Some Snapshots of our House Building Trip to Indonesia
This view is from the Sepik Valley in Papua New Guinea.
Our house building location was nestled in the rugged and isolated mountain ranges of Papua, Indonesia…there were snow on some peaks we flew by that day.
It was neat how the Lord brought each one of us together on this work team. Each with different talents and trades. We did not lack in any skill except someone who was good at keeping the rain away. It rained almost every day we were there and it was supposed to be their dry season.
This small chunk of change equal to 1 MILLION Rupiah is equivalent to $100. At least now we can say that we have been millionaire’s at least once in our lives.
While we worked on the house for the single girls…the tribal people continued to work on leveling the airstrip, one wheelbarrow at a time. Some of those rocks you see jutting up turned out to be larger then they were so they had to build large fires by them to cause the rocks to split and crack up into smaller pieces. Then they could be carried away off to the side of the airstrip.
I particularly enjoyed this moment watching the two girls practice their tribal language skills by trying to get the boys to wrap their clothesline around the proper fork in the tree. Everyone was exhausted when it was all done.
Don’t think the fire marshal would have been too happy with our temporary wire job to enable all the computers and peripherals to get power for our tech help session at night.
When the plainer bearing burned up 3/4 of the way through the project, we were lucky to find a portable plainer we could use to finish up the really rough spots.
The wires for the premade kit arrived too short to fit in their designated spot so we had to invert everything and put each 70kg/250 amp/hr battery on a top shelf up above our heads.
I wish I could say that I was trying to explain why I was putting aluminum on top of a septic tank but in reality I was probably telling him that I wanted him to help us redig the hole that had just collapsed because of heavy rains during the night. NOT FUN!
We were more then a few pieces short of plumbing parts on this job. We were trying hard to figure out how we were going to “rig” it to give them water…by that time Dave, the Master Plumber had already given up on keeping anything to code. “it will work…” would be his favorite line….he would then pause…and say, “out in the middle of nowhere”! 
The tribal people were trying to get Porter to climb the rickety ladder because they were worried I would topple it for sure and then they would be without ANY ladder!
As going away gifts…we gave the kids some balloons to play with. You think we had given them some real treasures…and really got excited when I showed them how to make the balloons make noise by pulling the flaps of the balloon tight.
We met someone who had studied in PNG when he was a kid and had learned the Tok Pisin. (the everyday language of PNG) and it was neat to be able to communicate with the tribe through him. I would say a PNG joke and he would laugh with me and then get really serious and say, we can’t say that here…they will not think it is funny!
Tim was seen grimacing like this for 5 hours during one leg of our trip as he sat right behind 500 smelly, chirpy, chicks.
Dave, was trying to prove his point to Judge Tim that it was on the black and not the yellow.
(It is ok Dave, we let you have that one because it was your birthday…)
Here are some final shots of the living room, office, and kitchen areas.
Note: their oven sits on top of that flat stove…weird! I don’t think they are into using the oven folks!
ICCM (International Conference on Computing and Missions)
Tomorrow, June 10, I will be leaving the family for six days to attend a special tech conference in Indiana. During this time, I hope to find out about all the latest tools and computing technologies that missionaries from all over the world are using. I hope this time can be profitable for learning and also for building friendship networks through which we can help each other further missions around the world. Pray for Kristi as she holds the fort down here at home with all the many responsibilities.
You can find out more about the conference at ICCM
Are laptops a blessing?
Yes and No? Well, let me explain. Laptops are built to sell to business people who work and live in perfect climate and dust free rooms for the most part. This greatly reduces downtime and issues. Most missionaries live in conditions that are extremely opposite of that. 120 degree weather in combination to near 100 percent humidity, etc., is not what the manufacturers had in mind when they build them. (Unless it is the OLPC computer) In fact most warranties state that when you take a laptop in those conditions their fancy warranties are voided. Because of this, missionaries laptops have a lifetime expectancy of about 6 months before they need repaired. Generally I have about 10 laptops per week come in and out of my office. That is a whole lot of down time for missionaries. Most missionaries choose to use laptops because of two main reasons…power consumption (most use solar power) and portability as they travel in and out of their villages. Because productivity is so important to the modern missionary, most missionaries carry about 3 or 4 computers with them. Computers are a huge asset to the missionary life in language learning, bible translation, emailing supporters, etc., There are always exceptions, but in general laptops have an awful track record for reliability and support and if it were not for those two reasons stated earlier I would choose a desktop over a laptop any day of the week. There are brands that do better than others…right now, we work on far fewer IBM (now Lenovo) machines than any other machine.
The Ends of the Earth…a little closer.
Although at times we feel like we are at the ends of the earth. Certain technologies have really helped to bridge that gap in communications between missionaries and their home churches, families, and friends – worldwide. For many years our connection to the outside world was one phone line that was 28.8kbs on a good day. We roughly paid 1500 dollars a month to pass data through that phone line. Thanks to the many years of pioneering help of a retired airplane pilot, by the name of Gabor Leidenfrost, we were able to secure a license from the PNG government to install our first satellite dish. This is the first satellite dish for the field of PNG. What a blessing that has been. We went from 28.8 to regular DSL speeds. Although we still pay roughly the same amount each month, the amount of data we push through it that dish far exceeds what we could do in the past. Through the use of this technology, missionaries can skype their families and churches. Leadership can setup online meetings, and an unbelievable amount of resources have been made available to the missionaries…thanks to the web. So although it can take 20+ hours of flying by commercial jet to reach us on this side of the world, a single email can arrive in a matter of seconds. Man have times changed! I wonder what Hudson Taylor would have thought of this technology. God has been gracious to us.
The nerve center…
Have you ever wondered how many computers it takes to run the field of Papua New Guinea? With over 400 families all in various parts of the country with various means of communication, it takes a lot of infrastructure to keep the work flow moving. Our server room…the nerve center of the department has 9 servers. (Click on the image…to find out just a few things that they control.) We mainly run a Linux Shop. From this room we can control all the communications and infrastructure within PNG. (More on that later…) After many years of working in a very dusty setting, we finally were able to move into a dust free and climate controlled room for the servers. This has already been a huge blessing in regards to maintenance. When we have a server problem it doesn’t take long for it to affect all the missionaries in PNG…everyone depends on them heavily for emails, web traffic, finances, administration functions, etc.,
