, we'll have to go the antibiotic route...

2010-09-06T20:19:00.003+07:00

Wow, tonight we had quite a talk with our guard Y. He'd gone to Wamena with his wife M and returned divorced from her... I had heard some of the story from Ice as M had been living with her for the prior couple months. So Y came back on Friday, bearing some fresh veggies for us. While he was gone, his brother in law had come up to me at the mall and expressed that Y had done some terrible things and that he had told Y that maybe he wouldn't be working for Pak Hugo and Ibu Erica anymore. That got my goat. Um, since when did he become the boss??? Originally, he had been working for us but then he decided to try to become a government worker and took off to Wamena and Y, without being asked, filled in rather permanently. What we didn't realize was that Y has been giving his entire paycheque to the brother in law and would recive only $10 for the entire month that he had worked!! Their pay is just over $1oo. So the brother-in-law has been controlling that money! Well... We wanted to talk with Y about what happened with his wife and about the brother-in-law etc...
The story went something like this:
So I married my wife and I had to pay 13 pigs for her. We had a good life and then we had a baby boy. When he was three months old he got sick and died. A couple months later I moved to Sentani. A few months later my wife joined me. After a few months she wasn't pregnant so I asked her if she had done something so that she wouldn't get pregnant again. Like use black magic or take pills or something. She wouldn't answer me. I tried to talk with her about it but she wouldn't listen to me so I stabbed her in the thigh. She moved in with Ice's dad and then I talked with her family and I paid her 500,000 rupiah which she shared with her uncles and she moved back in with me. We lived good again. Then she went to Jayapura without asking me and wouldn't tell me where she went. So I got mad and I hit her again. She moved back in with Ice's dad. After a while she moved back in with me again and things were fine. Then another time she went to Jayapura and met her brother-in-law and he offered to marry her. I don't know if they did anything but I was mad so I went to our house and I didn't hit her but I broke 2 plates and a bowl. Then we were sitting and talking and Ice's husband and dad came and punched me. They took her to live with them again. After that she wanted a divorce. So we went to Wamena and I talked with her family and we divorced. She said that she's sick of having to carry a knife around me.
I informed Y that Biblically, stabbing your wife in the thigh was really unacceptable. I told him, that as a woman, if my husband stabbed me in the thigh, I would be very afraid of him! Maybe always afraid. I feel very sad that this couple didn't really have the chance to repair their marriage. He told us that he is going to church again and that he is working on his relationship with the Lord. We have told him that we want him to be our guard/yard guy and that we will talk with the brother-in-law and let him know who's boss. A fun thing to look forward to doing...

On Saturday the Dutch couple working here with the CVO and R the nurse went to Ibu N's home village and were able to bring back two girls to stay with her at the hospital. They went to the hospital together with Ibu N's sister, her daughter and Ibu N's 8 month old child. The reunion was an emotional one and R feels that the sister has had a change of heart and maybe will visit more often and take more care. N was mentally much more allert and was doing a lot better. An answer to prayer!

Difficulties...

2010-08-29T09:29:00.003+07:00

I was able to get in a visit with Ibu N on Thursday morning. I took the Belgian nurse with me. I couldn't believe the condition of Ibu N. When we first arrived she was lying motionless and staring straight ahead like a zombie. She barely reacted to us. But we continued to talk with her and at first I was a little afraid of contact with her as she has TB, but the nurse reassured me that it is only transmitted if the TB patient coughs. So, with that knowledge I felt more comfortable to touch her. She is soooo skinny and weak. After a while she agreed to sit up and had some water to drink and a snack that had just been handed out. We also managed to get her to smile and before we left I prayed with her. We were given a bag of her dirty clothing by the nurses as again, no family had come to see her. The Belgian nurse, R, contacted the family and asked them to pick up the clothes and wash them and return them to my house by the next day as she was going to bring them then. The family didn't come until the evening and it had been raining so there was no way the clothing would be dry. So I washed and dried them. It is so sad that they care so little about Ibu N. We are very thankful that R has been around here and is able to coordinate Ibu N's care as she is very experienced with TB. Please pray for Ibu N!

The house that is located on the same property as the building that we worship in has been now inhabited by some P*puans. They broke down a door and use the building to take part in activities of a sinful nature. This is not a nice situation as the longer they are in that house, the harder it will be for us to remove them. That is the character of their people.

Another very difficult situation is that there are a couple guys from the church in Waena who have started another "reformed" church which is more politically oriented. As in, free P*pua oriented. However, they were the two that took care of the money that the government gives to our church. Originally there had been a church account where the funds were deposited into. However, when they came into "power" they changed the account to a private one in their names only. So last year they received the full funding that was meant for our church, 400,000,000 rupiahs, and bought all their friends new motorbikes... People have tried to go to the government and explain the situation, but the government workers just say,"That's your problem, you have to work it out between eachother." Now a couple men from our church are trying to fix things again. Hopefully they are successful because this kind of blatant corruption is very destructive to a church. It is a terrible situation! Please pray for the churches here as they experience many difficulties such as this one.

We were all so hopeful...

2010-08-23T17:52:00.002+07:00

When this new store opened up. But as it turns out, it's pretty much just another store like the others. But it does occasionally have such wonders as real Parmesan cheese or blue cheese. The wonderful meat they claim to have, the sausages they have pictured on the sign beside the front door, non-existant... So disappointing...

