Difficulties...

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...

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...

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!

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...

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...

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...

Nasi Kuning!

White Shirt Day...

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.