Moving into the Jungle

Our friend Joanna hanging out at a "jungle water park" with tribal kids

Following is a copy of an email from one of the missionaries we studied language with.  She is preparing to move into a tribe to begin language and culture study.  Kubili is her co-worker.  We really enjoy her spirit and sense of humor (which is almost required to live in a third world country).  

As for house planning stuff…at times it has all the excitement of beating one’s head against the wall! J  The excitement of being to every store in a 60 mile radius to find something and never succeeding!!!  My favorite “adventures” have been in the area of mistakenly trying to get people to special order the 101 things we are looking for that seem to have mysteriously  vanished out of every store in (region). J  I am looking for these “Onyx” plastic dishes that they have all over this country…but there is no complete set in one design pattern to be found for the life of me. So instead of just accepting that I am going to have world’s most random collection of kitchenware…I get all anal and try “problem-solving”  by thinking…..”if I could just get a store to order what I want……….it would save me a headache and how hard could that be….”  So I attempt to put this plan into action …like ten people are called to try and help the "whitey" with her “too far outside the box” idea…..until finally they have the guy  who can REALLY help me.  So I start all over again…explaining my cool plan….and to my “delight” he says…“Oh yes,  we already ordered just what you are looking for……..we just don’t know when it will arrive…maybe besok (tomorrow)!”  I manage to verify with a straight face that he has miraculously already ordered the design and type of dishes that I am looking for and he insists that yes indeed he has! J  See…now THAT is truly customer service. J  Mind reading and special ordering weeks before I even go shopping in that store…. Apparently I had finally driven my poor little store friends to have to resort to the big fat lie approach. J Kubili and I do laugh and agree that if nothing else it is quite effective.  I mean it shut me up.  What else can I say to that…….well, plenty I could say I guess  but that didn’t fall into rude category like  “Liar, Liar Pants On Fire....:J  And the good news is that we don’t actually believe their blatant customer lies …I won't be wasting any more trips to that store to see if my dishes are in yet. J 

 So after that long diatribe of mine…you can now truly share in some of our “excitement and joy” when you keep sending bushels and bushels of "help" to (region) for building funds. J  And just so ya know the “success” of finding things and buying them is that much more festive!!!!  Like getting the last two LPG tanks yesterday.  I thought Kubili was gonna hug the guy….:) 

So, thanks for your part in making these memories possible! J

If you think of it, please pray for them as it can be quite frustrating at times to try to find things you need.  Beyond that, it will be a challenge as they will have to build a house in the tribe (I would think the other coworkers would help as much as they can, as well as tribal men they can hire to cut the wood for the house, etc), then make it as usable as possible for an office and living area while they start spending time with the people in order to learn their language and why they do the things they do.  I believe they will also be spending time in the gardens with tribal women and will have to learn to eat many of the staples that the tribal people rely on.  Their tribe is mainly accessible at this time by heli so every trip in or out is very expensive.  This is a great undertaking made possibly only by their reliance on the Lord to be their strength!  We greatly appreciate these women!

Conference

Feb 11-16th was the Regional Conference for our organization.  As Josh and I are part of the admin team here in town, we were involved in the planning and implementation of the event.  We also got to attend! :)  It was a crazy few days leading up to the event, coordinating "duties" for each colleague to make sure all the needs were met for the 80 people attending.  We had some guests, but most were our colleagues and their children.  We enjoyed worship and teaching times in English as well so updates from those who work interior.  It was great to hear about their joys as well as their struggles and to be able to pray together for them.

Prayer time - a different team gave an update and were prayed for each morning

We enjoyed lunches and suppers together.  Lunches were ordered in packets - usually rice, a veggie (usually a steamed green or raw "coleslaw" or cucumber) and a piece of meat.  We had rendang (VERY GOOD), yellow rice (delicious), and so on.  One of the lunch times we invited our colleagues from Germany (2 couples) to join us at our home.  We all brought our box lunches with us, and then I fried up some Mennonite Farmer Sausage (which we'd smoked in our backyard smokehouse) for them to enjoy.  Sausage is a part of their diet in Germany which they'd been missing since good sausage is very hard to find here.  We were so thrilled to watch them enjoy it!  

Adding a Mennonite side dish to local food - YUM!

For suppers we only served those who don't have a home in town, so the numbers were somewhat lower.  I, along with 2 colleagues, planned, prepared and served dinners.  Since there were less people to serve (around 45) we opted to go with more "western" fare - sandwiches.  We actually were able to have some deli ham sent out from the capitol with a guest, so we did sandwiches two days.  We made some pickles (also a "special treat") from dill we special-ordered from the capitol to add to that.  

Enjoying fellowship while sharing meals!

Sandwiches are a treat!

