Marc is 6!!

Today our youngest son turned 6! It is hard to believe that it is already 6 years since he was born here in Papua. What an adventure that was! We had a quiet day as Marc will have his party on Saturday to accomodate his school-going friends. I let him and Brynne put the little guys on the cake and they buried them! So it was a holey cake... Today was a windy day so we had a hard time keeping the candles lit so he could blow them out! Close the windows? Don't have windows to close in the front or back of our living area. Our house is very open, in fact it's almost like living outside.... Well, with screens on all the windows... Marc was very excited about his new swimming goggles and Garfield comic books.

The Christmas season has officially begun! Today there was a bakar batu (baking stones) across the road from us. I heard the pigs squealing as they were slaughtered... That and loud music for most of the day. Some of it was techno music and some of it was the MC singing Christian songs off-key.

Today is also the anniversary of the province of Papua being given some autonomy. Basically that means more money stays in province than used to. The local leaders also have a titch more control than before being given this "autonomy". In years past there have been some uprisings on this date, but I think things were quite quiet today. Maybe the bands of soldiers travelling around all night played a part in that.

In the middle of the night our airconditioning began beeping like crazy. That usually means that it's not getting enough power to get the compressor going. Which means that the power is browning out. Sure enough. Just before noon things had been repaired and everyone had power except us. That's a tough pill to swallow... Hugo went down to the hydro office after lunch to let them know. They said they would check it out. By the time he was about to come home from work we still had no power so he stopped in again. By dark, 6:00, still no one had come. Hugo called a few times and finally at 7:00 someone came. Turns out, there was a loose connection on our hydro pole... ugghh... Well, I hope we saved a lot in electrical fees because of it...

This morning we also said good-bye to our dear friends Jan and Dini. They are returning to Holland for their annual 6 week furlough. However, they are only returning to Papua for a couple months before going home for good. We will sure miss them! They were such a blessing to us and we learned so much from them!