10 years in PNG!

10 years ago today, (January 27th), I first set foot on PNG soil. I don't remember much of that day, I had started out from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Los Angeles, Tokyo, Singapore, (where I had a 22 hour layover and dozed in the observation lounge of the airport), and then finally to Port Moresby. I was very tired--as I recall, one of my new colleagues who I had met in Singapore, proposed spending the day in a local hotel to get rested up before our next flight to Madang that afternoon, where we would go through Wycliffe's Pacific Orientation Course.

Anyway, it's been 10 years since that day. A lot has happened in that time, but I'm as sure of my calling now as I have ever been. This is where I am supposed to be, and this is the work I am supposed ot be doing. Sure, it's frustrating some times, and life might be easier somewhere else, but we weren't called to a life of ease, were we?

Ahhhhhh, Brisbane.

Ah, it's nice to be back in Australia. We left the US a few days ago and had a mad series of flights between Tampa, Florida and Brisbane, Australia. We were delayed by weather on our first flight, which meant that we missed our connecting flight in Atlanta, which meant that all of our subsequent flights were shuffled around and rearranged and what we ended up with was somewhat different from what we started with, and included what must be one of the longest commercial flights on Earth: Dallas, Texas to Brisbane in 15 hours and 15 minutes or so.

Anyway, these few days in Brisbane have been great, to me it feels like maybe only the second time we've really relaxed since we stopped in Hawaii after leaving PNG back in June. Today, however, we leave and fly back to PNG. We're planning to spend the night in Port Moresby, then tomorrow on back to Ukarumpa!

Here's a photo from the archives, me back when I was still single, riding a borrowed bike (US spec 1987 Honda XL600R) to Madang for Christmas holidays with friends back in 2004, (I think?).

Merry Christmas!

So about a week or two ago we had a couple of inches of snow at our place in Tennessee, which was nice for Levi to see, since it was his first snowfall. Since we seem to live mostly in our car, I decided to just decorate that instead of a house. That's a real wreath on the grille, made out of branches of real trees.

There were lots of Christmas decorations going up in that area, (the Stoney Creek area outside of Elizabethton, TN, if you are familiar with that part of the USA), but I think my favorite was this shockingly blue tree:


The photo really doesn't do it justice. The look was heightened by the fact that there were no other exterior lights and the curtains were drawn in the house behind the tree.

We are back in Waxhaw again now. Between my last post and this one we were back in TN, where I made another trip to the motorcycle junkyard and picked up another load of useful parts to ship to PNG. I also met up with a couple of old friends who each gave me loads of parts that they had been squirrelling away for me, good stuff. Then we crammed all of this stuff into the Mighty Explorer, (glad I installed those air adjustable rear shocks-we really needed them in order to handle the load), cleaned the house we had been staying in, and headed south again. We're here in Waxhaw for a few days, then will head to FL on Christmas Eve. While here, we'll drop off all of the motorcycle parts to be shipped to PNG, so we shouldn't be so heavily loaded for the trip to FL.

It's good to be in Waxhaw, TN was good, but I'm glad to be back in a place where we have good internet access (rather than having to drive 15 miles to a McDonald's parking lot to use the Wifi) and a reliable cell phone connection.

We're all looking forward to Christmas and I think we're all starting to look forward to getting back to PNG!

Waxhaw!

Okay, so today we piled into the Family Ford and pointed the grille, (now festively decorated with a Christmas wreath in good Tennessee mountain tradition), towards Waxhaw, North Carolina. Waxhaw is where the JAARS Center is. For those who don't know, JAARS, (used to be an acronym for Jungle Aviation And Radio Service, now "JAARS" just short for "JAARS" I guess), anyway, JAARS specialises in technical support services for missionaries serving overseas. JAARS provides aviation services, communications services, computer support services, land transportation support services, etc., etc., lots of stuff. Among the things they help us out with is shipping items overseas from the US. We are here this time to get a small crate loaded up to go to PNG, mostly loaded with used motorcycle parts, but also some other bits and bobs that we have picked up here and would like to have in PNG.

Anyway, the contained is being sealed tomorrow afternoon, so we have to get our crate all packed up and turn in the manifest and other paperwork. It should get to PNG sometime in February or March, maybe April. I can't complain about how long it takes, my first shipment to PNG took nearly 10 months, (long story) and the worst I ever heard about was a poor missionary in Peru whose crate arrived 11 YEARS (!) after he had made arrangements to ship it from the US.

