Family Conference!!

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...

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...

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...

A trip to the Indonesian embassy...

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...

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!

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...

here
hmmmm....

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....

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...

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...

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...

Aidan turns 9!!

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!