Christiaan has completed his course of medicines and they worked as they should. He is feeling much better and went to school for the first time today. He'll probably get tired quicker for a bit, but he's doing well!
On Saturday a Dani woman from up here on the hill passed away. She had been ill for some time already. Her body was brought to her house late Saturday evening. Apparently they had put her in a coffin at the hospital and closed it there and warned the family not to open it. They said that she had a very dangerous disease and they didn't want anyone else to get it... hmmm... They buried her first thing Sunday morning.
The helper of our good friends Jan and Dini (who have now repatriated) is very ill. We had no idea until a Belgian nurse who works interior came to Sentani and went to the helpers house to get the key to the ZGK house and saw that Ibu N was very very ill. The next day she brought her to the hospital. During the week that she has been in the hospital, only one time towards the end of the week did a young family member visit her and bring some clothing for her. She apparently has TB, although has yet to begin treatment, and was reduced to skin and bones. She seems to have lost her will to live. She had pulled out her IV and catheter and just lay there. She has a young child and a stay away husband. I can't imagine how she must feel to have no one care about her at all. The Belgian nurse went to the family and explained to them that they must care for her. It is their task. I'd love to visit her, but I'm not sure when I'll be able to as I have a busy week coming up.

Bits and Bites...

2010-08-19T19:12:00.004+07:00

This week Tuesday was Indonesia's national day of Independance. Lots of flags around town, and some festivities but not like those we'd experienced while living in Bandung. It was also a day off for Hugo. We had lunch at our home with some friends from Wamena and then hit the pool. Fun times!

The following day was the kids first day of school for this year. For Brynnie it really was her first day of school! She was very, very excited and kept asking me what time it was and telling me to make sure she wasn't late. Due to a teacher shortage her kindergarten class is from 12:00-3:00. Marc has to wait for his first day of school as his teacher is delayed due to visa issues. Poor guy...

Unfortunately for Christiaan he did not get a first day of school. That night he developed malaria and is still not feeling well at all. I hope it's just malaria and not also dengue fever! He's had malaria before but didn't feel as badly then as he does now.

In other not so fun news, the cust*ms people in Jakarta decided to open our crate and when they saw some radios we'd brought for a friend who lives interi*r, they decided that they were worth much much more than they actually are and are requiring us to pay an exhorbitant fee to have our crate released. We have the original receipt and it is on it's way to Jakarta. In the meantime they decided to take nearly everything out of our crate and look at it... ugghh.... I hope nothing "walks away"...

Aidan's mouth is healing nicely and he had his only remaining stitch removed today. The other one had come out on its own. If his teeth don't begin moving together after a couple months we may get him a retainer to help them along. A prospect Aidan is not looking forward to...

Birthday Party!

2010-08-19T18:15:00.004+07:00

On Monday we went to Brittney's 2nd birthday party. Brittney is the daughter of one of our national mechanics. She's very very precious to them as they have had two other children who both died seven years ago. There were a lot of kids at this party! They were mostly children from their church and the children of other MAF employees. The woman dressed up was the "master of ceremonies" and she did a wonderful job. Unlike at other parties we've been to, the children actually paid attention to her and enthusiastically participated. She had them sing some songs and then gave a Bible lesson. Someone from their church also prayed for Brittney.

Then Brittney blew out her candles and cut a few small pieces of cake to give to the important people in her life; her Sunday school teachers and then she fed each of her parents a bite. This is a tradition here in Indonesia. Then the cake was put away. My children were a little disapointed not to get a piece.

After all that, each child received a gender and age appropriate goody-bag. Here are Marc and Brynne with theirs. Inside the bags was a plastic take-out container with yellow rice, noodles, a chicken nugget and a hard-boiled egg and a box of milk, chip-type things, chocolate and a small toy.

This party was from 4:00-5:00. Then later at 7:00 they had a service at their home for adults where their pastor spoke and a couple different people prayed, we sang, and then we all ate together. Earlier in the day Brittney's dad had cooked pig the traditional Papuan way with hot rocks. He also cooked ferns and sweet potatoes with the pig. I knew they had cooked it all in the afternoon so when it was time to eat I avoided all the meat and just had yellow rice and noodles... Hugo was brave enough to try his first piece of pig meat. I've never been brave enough to buy it... He said it had a unique taste. It was neat to celebrate Brittney's birthday with her parents. They are truly thankful to their Lord and Maker for the gift of their daughter.

Bits and Bites...

2010-08-12T19:50:00.003+07:00

Yikes! It's been nearly a week since my last post...
The boy who had the gate fall on him is doing just fine. However a 13 year old boy passed away yesterday. This morning as we walked to our neighbours to get the car we passed by girls putting flower petals into bags. Later they will scatter the petals on the coffin before it is put in the ground.
They are gearing up for August 17th here in town. That is the Indonesian day of independance. Most people here don't care about it, but the government does and so there are flags all over town. Today was also the first day of Ramadan.
The power has been out periodically and our new generator uses a titch more gas than our old one... well, more like nearly twice as much. So I decided that as our jerry can was empty and the tank on the generator nearing empty, I should probably fill it. We are not allowed to get more than 5 litres of gas (for jerry cans) at the government gas station so we go to a private gas pump on the other side of town. This pump uses a very old tube system of measuring the gas. We also pay more per litre of course. As I was waiting for our jerry can to be filled, chickens were running around and a rooster got hit by a car...
This morning Aidan had a frenectomy. His front teeth were becoming more and more spaced apart and were also beginning to splay upward. So for the hefty fee of $30, the expat dentist cut the frenom in his mouth. Aidan was a little nervous beforehand but things went very well. He just needs to lay low for a couple days so the stitches don't rip out or things begin to bleed.

Happenings on the Hill...

2010-08-06T20:04:00.003+07:00

This afternoon we had a very sudden strong wind for about 5 minutes. Just long enough to cause this dead tree to fall across the road. Thankfully, no one was hurt when it fell. As you can see in the photo, Hugo came to "help" move the tree. It was too heavy for the car to move it in one piece. It's a kind of iron wood. So there was one guy with an ax, which needed to be periodically sharpened, who was able to cut the tree in half allowing Hugo to move it with the car. There were of course, the requisit onlookers, many of them slightly inebriated fellows who demanded 1,000 rups for their "hard" work from anyone on a motorbike going by. This event knocked out our power for a few hours of course.