We'l only be in Waxhaw for a couple of days, then back to TN for a couple more weeks and then back to FL!

very quick update

We made it safely to the US, beat the old Explorer into shape and made it safely to Tennessee. We're living in a house with no phone, no TV and no internet, so we only check e-mail every couple of days when we come into town and use the Chick-Fil-A WiFi.

My airplane seat was wretched in 100 ways.

The seats in the Explorer are comfy, the whole car is comfy and nice to drive, especially after I fixed the front sway bar. The rear springs seem a little tired, I am planning to install a set of adjustable air shocks so that it can better deal with missionary-family-on-furlough loads.

More next time!

Westward, ho!

Tomorrow we fly! London to Tampa, about an 8 hour flight in a Boeing 777. I think this might be my first flight in the Triple 7, not sure.

8 hours of pure misery. Horrible seats, screaming baby and wailing little boy, too much luggage, trying to avoid overpriced "help" in Tampa airport, etc. I like travelling, I even like airplanes, it's just airliner seats that I loathe and despise.

All in all, I think I'd much rather travel by airship. That'd be cool. What a relaxing way to travel that would be! (Most of the time--I'm sure that things can get pretty hairy in an airship, too.) But how cool would it be to be living on a big airship for a few weeks while you travel from place to place around the world? Maybe have a hammock to sleep in, maybe a comfy chair to lounge around in, maybe an observation deck to stroll around. Ah, bliss!

Once or twice in my life I've had the opportunity to fly first class or "business plus" class for free. Man, that was nice. But to fly anywhere now is so expensive even for cattle class that upgrading to anything better is pretty much out of the question.

Ah, but I'm complaining. I'll stop.

It'll be good to see Mom and Dad Koens again! They haven't met Heidi yet, so naturally they are looking forward to that! Levi is excited about going to see them, too. Tonight when I tucked him in to bed he said, "I want to go to Oma-n-Opa's house NOW! I don't want to go to bed!"

So, while in FL, I need to beat our car into shape and then hit the road, north to North Carolina and Tennessee!

St. Saviour's, Brooklands, we must be south again

Scotland was great! I really liked it--it seemed really cold at first, but while helping my new friend Adrian clean up the grounds outside his late 17th century castle/manor (it doesn't really fit into either of those categories in my mind), I got used to the cold and wet and eventually found myself working outside in my t-shirt and jeans, in weather that would normally have me dressing in many layers.

I was pleased to be offered the chance to eat haggis, since I generally like to sample the local cuisine wherever we go. I liked it, and would happily eat it again.

We hung around up North (it's always capitalised on the motorway signs i.e. "this way to The North"), for a week or so, staying in Scotland for 3 days, then in a place near Keswick for a few more days, from where we visited friends of ours working with Operation Mobilisastion in Carlisle, (I also took the time to visit Carlisle Castle--which is a "real" castle, and worth a visit if you are in the area and are into history and castles, as I am). We drove up into Scotland a second time to meet up with some friends for the day, visited the Castlerigg standing stones, visited the Keswick Illusions Museum, where we took this photo:

Naturally, Levi didn't quite understand what was going on, and the camera angle isn't 100% perfect, so the effect is a little bit spoiled, but you get the idea.

After all that we took the longest road trip we have yet done in the UK, and drove all the way down to Guildford, (south of London, The South), where we have friends and where we were scheduled to speak at St.Saviour's, the church where we were married. That was a long drive, as both kids were really unhappy, Heidi screaming for a lot of it and Levi crying inexplicably. Poor kids, they must be really sick of constantly moving around, and who can blame them?

So this last Sunday we spoke 3 times at St. Saviour's, (both of the morning services and the evening one) and also made ourselves available for a special seminar on Bible translation that was put on after the evening service. It was the first time that we've had four things at one church in one day. All went fairly well. We are used to using a lectern/podium, so when we were given a hand-held microphone that threw us for a loop as we suddenly had to figure out how to shuffle our presentation notes and the microphone around. But like I said, all went well, we got the message out about who we are and what God has us doing in PNG.

Today we spent most of the day with Clare's folks who drove down from north of London yesterday to visit us. We went to the Brooklands Museum, where I got to see all kinds of cool stuff, mostly pre-war racing cars and bikes, but also some airplanes, including a replica of a WWI Vickers Vimy bi-plane bomber that over the last 15 years or so has flown California to Ireland, UK to Australia, and UK to South Africa, all at the blazing speed of 75 mph, and remember that the Vimy is an open cockpit aircraft. It sounded like a fantastic adventure and one I would love to have been a part of. Maybe one day Levi and I will drive the Land Rover back to the UK or the US from PNG. That would be a similar kind of adventure.