Jonathan turns 7 months old!

 Jonathan turns 7 months old, the "official" couch picture... although it seems that every month we take his picture on a different couch in a different house. But one of these days we will have our own couch and our pictures each month will be more comparable. :)

 Jacob installed a wooden block on the kitchen ceiling so that Jonathan can use his jolly jumper. Jonathan and I love it!

 Jonathan has figured out that if he turns in circles until his feet can barely touch the ground he can spin really fast and make himself dizzy. :) He is a crazy boy!

 Don't worry, he didn't go down the slide... he is a bit too young for that!

Renovations

 One of the guest house flats is now being renovated by Jacob and his crew. It takes a mess to make things looking better! Stay tuned for the end result...

 Jacob took out a wall and is now working on putting in a half wall.

Jonathan's activities

Sitting and playing!

 Playing with Cheerios at the table.

Jonathan and I cooking supper... stir fry!

Jonathan enjoying a nice cold glass of water after all the hard work of making supper in this heat! :)

Heading to Goroka via NTM Aviation!

 Don't worry, Jacob is not the one flying. :)

 Nate, our only fixed wing pilot, flying us to Goroka in the C-90! Pray for more pilots to head to PNG to help support the work here!

 Jonathan enjoyed his first flight on such a small plane!

 We headed to Goroka, to the NTM Center to sort through all our belongings that were moved from the Interface Campus when it was closed. These four large crates are ours, plus two more just like it!

We enjoyed finding all our things again! But it was a lot of work to sort through it all, as well as Interface's things and other random things that ended up in our crates. We also had some furniture in storage in another area of the center and Jacob's four-wheeler and a few more things in another area of storage.

Jonathan turned 6 months old!

 Jonathan turned 6 months old here at the NTM Center in the Highlands.

 And he started eating pumpkin and rice cereal!

 Whenever he is hungry, he loves it!

 Jonathan's new stroller, great for all the bumpy roads and trails!

 Our former Interface co-workers had a baby boy as well, so they left a big bag of clothes for Jonathan and some fun toys and shoes. :) Jonathan is modeling his new clothes in this photo.

 We were able to borrow an exersaucer while we were here. Jonathan loved it! And it enabled us to get more sorting and packing done!

 Jonathan wasn't quite sure what to make of the very cold mornings here in the mountains. :) So cold compared to the Sepik!

Sorting!

 Our house at the NTM Center was a disaster most of the time! So much sorting and so many decisions... do we keep it and ship it to Wewak, or sell it or give it away. (If you check out the background, you can see Jonathan and I in the kitchen :))

 We were so happy to be able to sell some stuff and give some away so that we could consolidate our belongings into just 4 crates!

It was a slow process, but we had three weeks here to get it all done!

 There was so much to do, yet we still enjoyed time with Jonathan in the mess!

 When my desk was packed away in the crate... I found this old table that used to be in the kitchen... made a good desk as well.

 Some days we were happy to have a break from sorting and packing... our Bena friends would stop by to see us and meet Jonathan. Jonathan wasn't quite sure what to think about our Bena friends!

And Sundays we enjoyed a day of rest...even though there was still a huge mess... church in the morning and football in the afternoon. Jonathan is starting to love football too!

Repacking...

 After emptying all our crates and finding the rest of our things around the center, we started the task of repacking our crates.

 It was quite challenging to fill every space as we packed, especially around furniture! But we are going to be paying by the cubic foot, so we have to fill it all up!

Jacob was quite happy that his four wheeler fit in a crate after removing the tires and taking off the handles. In the end we ended up with four crates including this one with the four-wheeler in it. We will be trucking our crates to Madang and then from there they will go on a ship to Wewak. The only problem is that the shipping company is not taking a break for a month. All of their ships are at dock and none are running! So we wait!