After the tree was moved, there were a number of kids playing on a gate that was leaning against the fence on the left in the photo above. Suddenly the fence fell back and one of the children was under it. They immediately lifted up the gate and of course began shaking the child to see if he was ok. He wasn't. The expat dentist happened to be driving by and he stopped and checked out the child who was not very responsive. It was decided to take him to the hospital in Sentani. At the hospital they decided he should go to a different hospital tomorrow because the x-ray technician at the first hospital is on holidays or something. Hopefully he will be able to get the help he may need. Unfortunately the event occurred on land owned by a mission org working here. I'm not sure what the ramifications of this event may be.

Brynne found her bike upon our return from furlough and promptly began riding it, having never ridden a two-wheeler before! There is a larger bike for her in our crate, which is currently in customs in Jakarta.

These ladies are coming home after spending the day in their gardens. They were collecting vegetables for a pig feast for tonight. I'm always amazed at the heavy loads these ladies can carry off their foreheads! The lady on the right is Ibu Mika, Yokben's sister. And the girl in the orange shirt is her oldest daughter Mira.

Yokben has been wanting to go to Pyramid with his wife as her father is very ill and Mere hasn't seen her family in 2 years. He had been going to the airport and checking on the prices of tickets with Trigana Air (local airline). It has been hard for him to get tickets. The price of a ticket to Wamena is about 850,000 rupiahs or roughly $100CAD. I was at the pool yesterday and I met a Dutch woman who was returning to her home in Wamena the next day. She had bought tickets with Trigana but then found out she could go with one of the mission aviation groups instead. Preferring that, she mentioned to me that she had these Trigana tickets to sell.... My mind went racing ahead and I told her about Yokben and his wife wanting tickets. She thought that was a good idea and we went and found him and she sold him the tickets for a greatly reduced price and this morning he and Mere flew to Wamena. From there they will take a taxi (pickup truck) to Pyramid. Mere was so excited about going back home that she couldn't sleep last night!

On Tonights Menu...

2010-08-06T10:22:00.001+07:00

Nasi Kuning!

White Shirt Day...

2010-08-01T19:23:00.003+07:00

99% of the time Hugo wears a light blue shirt with dark blue pants to work. But this week he had to wear a white shirt one day. In this country, if you are a manager in aviation, you wear a white shirt. So when government officials from the Indonesian Directorat General of Civil Aviation or DGCA (like Transport Canada or the FAA) come on official business, you dust off your white shirt and wear it to work that day. The officials came to do an airworthiness check on a few of our aircraft; a once a year process done on all Indonesian registered aircraft. This was Hugo's first time doing this process as the manager of maintenance. By all accounts everything went smoothly and with no glitches. Whew!
For the rest things have been humming along. Bread is being baked fairly frequently, bikes are being ridden also fairly frequently and friends are coming over to play also fairly frequently. The kids are going to enjoy their last couple weeks of holidays before school starts again on August 18. This year it looks like I'm going to be teaching grades 1 and 2 PE. Should be a hoot! We're rather short of teachers, hence the recruitment of myself to fill in...

These are a couple pics from last week when Mikah helped at the VBS program for the kids from the Papua Harapan (Hope) school.

2010-07-29T20:17:00.001+07:00

Life on the hill continues as though we’d never left.

I took Ice to the dentist today. The purpose was to pick up some false teeth that we’d ordered a long time ago but then we went on furlough and the dentist was on furlough... Anyways, during our visit they realized that Ice needed to have three more teeth pulled out as 2 were broken in half and one was loose in her gums. People here love to eat beetle nut (nasty nut that they mix with a powder which creates a red juice in their mouth which they in turn spit out-it’s also a mild narcotic – watching people chew this stuff makes me gag...). Anyways, a side effect of years of beetle nut chewing is that your gums are affected in a negative way making your teeth loose. Ice promised to stop chewing after I told her that if she didn’t, she’d have to pay for all her dental work and I wouldn’t... That was enough incentive for her! She hasn’t chewed it since, but the damage is lasting. So now we have to wait for her extraction points to heal and then get new impressions made and wait a few weeks for the false teeth to be made. I am confident that once she has all her false teeth, ergo a mouth full of teeth, her overall quality of life will improve. She rarely eats meat because she can’t and she’s so small she wears size 12 children’s clothing.

I was talking to Mere, Yokben’s wife, the other day. She’s not gotten pregnant during their 3 years (or so) of marriage. She wondered if it was because there weren’t enough pigs paid when they got married... I assured her that that did not play a factor in her infertility... Not sure if she believed me though...

I’ve also been talking with Ice about what happened with her mom – how she was accused in the death of a young boy. Apparently it was the family of the girl who was murdered just over a year ago that was being very vocal in their accusations towards Ibu Termina. They are still upset that there wasn’t a retribution death in payment for the death of their daughter. They keep saying that money can’t replace their daughter. Never mind the fact that Ice’s family had nothing to do with the death of the girl, nothing at all!! So this is the kind of stress that Ice and her family live with daily. It has affected the health of her mother and she’s been sick quite often since the whole thing happened. I’ve put them both on iron and Vitamin B supplements to hopefully strengthen their bodies a little. These events have had such a negative impact on the community up here on Pos 7. We really feel burdened to try to do something to help things get better. Praying for the people up here is a good start!

Life goes on...

