Praise God!!!

I returned from Lae in good spirits and more energy than when I left. When I arrived in Lae I had a pounding headache, likewise on Wednesday but the rest of the time I was almost headache free. I was able to attend a number of sessions at the community development expo, but I usually took a long nap time between 12 and 3pm (kinda like a Mexican siesta). On Friday I even drove most of the 3hr drive home, which is always an adventure with potholes, one lane bridges and passing slower trucks. So was it the malaria treatment, a diet (taking out sugar, yeast and flour), the church elders coming by the Sunday before or your prayers or a combination? Whatever God used we thank him that this has passed and I am improving!


Thankfully we didn't have to travel in the back of a PMV like this.

On the Road Again

At 1:00 this afternoon, July 2nd, Paul left to go to a Community Development expo in Lae and will be gone until Friday. He has been slowly but steadily improving over the past few days and we are hoping that he'll continue to get better while he's enjoying the heat in the lowlands. Thanks to all of you who have been praying for Paul's health.

wedded bliss

On Sunday evening we had the joy of celebrating our second wedding anniversary (it was easier to celebrate on a Sunday rather than on our true anniversary, Monday June 26). We made a delicious Thai meal: spring rolls, stir fried mixed vegetables, chicken with green curry, and stir fried chicken with ginger, with an amazing cheesecake for dessert. These 2 years of marriage have been so great - we are blessed to have each other. We're looking forward to many many years together...

wedding day















1st anniversary in Fernie, BC





















2nd anniversary in Papua New Guinea
(paul rigged up some sheets, hung christmas lights,
and filled the room with candles)

My favorite Papua New Guinean

I wanted to show off some photos of my favorite Papua New Guinean, Benell.














He's about 6 months old now, and I get to see him almost every week at the
clinic for a club foot. His foot is better now, after casting it every week for
several months into the correct postion, and his mom has been doing excercises
with his foot. He won't need to come in to see us at the clinic much anymore,
and I will sure miss him. Hope you enjoy the photos of Benell, his beautiful mom Ame, and me.

The backpack that didn't go...

Thank you all for your prayers. Heidi and I decided that I won't be going on survey, my body is still not at 100% and I won't have enough recovery time before Thurs. I was really looking forward to going on this survey and I'm a little discouraged but it seems that God has other plans and I'll just wait to see what is in store for me here. Please continue to pray for the survey team.

Celebrating the Queen's Birthday

Today was a national holiday here in Papua New Guinea, in honour of the Queen's Birthday. To celebrate the occasion, my friend Carrie hosted a Tea Party.














We enjoyed tea and homemade scones with jam and English clotted cream.



















It was a lovely afternoon. Here's to the Queen's Birthday!

Now that's my cuppa tea

How does your coffee grow?

Yes, your coffee comes from these berries.















After the berries are picked, the bean is squeezed or shelled out. Then the beans must be dried, which can take up to a month for the rural coffee farmers, depending on the amount of sun and the humidity. After drying, another shell is removed from the bean, and the "green beans" are roasted. Voila, you have your roasted coffee beans, ready to be ground and made into a cup of coffee.

Last survey trip

The survey team (Thom, Esther and Rachel) leaves on Wednesday for Oro Province, but without Paul. He has been sick for a week now with a flu that has left him weak and achy, and a little discouraged. On the bright side there is a helicopter that was scheduled to be in Oro Province a week later so Paul will get a ride out joining the team on Thursday, June 15. Please pray for a full recovery for Paul during this next week.
The survey team will be surveying three language groups, one of which has requested help for Bible translation and literacy courses. The first two languages are on the coast so hopefully boats/dinghies will be available to speed up the traveling time. The team plans to return on July 3. Heidi will be by herself for about 19 days.
For lack of a photo here is a map of PNG, we live in Eastern HighlandsProvince (EHP).

a weekend with friends

This weekend our friends Ian & Nadia and their little boy Jonathan came up to Ukarumpa for a visit. They enjoyed the nice cool temperatures here in the Highlands after living in the humid heat of Lae. We all enjoyed a Greek meal together on Friday evening, along with Gavin & Carrie Jones and their son Isaac. Jonathan provided comedy relief through out the weekend (see photo of Jonathan using cereal box as a hat!)
We also enjoyed our visit with the Wildeboers who are fellow Canadians!

the missionary life...