 On the 14th we had a Valentine's banquet with the evening session taking place at a restaurant in town.  The place was pretty booked up and we ended up in a tiny room up some winding stairs overlooking a large open room.  The open room was being used by a birthday party for a child - they had LOUD kareoke going on while we were trying to hear what our speaker was saying!  They finished just in time for us to hear the closing prayer!

Karaoke - taken through a window - see the stage with the lady and girl on it?

One of the many delicious dishes at the banquet.  The basket is made of fried sweet potatoes - I think...

Sweethearts... :)

On the 15th there was a special Ladies Tea which we held at our home since it was close by.  We had a short talk from our guest speaker's wife and a time of sharing.  It was nice for us women to all be together (no kids!) and chat a bit.

Andrea made delicious desserts out of some waffles and served hot chai and iced friendship tea.

The kids really enjoyed the children's sessions which were facilitiated by some colleagues from another region.  They had lessons as well as a lot of time to play organized games, do crafts, etc.  The last night they sang a number of songs for the adults.  Evenings were nice and low-key with the leaders reading stories to the kids in two groups - little kids and bigger kids.  

Younger kids activity time

Older kids activity time

Story time - see Mitchell in the green!

All in all it was a lot of work but a fun change.  I wasn't able to attend all the sessions as Katrina is still napping and since we live close to the facility where we held the conference, I just took her home.  

Katrina played well during sessions when it wasn't nap time!

Josh was part of the worship team and had very sore fingers since he doesn't play guitar much these days.

How Hot is HOT?

Recently someone from our church got in contact with us for the first time, and she had some questions for us.  I thought you might be interested...

 An interesting thing about where we live:  we don't get a lot of wind here, in fact, even breezes are a treat!  In reading one of our boys' books on oceans, Josh found out that where we live is considered the "doldrums"!  Like when a sailboat is stuck out in the ocean because there's no wind.   It's flat here and very humid (humidity ranges from 70-90%).  Our annual rainfall is around 106 inches compared to 33.8 inches annually on average in Milwaukee.  The temperature during the day is high 80's to high 90's even if it rains.  A couple of days of rain can  bring the temp down to the high 70's (and when that happens we break out the hot chocolate!).  It doesn't often get below 80 degrees even at night.

You asked about power and using a generator: The power here fluctuates on how bad it is.  When we got here in March '07 it was very predictable - the power was out 1 full day and one half day each week.  Then it got worse and was a pattern of being out for an 8 hour stretch each day, on for around 6 hours and then out for about 4 hours.  An angry group of nationals held a demonstration of sorts at the house of the person in charge of the power here in our city, and then it was on almost all the time again for several  months.  We had several weeks where it was bad but they had a broken generator (the city did).  When they replaced it the power was stable again but took a couple of week to get it.  Lately it's been getting worse and worse again. 

We do have a generator and can run one air conditioner with it, but even with that it's hard to get cool some days!  Josh has to quickly start the generator each time the power goes out to avoid shutting down his computer--less of interruption if he doesn't have to reboot!  We do have a UPS attached to Josh's computer and it gives him around 10 minutes to get the generator started before the computer dies.  It's a bit of an interruption to have to shut down the (desktop) computer several times in a day when the power goes out.  Sometimes the power is only out for 10 minutes at a time, several times a day.  Part of what takes so much time is that when the generator runs we can't run more than 1 A/C, so we have to go shut off the "big" one (which is not energy efficient and came with the house), turn off the fridge, the water cooler, etc - anything that draws a lot of power so that the generator can get started.  The fridge can generally then be turned back on once the generator is stable.  

Hot weather means grilling out a lot - right?  

Not here! - this is the BIGGEST grill we could find!

We would love for you to pray for us.  There are the usual things to pray for - like health (dengue fever is a risk here) and safety (traffic on the roads is quite random - cutting people off is "normal driving").  Also please pray that we'd put our walk with the Lord above our ministry and family life - it's a struggle each day as I believe that the evil one does not want us to be faithful.  Pray for patience and stamina as there are days that the power goes out numerous times.  It's SO hot and SO humid and sometimes it's hard to cope.  

We'd love prayer for decisions we need to make in the near future - like our planned trip home for 11 months beginning in fall and potentially returning in summer 2010 as longer-term workers.   It will be an opportunity to reconnect with supporters, friends and family whom we haven't seen in 3 years.  If we are able to return, we will need additional monthly financial support (sponsors) to function at the recommended level of support.  

I hope this peek into correspondence with a new prayer partner gives you an idea of what life here is like.  We've had incredibly hot, dry weather for the past few weeks, and suddenly we've had 2 days of rain!  What an incredible blessing!  I'll be sleeping well tonight!  Not only is it cooler but the SOUND of rain is SOOO relaxing...   Ahhhh!