2010-07-26T20:32:00.002+07:00

Well, we've hit the ground running here. It's been a week since we've returned from family conference and we've barely caught our breath.
One of our a/c units wasn't functioning when we returned from furlough so we had it fixed right away. A few days after our return from family conference, someone pulled out the hoses for the a/c located on the exterior fan box. Not good news. We ended up having to purchase an entire new unit. Not exactly in the post-furlough budget... But they have a new low-watt version that we could get. Hopefully we won't blow our house circuit breaker as much anymore...
Hugo's been busy getting into his new role as manager of maintenance or "MOM" for short. He's been organizing things and getting a fresh start. It's a good time to do this as we are short of pilots right now so that means less maintenance.
I think I'll just list some of the things we've been getting used to again:
making bread... like a lot...
sharing our home with lizards
the war with ants (so thankful for poison...)
the swimming pool, even though both diving boards and the slide are all broken, it's still a fun place to play on the really hot days we've been having
Did I just say hot??? No real rain for over a month now. The grass is getting crunchy...
How much time it takes to prepare food here!
Really really crummy internet... I'm using dial-up to post this post... rather archaic eh?
Hanging out with Ritha - always fun!
Yokben playing the piano in the afternoons...
Roosters crowing at 4:30 (thankfully I sleep through this, but others in this house don't...)
Church at 8:30 am and Sunday School (which they've asked me to help teach) at 7:30... Rise and Shine people!!
Floor hockey!!
Going to at least 3 different shops just to get the basic staples for your kitchen pantry. Then off to the market!
Lousy water pressure...
Warmish water out of the tap. The water in Canada is fridge-cold out of the tap!!
Food wrapped in paper so delicious and for a mere $1.25!
Worm treatments... don't ask...
I could go on and on but I won't...
This week Mikah is helping out at a VBS program done by an American church for the local Papua Harapan (Hope) School. It's a great opportunity for her to have some fun with some local kids in a structured environment.
Today we had to get finger-printed by the police. This was able to occur in the MAF office, thankfully... However, they don't have the sofisticated finger-print scanner that the immigration office in Jayapura has. So it was out with the black ink and then the wet wipes to follow...

Family Conference Continued...

2010-07-26T19:44:00.004+07:00

A freshly showered Marc and Mikah spitting some alka seltzer into a bowl as part of a race. The kids had to put a tablet in their mouths, get a good mouthful of water, do a number of jumping jacks, spin around a couple times and then run to the bowl and spit their mouthful into it. Whichever team filled their bowl first won. Mikah's team won of course... Doesn't that sound like fun??

A photo of our entire group of attendees. 101!

Hugo receiving his four year safety award. Me trying to throw a real American football...

This is the road you walk on from the conference grounds to the airstrip. On the way you see women like this one with their nokens (net bags) full of produce from their gardens, and maybe a baby as well, and then a toddler on the shoulders. These women are incredible!

This vehicle is fondly known as the "Red Rocket" for rather obvious reasons... The local kids gathered to see us off the morning that we left.
Here we are preparing to leave after a week of fun. The man in the second photo is sporting the local traditional clothing... or lack thereof... Actually, he was trying to make a buck by selling gourds to us. His friend is sporting a traditional hat made of chicken feathers.

Here we are in a Cessna 208 on our way to Wamena where we caught the same scary plane that brought us and made our way back to Sentani where we arrived safe and sound! Later than we were supposed to, but remember, this is Papua!

Family Conference!!

2010-07-20T21:21:00.008+07:00

After being in Sentani for a mere week, we "jetted" off to the interior village of Pyramid for our annual MAF family conference.

This is the plane that took us for the 40 minute flight from Sentani to Wamena. It's a bit of a scary plane...

The airstrip in view as we come into land.

Then we waited for our 10 minute flight to Pyramid with the new MAF kodiak. This plane is really nice but does provide a rather bumpy ride... Gravol all around...

Once we arrived we settled into our luxurious accomodations... cabins with very thin walls containing beds made by hand and probably no level and mattresses stamped with dates like 1958... I left our mattress out in the sun for a few hours in the hopes that would kill some of the dust mites... I think it helped.

The "lodge" where we ate our meals and had our meetings.

The old church building where VBS was held.

Each year a team from New Heights Church in Vancouver, Washington comes to help us with our conference. They run programs for all the age groups of kids and Pastor Matt Hannan teaches us twice a day. This year he taught us from the book of 2 Corinthians. Good stuff! There is also a team of cooks that volunteers to cook for us for the week (on two large wood stoves!). They are assisted by a great team of locals.

The kids had a great time playing with the other kids and participating in the programs.

One night we were the privileged family to sit in the family fun box seating (located on the "stage"...). For this honour we also received water bottles and bags of Skittles!

Brynne and her friend Hanne.
This is how we had hot water for our showers each day...

A traditional shelter where the high school group had their gatherings.

One afternoon my friend Anja and I took a little walk and this was our view as we sat on the side of the road. Then along came a pig, he visited for a bit. There were overloaded pick-ups passing us by and every now and then a local person would wander by. The women with their colourful skirts and nokens hanging off their foreheads down their backs. They were quite curious about us but didn't ask us what we were doing sitting on the side of the road. They just giggled... Many of the people there speak little or no Indonesian.
To be continued....

The end of our epic journey...