It was just such a nice sunny day and so warm that we couldn't eat inside!
So we took our plates outside and had a yummy lunch on the back steps of our house!














photo taken last week

all the flowers of the feild

a few blooms from our yard

mumu

Last week Paul and the survey team were invited to a nearby village to join in a goodbye celebration for one of the teachers, Donna, who's going on furlough. The village had a mumu (pronounced "moomoo") for Donna. A mumu is cooking food (cooking bananas, sweet potato, corn, squash, greens,chicken, lamb, or pig) on hot rocks that have been heated in the fire, either in a hole in the ground, or covered in banana leaves. As you can see in the photos, the village ladies made a lot of food!

Tupela poroman "two friends"

Kein New Testament Dedication

On the weekend of April 15 we had the priviledge and joy of celebrating with the people from Kein (pronounced "cane"), the village where we did village living, as they dedicated the New Testament in their language. We hiked out to the village the day before the dedication and spent the day visiting with our village family. The next day was a day of celebration, singing, dancing, and speeches. It was special for us to see people that we have grown to love here in Papua New Guinea receive God's Word in their heart language.














1: Heidi receives a warm greeting from her village grandma
2: Traditional dancing and singing
3: Our village Papa & Grandma with their copies of the Kein NewTestament
4: Paul & Heidi with the village kids

a shot from survey

Getting down to business

All hiking and scenery and coffee aside, what was the purpose?
In every village we went to we did various types of survey to understand the sociolinguistic situation.
Esther took word lists (170 plus 20 sentences) that usually lasted about three hours.














Bonnie did interviews with church and school leaders and also recorded a few stories that we used to test peoples understanding of different speech varieties.














I did interviews asking what language they speak and who speaks like them. As well as questions about their culture and where they travel to and what the marriage patterns are (who goes where and comes from where).














Right now we are back in the office (yeah!) trying to sort out all the information we gathered and determine the need for Bible translation in the three languages we surveyed.

Bridges

Build your own bridge! Grab some bamboo, a few sticks and some vines, bundle them together and viola. I thought these bridges were awesome. People cross these carrying bags of coffee,
cement and sheets of tin roofing and we felt a little wobbly with just backpacks.

Cash Crop

Coffee is the cash crop in this area of PNG.















The red berries are harvested, husked and then set out to dry.

















Ever morning the people lay the berries out and then take them in at night and whenever it rains. This is done for a month. Then they carry them down to the mill in big sacks, some people will hike 6 hrs through the mountains! One garden will yield about 6 bags of dried beans. They will get 60 Kina ($20 CAD) per bag, if the price is good.

Survey

My two teammates and I got dropped by helicopter in the Saruwaget mountains in Morobe province on March 8. It was a kind of funny feeling watching the chopper fly away.














We spent the next 18 days hiking through the most amazing mountains. We could usually see where the next village was, just across the valley maybe 3 or 4 kms. But the trail went straight down to the bottom of the valley and then straight up the other side! We probably gained and lost more than 1000ft a day. We were able to finish the survey 2 days early, I was very excited to see Heidi sooner than planned!



















On our way out we took a PMV (public transportation) as you can see the road had seen better days.The corner was a litte too tight and the river was washing the road away, so they just threw a few branches down and drove across! We made it but I was holding my breath.














The survey went really well and we are now back in Ukarumpa. I'll try to post a few pictures at a time and some brief explanations. Thank you for your prayers, none of us were injured apart from a few scratches and many flea bites...

reunited

Paul is safe and sound, reunited with his wife after 18 long days apart. The survey team is in Lae this week while they start to write the survey report. Once we get back to Ukarumpa we will post some pictures from the survey. The views and scenery were incredible and we were welcomed warmly in all the villages we visited.
Thanks for your prayers.

