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!