2010-07-05T19:36:00.002+07:00

A couple days ago we reached the end of our epic journey "home" when we landed at Jayapura International Airport. (located in Sentani and rarely receives and international flight...) Going back a bit to Jakarta, we were able to purchase a new generator and arrange for shipping, yippee... Then we wondered how we should send half of our totes from Jakarta to Sentani. International travellers are allowed 2 23 kg pieces of luggage but once you are in Indonesia, you are only allowed 1 20kg piece. I called the MAF lady in Jakarta and she arranged for us to meet "Yogi" at the airport hotel and he would take half our totes off our hands and air-cargo them for us. The taxi arrived at the guest house and whipped us to the airport in record time as it was night time already. We picked up our stuff from the storage place without incident and made our way up to the hotel where a man immediately walked up to us and introduced himself as "Yogi". We gave him our 7 lightest totes (cheaper!) and he had a couple guys pushing the luggage carts and off they went. A little disconcerting to leave your luggage with a complete stranger! This whole process of getting to the airport and then retrieving our luggage and handing it off, took far less time than we had anticipated. We decided to see if we could check in as there is airconditioning past the security posts... check-in went smoothly and because I am a Garuda Frequent Flyer Silver card holder, I'm allowed 5 kg's extra luggage allowance... whoot whoot!! We then made our way to the gate area where we were very pleased to find that the Fifa game of Holland vs Brazil was on. We settled in to watch. Afterwards we had to go down the stairs to a bus which then brought us to another part of the airport where we exited the bus and went up another stairs and through a different gate into a brand new Garuda airplane sporting individual tv's!! For a moment I forgot I was in Indonesia and then I was offered a candy by the flight attendant and came crashing back to reality... They still offer candies before the flights on Garuda. Our plane left just after midnight and we stopped twice on our way to Papua; in Makassar and then in Biak. So it was a loooonngg flight. We arrived at about 9:30 am and exited the plane to a blast of humid air hitting us full force. Met by 2 MAF colleagues, we quickly made our way to the brand new "arrival hall" which is very spacious and air conditioned! Our luggage came and off we went home!
It's been really great to see our local friends again. The majority of our Western friends are not here right now so we'll have to wait to see them. Ritha is actually on the other side of the island for a church function so she isn't here either. Her sister is however, and is sporting a lovely round tummy! So exciting for her and her husband! Sadly, Awi's biological mother came and pretended to be her actual parent and took Awi from school and brought her to her home on the other side of the island without communicating with Ritha about it. Unbelievable really... Thankfully, Ritha was able to say good-bye to her. Rode is staying with Ritha's sister for now and came over to play with Marc and Brynne today. I was worried how Brynne would react as she has forgotten a lot about Papua, but she was excited to see Rode and they played nicely. Ice has started helping me again. She was very anxious to get back to work. She's been very healthy and looks really good! Yokben had been in a motorcycle accident and has a pretty big wound on his half-foot. They don't understand that you need to cover up wounds in order for them to heal. So I bought him bandaids and antiseptic ointment that day.
Today our other totes arrived safely from Jakarta. Yogi is a trust-worthy guy after all!
Tomorrow Hugo starts work again. Let's hope we have a jet-lag-free night!
Thankful again for God's care and protection of us on this very long journey back home!

Our journey home...

2010-07-01T20:44:00.005+07:00

Here we are cheering on Holland as they played against Slovakia. Hup Holland Hup!!

The next day we got up at 2:00am and made our way to Schiphol airport. The traffic is really minimal at that time of day! No traffic jams! Hugo's lovely brother Luke had driven to Enschede the afternoon before so he could drive some of us and all our stuff. We made our way to the British Airways check-in counter where they couldn't find our tickets in their system... we tried not to panic... The nice woman at the counter called the ticketing office and located our tickets... whew... She was well aware of the rules regarding around the world travel and so didn't try to charge us an insane amount of money for our second bag per person... 14 rubbermaid totes in all! We had an uneventful short hop over to Heathrow International airport where we waited for 5 hours for our next flight. Heathrow must be the most unfamily-friendly airport there is (besides Sentani airport of course... :-)). There are no fast food places and no kiddy play area. So Starbucks muffins for lunch it was. You are kept in the dark as to what gate you will board your flight until the last possible moment and then everyone races to the gate where the frazzled airport people try to keep order... We had a lovely 11.5 hour flight to Hong Kong with lovely service from the lovely Cathay people. Upon arrival in Hong Kong we went through the quickest immigration ever... he couldn't speak English... Then we went to get our stuff and waited and waited. Then we noticed that the board said that all the luggage for our flight had been off-loaded... Thankfully I noticed a lady pushing a cart with some of our totes on it. Some airports consider our totes to be oversized and off load them to a different area. All the totes made it, whew! Then we made our way to the transit hotel where the friendly concierge guys took all our totes off our hands after which we and our backpacks went to check in. Our rooms wouldn't be ready for a couple hours so we made our way up to the hotel pool for a refreshing swim. It's quite warm and humid in Hong Kong! After 26 hours, 2 meals from Burger King and breakfast from Starbucks, we were on our way to Jakarta. After a lovely 4 hour flight we were back in Indonesia. The immigration line was painfully slow and our luggage took forever to make it's way out onto the luggage belt. Then we had to fend off porters and taxi drivers as we made our way to the counter of the taxi service hired to drive us to the city. They had only a car to drive us in that couldn't accomodate even one of our totes. So we and our four carts piled high with luggage went up to the transit hotel to see if we could store our stuff there. No dice, too much stuff... really?? So we, sweating profusely by now, made our way down again and found a place where you can store your stuff. We were probably overcharged, but we were just glad to be rid of all those totes! Then we went to the taxi and reaquainted ourselves with Indonesian traffic on our way to the guest house in Jakarta. Thankfully we arrived without incident and were able to order supper delivered. Hugo and I were thrilled not to have to eat another hamburger while the kids were thrilled to eat another hamburger. We hope to be here one night and leave tomorrow at midnight for our final flight to our home in Papua. It's been an insanely long journey and we are very thankful for God's care and protection on our way!

Waiting in Heathrow...

The pool in HongKong.
Waiting to board our flight to Jakarta.

Check out the sky scrapers!! At the guest house... Check out the miniscule salad Hugo got with his nasi goreng!

On Tonights Menu...

2010-06-24T23:49:00.000+07:00

A trip to the Indonesian embassy...

2010-06-24T15:55:00.002+07:00

Yesterday Hugo and I took the train to Den Haag to get our visa's from the Indonesian embassy. Normally, you hop in the train in Enschede and you stay on that same train for 2.5 hours until you reach Den Haag. However, there was an electrical issue at one of the stations along the way and we ended up changing trains twice and arriving 3 hours after departure. We decided to keep our jingle in our jeans and walk to the embassy... It's a bit of a hike but the weather was beautiful and Den Haag is a beautiful old city. The office of the Indonesian embassy is in a rather old, ugly "white" building. Upon entry you feel as though you have actually entered the country itself. The first thing you see is a mushola (prayer room). The waiting area for visa's is a small boxy room with a large ornate couch and some not so ornate wooden seats. There was no line-up so we could obtain our visa's immediately from the friendly lady behind the counter. Then we went to use the washrooms... this only confirmed our feeling that we were no longer in Holland, but in another country...
It was a nice day out for us, Mom and Dad took care of the kids as we didn't think they would enjoy spending 5 hours in a train... They went to a large outdoor playground instead. More their kind of fun!
As it stands now, we are due to leave Holland for Heathrow early Tuesday morning meaning we need to get up at about 2:00 am to make it to the airport on time... Then we have a 5 hour layover in Heathrow before heading to HongKong where we will have a 26 hour layover before heading to Jakarta where we will most likely spend the night as there are some things we need to get in Jakarta. Sounds like fun eh? Teleporting sounds like a whole lot more fun to me!