Survey Trip

Paul will be off on his first survey trip on Wednesday morning, bright and early. Three of the surveyors, Bonnie, Esther and Paul, will take a helicopter ride to the village of Gom and start their 20 day survey from there. They will be visiting 14 villages in five language groups and then travel to the city of Lae on the 27 of March. The other half of the survey team will be flying to the other side of the language group and surveying three more languages. Heidi will fly down to Lae and meet the team there when it's all over. Please pray for us during the time we are apart and pray for health and safety for the survey team. Also pray for good interaction and meaningful conversations with the people we come in contact with.

Community Health Clinic

Heidi has had the opportunity, once a week during the month of February, to go along with other clinic nurses to help with the Community Health Clinics (CHC). A group of 3 or 4 nurses and sometimes other volunteers go out to surrounding villages. Infants and children are given their childhood vaccinations, and the moms are also given education about how to help keep their kids healthy. It has been a very rewarding experience. She has also enjoyed time outside of Ukarumpa and being able to interact with Papua New Guineans where they are more comforable, in their own villages.

Lae

We recently took a trip down to Lae, a city on the coast of about 70,000 in the urban area. The scenery on the way was beautiful as we left the highlands and traveled down to the coast.




While we were there we ventured to the big market in town where you can get coconuts, bananas (by the stalk), peanuts (roasted or fresh), any other fruit or vegetable you like and if you're hankering for them even bat and grubs. We went to visit a family who we went to POC with. They are working with the Reform church in Lae.

Medical Evacuation to Cairns, AustraliaI

I am back in Ukarumpa, safe and sound. What an adventure I had this week . On Tuesday, we (another nurse, Karen Wood, a patient, his wife, and I) left the local Aiyura airstrip at around 3:00pm. We took a man that had been having abdominal pain, and we suspected appendicitis. We are not able to do surgery at the clinic, so we had to fly him over to Australia. The plane that we usually use for medical evacuations (med evac) is our King Air, which was recently struck by lightning and the engine is being overhauled. Another mission has very generously offered to help us out with med evacs while our plane is out of commission, so their plane and pilot picked us up at our airstrip here and we set off for Cairns. It was a 3 hour flight,with no trouble, and the patient tolerated the flight fairly well, just had pain and some nausea, which we had medication for. We flew into the overcast and rainy, but warm town of Cairns. It is a lovely town of about 30,000 people. There was only room for 2 extra people to ride in the ambulance with the patient, and seeing as this trip was for me to learn the ropes of a med evac, I went along with the patient's wife in the ambulance,
We walked into the lobby of the hospital, and it was so nice that I was worried my shoes would get dirt on their nice carpet. I had to bite my tongue not to exclaim how clean and nice the hospital was, I think it's the nicest one I've ever seen. I reported off to the nurse there, and then went to catch a cab. I got a ride to Treetops guesthouse, which is also lovely. Karen (the other nurse) and I had a car from the guesthouse, and headed in to town. First on the agenda was a trip to the grocery store, because we had a moderate-sized list of requests from some of the clinic staff for items that you just can't get here in Ukarumpa. I even bought myself 2 packages of feta cheese!!! And of course, picked up a treat for Paul - Cadbury Flake chocolate bars, which I knew he likes. Next we were in serious need of some supper. So we drove around town, and settled on a Chinese restaurant, and the food was superb. We also got to shop around at the night markets for about 20 minutes, before they closed at 11 pm, and I bought a hat! We had to leave early in the morning, so up at 5 am, with only about 4-5 hrs of sleep. But it was worth it! It was so weird to be in a developing country one morning, and by evening, be enjoying some of the sights in Australia! I am thankful for this experience, and for the safety we had during our flights and also that the patient got to Australia on time. We hear that they took out his appendix about 1/2 hr after he got to the hospital! He and his wife will stay in Cairns for a time while he recovers from surgery.