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!

Video of House Building Trip to Indonesia

A little late in coming but hopefully you will enjoy seeing pictures and videos of our House Building Trip to work on the home of Joanna and Kubili in Indonesia.  I wish I could have taken each of you a long with me.  What an awesome way to partner together to further the gospel.

Trip to Indonesia

My sister, Joanna Jansma, and her co-worker, Kubili Condit, allocated to the Nagi people group of Papua, Indonesia last January.  They spend many hours each day working along side the people, building relationships.  They are doing an outstanding job learning the language and culture. When they first moved in, a group of national builders came in and built a shell of a house; however, they were unable to finish the job properly.  And so the house still sits.  Joanna and Kubili have been staying in their co-workers home while they are on furlough, but this family will be returning soon.  I felt God leading me to take a trip to Indonesia to help my sister. I decided to ask around here to see if any other missionary would be interested in joining me on the trip.  We were so thrilled when three men said they’d love to come help.  All three of these men are skilled in construction.  The team will be leaving tomorrow, the 16th of November and will return the 1st of December.

Please pray we will make all our many connections.  We will first take a twin engine plane from Goroka to the border town.  Then we will take a taxi to the border where we will walk across and then meet another taxi on the Indonesian side.   We will overnight in the mission guest house and will then fly in a small plane to a nearby village where we will shuttle into the tribe in a helicopter.   In a country where nothing goes as planned and you plan for the “unexpected” , we learn to keep flexible.   Pray we will have good weather and will be protected from the many diseases in this area.   Pray also for our families we leave behind.  They will most definitely need an extra amount of grace and strength during this time we are away.  This trip has already been a HUGE encouragement to the girls.  Thank you for your part in making it possible through your prayers and giving!

Sincerely,
Phil Jansma