Rollercoaster...

2010-06-22T15:47:00.002+07:00

It's been a bit of a rollercoaster ride this past weekend. Hugo went to the Indonesian embassy on Friday after hearing from the office in Jakarta that our visa's had been approved. Remember, we are in Enschede which is in Eastern Holland and the embassy is in Western Holland. The train ride is about 2.5 hours... At the embassy Hugo was told that they had not yet received the visa approvals. Even though Hugo had printed copies of the visa approvals, they would not accept our applications. So it was a wasted trip. On Monday morning Hugo hopped on the latest train he could take while still being on time to the embassy (it closes at 1:00 for visa applications). Just as he was getting on the train he finally got through to the embassy. Even though they open at 9:00, they did not answer his calls until 9:30. He spoke with a number of different people who all confirmed that they had not yet received the approvals. He called me. I called the MAF office in Jakarta and the woman there said she'd see what she could do. The train ride is 2.5 hours and then you have to walk or take a taxi to the embassy. Then wait in line. When Hugo came to the counter and handed over our applications, the lady said,"For seven people? The approvals just came in." Wow!! Whew!! So on Wednesday we can go and pick up our visas... Now the fun part is finding flights... We did not cancel our original tickets but are in the process of changing them. All flights with our Airline are booked up until the end of August so our agent is checking hourly for cancellations. It looks like we were successful and we may have flights out next week. It may involve an overnight in HongKong, but that's a small price to pay!
It's been a bit hard not to worry and to just trust in God's plan for us. As I've said before, it's a difficult thing for us sinful control-freak humans to do. We're learning!

2010-06-14T03:08:00.007+07:00

We have had a busy 2 weeks so far here in Holland. Busy but nice! Our first weekend we spent at a dairy farm in the countryside with all of Hugo's siblings, spouses, and kids and of course, the parents. It was a fun time together. This past week Hugo and I went away for 2 nights to a hotel in Appeldoorn. We relaxed and rented bikes one day. Then on Saturday there was an open house for us and we got to visit with some of our relatives, particularly Sikkema relatives. That was really nice. So now we are one week from our anticipated departure date. We are still waiting for our visa's to be ready. If they are not ready by Friday we will forfeit our flights and wait until our visa's are ready and then try to book flights with another airline. That is not the optimal result but we shall see. Thankfully all is in God's hands!

Check out this article on Papua...

2010-06-12T00:29:00.001+07:00

here
hmmmm....

2010-06-03T00:40:00.003+07:00

I figured it was about time I updated you all on where we are. Well, we made it to Holland safe and sound. (We actually travelled on our 13th Anniversary...) We managed to make our connecting flight in Frankfurt after walking what felt like miles after exiting the aircraft on the tarmac and going by bus to the transit terminal. During our flight the woman in front of us wasn't waking up and her family members began to panic. The were of Indian descent and made a lot of noise in their panic while tryingto get her to wake up. Turns out she'd taken a sleeping pill. But there was a lot of commotion around us for about 20 minutes as paramedics and then a doctor (both Italian) checked her out. Never a dull moment! The boys slept through the entire event even though it happened in the row right in front of us.
We were happy when all of our totes came onto the luggage belt in Amsterdam. Always a relief. In spite of having one too many pieces of luggage, we were not charged anything for it! I feel this is because by the time we were at the check-in desk, there was a rather lengthy queue behind us and the people behind the desk were checking their watches... They didn't even check what kind of carry-ons we had (also too many) Whew... After collecting our large amount of luggage, we exited the baggage claim where we were met by some of the members of Hugo's family which is always fun!
Now we're in the city of Enschede which sports some incredibly long street names and is right on the border with Germany. To top it all off, the weather has been really really nice.... like, no rain... :-)

This is the scene over here....

2010-05-30T05:18:00.002+07:00

As you can see we are in the throes of packing. Trying to cram all our stuff into 14 rubbermaid totes and 7 backpacks is a challenge not for the weak... But Hugo is up to the task. He is feeling quite good these days having passed his final government exam... whew... This does not give him his Mechanics license but is one of the crucial steps needed to attain the license. He still has to do about a years worth of tasks in his logbook.
Good news, we have been granted permission to obtain a work permit!! This is big news!! We hope we can pick it up in Holland but the process does take 2-4 weeks and we are only planning to be in Holland for 3... Never a dull moment!!

Down to our last week...

2010-05-23T11:59:00.002+07:00

Well, we're down to our last week in Canada. Our time here has flown by unbelievably fast! It's been a good time of reconnecting with family and friends. Our children have really enjoyed our time here. As they are older now it will be more difficult for them to leave than the first time we left Canada. I feel sad about that but I know that they will enjoy reconnecting with their friends in Papua too.
Hugo still has one more government exam to write. He has been studying studiously. If he does not pass this exam he has to redo all three so it's a big deal.
We've packed up the majority of our things, the things we don't need now. Our crate is sealed up and scheduled to be picked up next week.
However, we still have no visa and things aren't looking too positive on that end so prayers are appreciated.
It's hard not to feel stressed. There are so many unknowns right now. It's at times like this in particular that one is challenged to simply trust in God's plan. Not an easy thing for us sinful control-freak humans to do.

Life...

2010-05-12T00:26:00.003+07:00

Life in our house is definitely in high gear these days. On the weekend we managed to get our crate packed up! Yay! One more thing off the list. Just waiting for the customs approval from Indo before getting the shipper to pick it up. The shopping list is dwindling down to a few necessary items... relief is in sight... Hugo is busy studying to do his last 2 government exams towards his M1 AME license. (small airplane mechanic) He also managed, together with P V, to replace all the single-paned windows in our home with double-paned ones.

Yesterday we had the pleasure of sharing our experiences with a grade 12 Comparative Religions class at Credo High. That was fun! I love the comments teen-age boys make!! Our authentic bow and arrow from the village of Boma was a hit! When Mrs. Vandergugten told the class that I had graduated from Credo I piped up to tell them that I was part of the class of 1992. The class informed me that they hadn't even been born yet then.... OUCH!!
Christiaan is sporting new hearing aids and trying out his new FM (thanks to a church in Holland). He is very excited about having an FM system that doesn't require cords.

Last week we managed to get in a family photo shoot with Karin Louwerse. We've never had a really nice photo done so it was high time! Check out the photos on Karin's blog: here If 20 people comment we can get a free 8x10!! That's exciting!! They're great photos!

A Day at the Vancouver Aquaruim...

2010-05-08T10:10:00.002+07:00

Aidan turns 9!!

2010-05-05T10:50:00.002+07:00

So last Thursday Aidan turned 9! He was very excited for weeks leading up to the big day. We gave him a lego set, a webkinz, and his first Bible with a cover on it. The next day he had a combined birthday party with another boy in his class. That was lots of fun! Then we had his choice for supper, McDonalds... After that we went to Cloverdale church where we did a presentation. It was a long day, but a fun one!

Visitors...

2010-04-29T12:58:00.001+07:00

Almost all the grandkids... Just one little cutie was missing...

Providence...

2010-04-16T23:51:00.003+07:00

It's been a crazy week. On Monday I returned from Manitoba while Hugo got off the plane in Calgary and made his way to Prairie Bible College in Three Hills. He has been doing some avionics work on a Cessna 206 that will later be used in Angola.
This morning as I was driving the kids to the bus stop the temperature gauge on the van we are using began to rise dangerously high. I pulled over and watched it ready to kill the engine if it rose any further. It suddenly dipped down again so off we went. After watching it rise and fall a few more times I decided that it would be prudent to go to our mechanic, who thankfully lives right around the corner from our kid's bus stop. His wife brought the non-school going kids and I home. He called later pronouncing the vehicle unusable unless a significant amount of funds were spent. I called MAF and was told that they actually have 2 vehicles in Three Hills and we could use one of them! And, guess what, Hugo is in Three Hills right now! So instead of flying back, he's driving back. I'm so thankful that this didn't happen yesterday as I was driving for Aidan's class field trip... I'm so thankful for God's providence!
I've since heard from Papua that the situation with Ice's mom has been "resolved". By resolved I mean that money and pigs changed hands... Nice eh? One would hope that bringing the Gospel to people would change their lives from the way they were. Before being evangelised the people lived in a state of constant watchfulness and fear. They never knew when an enemy tribe may attack or may attempt to kill one of their people. Now, they still live in fear. Fear of false accusations. This has happened twice to Ice's family in the past year. First after the death of the young girl and now with the death of a young man. In both cases, Ice's family was completely innocent, but they were still forced to make restitution for their supposed "guilt". It is very clear that these people are Christian in name only and are allowing greed to drive them. Please pray that they would come to an understanding of what it is to truly be a Christian.

2010-04-12T08:03:00.002+07:00

I just heard a few minutes ago about a terrible situation up on our hill in Papua. Ice's mother has been accused of using witchcraft in the death of a young man. She was dragged from her home and beaten. Apparently Ice and her sister were barricaded in their homes and prevented from going out for some time as well. Please pray for this awful situation and that the people involved would see the truth and stop their terrible actions.

Just a little update...

2010-04-12T07:37:00.004+07:00

Hugo and I are in Manitoba right now enjoying the hospitality of the Holtvluwer family. (The kids are staying with friends for the weekend) So fun to catch up again! We did 2 presentations this weekend and tomorrow (Monday) we are heading back west. Hugo will get off the plane in Alberta and make his way to Three Hills to do some work on an MAF plane destined for Africa. I will go home and begin a three day stint of solo parenting.
In other news, Hugo has just been appointed as MOM - Manager of Maintenance for the Papua program. This will be a new adventure for him but he is looking forward to it!

Found at a local Asian Food market...

2010-04-04T04:06:00.002+07:00

YIPPEE!!

An Afternoon at the Zoo...

2010-03-28T11:14:00.003+07:00

Wonder if it cures malaria...

2010-03-27T11:46:00.001+07:00

Our trip to Alberta...

2010-03-21T11:14:00.003+07:00

We sure had a nice time visiting with family and friends on this trip! We're very thankful for the hospitality of the folks that we stayed with on this trip. We sure do appreciate it!

But we're glad to be home again and sleeping in our "own" beds. The kids'll be heading back to school again on Monday so thing's will be back to a regular routine.

Little update...

2010-03-18T10:58:00.003+07:00

So here we are, back in Valemont, B.C. on our way back to the coast. First we plan to make a stop in Vernon to do a presentation. This will be the last one on this trip. We had a couple good presentations in Edmonton (where we enjoyed the hospitality of Rev and Mrs. Slomp-Thanks!) and in Neerlandia (land where all drivers wave to eachother upon passing); where we were able to use my aunt's house (she was in Aussie). We had a great turnout in both churches! It was neat to meet some supporters that we'd never met before and also talk with folks who've lived in Papua and know exactly what we're talking about!
In Neerlandia we enjoyed catching up with family, particularly my sister and her fam. Our kids thoroughly enjoyed the snow in Alberta and loved snowmobiling on the creek! (no photos yet, I'm on a computer at the hotel...) I think the kids are getting ready to return home and sleep in their own beds... and maybe the parents too...

Update...

2010-03-12T11:52:00.002+07:00

Here's a little update on us and where we're at...
Hugo arrived safely back home yesterday. The kids and I drove down to Bellingham airport to pick him up.
This morning we picked up a rental van and loaded it up with stuff and kids and began our journey to northern Alberta. Right now we are staying in a hotel in Valemont. There's a pool with a crazy slide so the kids are happy campers. We encountered all sorts of weather during our 7 hour drive up here... snow... rain... sun... The kids were thrilled to see snow again for the first time since we've come back to Canada. They can't wait to play in it this weekend.
Tomorrow we make our way to Edmonton where we will do a presentation and then on Saturday we will drive to Neerlandia where we will do another presentation and visit with some family. After a few days there we will drive down to Vernon where we hope to do a presentation on Thursday evening and then on Friday make our way back home.

2010-03-07T11:20:00.002+07:00

I see it has been a week since my last post...
Hugo has been in Spokane, Washington since last Saturday. So I've been solo parenting for the past week. Hugo is taking some courses related to the new Kodiak aircraft that we have just received. As this aircraft is completely different than our other aircraft in addition to being a newly designed aircraft, there is much to be learned about it. Hugo reports that the course has been very worthwhile and interesting.
He is scheduled to return on Wednesday and the following day we will begin our drive to Alberta to visit family and make a few presentations. If you are able to attend one we'd love to meet you!

2010-02-27T08:38:00.003+07:00

As today was a school holiday, we made our way to Heineken House in Richmond. We were there early so there was no line-up to get in! Didn't need to use Hugo's passport after all. We had fun on the simulators. Aidan did a great job of driving our sled. Then made our way to the arena area where we ate kroket on a bun, a delicacy more appreciated by dad and mom than the kids.... We watched the first bunch of teams in the mens long track pursuit on the big screen there. Then we walked around a bit, unfortunately nothing else opens until 3:00 so we went to Ikea... The kids enjoyed checking out Ikea. When we go to stores like that you see that we've been living in a third world country for the past number of years.

Last Saturday we walked around Campbell Valley park. It was beautiful weather! As we see virtually no wildlife in Papua, the kids thought the chipmunks and ducks were very cool.

Olympic Curling....

2010-02-21T11:46:00.003+07:00

It was a raucous night! Just getting to the Curling event location was an olympic event! Parking at skytrain was a nightmare leaving us begging permission from Home Depot to park in their parking lot. They acquiesed... (free parking!) Then a squishy skytrain ride to meet Chris at his building on Robson, right where the CTV live broadcast booth was located. Then we walked around a bit and saw the flame; behind fences. Apparently, Vancouver is allowing the public to get a lot closer to the cauldron then other cities have allowed in past Olympics. They have since replaced the fence with plexiglass. We grabbed a bite to eat at a crammed restaurant in Gastown, sitting beside some members of the Russian delegation, who took photos of everything. Then we made our way to the incredibly long line-up for the Canada Line. The line went extremely fast and soon we were on our way. Then we took a bus for a couple blocks and then walked a few more blocks before getting into line to have our bags screened. Finally, we were in! A whole 53 minutes before the event was to begin! There was an atmosphere not unlike one you'd encounter at a hockey game. Foot stomping was a favourite way to through off opponents of Canada while they were making crucial shots. Canada beat Denmark 4-3, needing an extra end to do it. After that we made our way back to Robson where the streets were loaded with people cheering and having a good time. We viewed the nightly laser light show and then made our way to this teeny tiny shewarma place where we joined the line-up for sustenance. I don't think they could have made this place any smaller! But the food was delish! Finally we made our way to the sky train station and home. What a fun Olympic experience!

Christiaan's birthday party...

2010-02-14T07:01:00.004+07:00

The very happy b-day boy!

Nearly 10 years ago, our oldest son made his entrance into the world. Tomorrow, D.V., he will celebrate his 10th birthday. We held his party on Friday after school.

Four friends came over and after sending them on a "treasure" hunt ending in chocolate bars all around, they made their own pizzas and headed to the park while I baked them. Then they ate them while watching the Olympic opening ceremonies (of course!). Good times!

Extracurricular stuff...

2010-02-10T10:10:00.002+07:00

This is totally not related to anything... but the guy who made this was my parents neighbour in Vernon. I've met him a few times....

Ontario

2010-02-07T07:29:00.002+07:00

This past week Hugo and I went to Ontario. First we spent Friday evening til Monday noon with my folks in Owen Sound. There was a lot of snow there! My brother and his wife were there and my sister and her hubby and new baby came down from Burlington for a night too. It was fun to catch up with everyone! On Monday Hugo and I headed out to Guelph and on the way stopped in to visit my sister Marsha at her new home. Got to meet some of her fun roommates too! Monday and Tuesday we had meetings with some of the MAF staff. And on Tuesday we got to have lunch with Clarence and Jeanette Togeretz! So fun to catch up with them! It was an incredibly quick trip but a very good one.

Safe and Sound in Owen Sound...

2010-01-30T10:22:00.002+07:00

Hugo and I, without our brood, flew from Abbotsford to Kitchener today and then drove from there to Owen Sound. It was an interesting drive in the dark on the somewhat snowy roads but we made it safely! It is great to see the folks again and catch up!

Kodiak...

2010-01-21T23:19:00.004+07:00

MAF is sending one of our new kodiak aircraft to help out in Haiti. Avgas supply is an issue there and the Kodiak can just carry more stuff and people. There's a little news story about it here
If you click here you can follow the path of the airplane as it makes its way to Haiti.

2010-01-21T06:54:00.002+07:00

Check out an interview with MAF pilot Jason Krul of B.C. who was in Haiti during the earthquake here

MAF in Haiti

2010-01-20T03:04:00.002+07:00

You can read more about what MAF is doing to help in Haiti here
There's a family from BC that is with MAF in Haiti (they have been evacuated) and you can read about their experiences here

School Skating...

2010-01-18T08:35:00.002+07:00

Yes, that is Mikah skating with a boy.... Yikes!! She doesn't even know his name! He's in a grade above her... SSSHHHH don't tell her I posted this shot... It's the only decent one I got of her skating...