June/July 2010 Interface team...

 Our June/July 2010 Interface team! Right now the students are split between two tribal locations in the Sepik learning more about mission life first hand. This is an exciting time for them because they get to meet tribal believers... people who have a completely different culture and language yet are still our brothers and sisters in Christ. We have enjoyed getting to know the students a little bit as we serve to enable them to grow in their knowledge of God and His heart for missions. It is exciting to see God work in their lives while they are here.

Bottom row: Renee, Nicky, Beth, Amanda, Marcia; Top row: Carson and Nate.
I am enjoying working with this crew in the kitchen this program! It is great to have Nate here as my assistant cook... I know that when I am off or sick he can crank out some good food too!

I am just about ready to choose a knife for my next chopping task from the "choose your weapon drawer". :)

We are so thankful for our dish washers!! Although sometimes we create quite the mess for them.

This is the dining hall where every eats three times a day. During the my off times this past year I was able to sew some new table skirts for the buffet tables. I wasn't quite sure what I was doing but they managed to come out straight. :)

Jacob is very busy while the students are here. He is busy running the workshop, fixing things, overseeing security and working on the big grass roof project. The roof was leaking pretty bad so Jacob told everyone we needed more grass and after a few weeks people started bringing bundles of grass to sell.

This project was a bit intimidating for Jacob because he hasn't had much experience fixing grass roofs before. He was thankful to have the advice of the national workers.

During the last month we have been able to watch the Australian Rugby Championship games on tv. There are two teams that play every year, the Blues and the Maroons. The winner team has to win two out of three games. Nate is a die hard Blues fan. We weren't sure we should let him in the house because we are Maroons fans. :)

Croquet!

For the last few months we've started playing croquet with everyone every Saturday. Julie, Jan, Robert, Nate, Daniel, Daniel, Jacob and I, Steffan....Very fun!

The last game before Jan left us :( we decided to play in the workshop... it was quite the course!

We also had to get a group shot of us around the junk pile that we played through. :)

Julie, Jan, Daniel, Robert, Jacob and I

Meanwhile, back at Home...

Exciting things are happening in the lives of Josh, Jacob's brother, and his fiance Rebekah... June 5th was the big day!!! We are excited to see the DVD and pray the Papua New Guinea mail delivers it soon!!

The Battle of our Home continues...

We finally caught the culprit!! This rat was chewing holes in lids of containers plus chewing around the edges of all my tuperware canisters!! We were so excited when he finally got caught in a trap! Jacob is actually holding the rat with a machete which he had to use to finish him off because the trap didn't quite do the trick. Our tally is up to 3 rats and 16 mice exterminated!!

Four-wheeler ride!!

Jacob had to check out the road situation so he could have some of the national guys do some work on it. So we took a ride!!

I got to drive too! We had fun watching some of the faces of the nationals as I drove the four-wheeler. :)

Jacob really enjoys the four-wheeler... he uses it every day for work and doesn't know what he would do without it!! Thanks again to all of you who helped get it here to PNG!

The Final Games...

We were very sad to see Danny, Tammy and Addie leave us at the end of May. Jacob, the German guys (Daniel, Robert and Jan) and Julie had one last game of volleyball!

And one last chess tournament...Danny and Jacob take on Jan and Robert! We miss Danny, Tammy and Addie!!

Many Birthday Celebrations!

 

 I made an ice cream cake for Jacob... he loved it! And so did everyone else who celebrated with us!

 

 Daniel, Jan, Julie, Robert, Nate, Janie, Jacob and I had a typical American meal of burgers and fries for Robert's birthday. Can't get that in Germany. :)

For Jan's birthday we went to the Steak Haus for a fun dinner with free ice cream sundaes!

We all got together for Julie's birthday too! She especially loved the birthday flowers!

Cake Decorating...

Beth had the opportunity to decorate a cake for the 6th grade graduating class. They seemed to enjoy it. :)

Our Crates Arrived!!

After leaving Nova Scotia on Dec 23, they traveled across Canada and finally left Canada on Jan 21st. March 13th they arrived in Papua New Guinea! But we couldn't have them brought our way because the only bridge to the port city was broken. So we waited for our crates to go through customs and we waited for PNG to fix the bridge. They arrived at our NTM Center on April 9th!!

We were happy to have some help unloading it! It looked exactly as it did last we saw it... just very hot instead of freezing cold!

All we had to do was get the four-wheeler on our truck and off we went to Interface!

 

Our electric piano also arrived safe and sound! We are enjoying it!

  

 

 It is fun to learn how to play piano again after so many years without one!

 

Now, we have a taste of home in our living room... a hand crafted Nova Scotian boat by Roy!

 

Jacob was so excited when the four-wheeler was up and running! First he had to put everything back in it, gas, grease, coolant, etc. And then he was off!! Work goes so much faster now that he has help running back to the shop for tools and materials!! And soon I hope to learn how to drive it too! Thank you all for your part in bringing these crates over with our four-wheeler... there was a lot of prayers and support that enabled our crates to arrive safely here at Interface!

A typical day venturing into town...

Our drive to town takes about 1 hour depending on the road conditions. Some days are just bad and some days are really bad. :) On this day we were the only people that did not get stuck.

The road even washes away sometimes.

There are also pigs and goats along the way. This is the main highway that we take after making it through our muddy road. :)

 Papua New Guinea is different because there are no street signs along the dirt roads but there is something like this at a local hotel... makes for a fun picture. :)

We stopped at the Supermarket in town to pick up our meat at the Butchery... they just got a fresh shipment of pork in... quite the sight!!

On our way back from town the tractor needed to be rescued. They were fixing the road a bit, but ended up slipping into this 3 foot hole along the way. We were able to pull it out.

March Conferences...

We hosted two conferences in March... Highlands and Lapilo. It was a good time for all the missionaries to take some time out of their every day routines of life and be encouraged in the Lord through special speakers and each other. The Highlands Conference was held here at Interface, about 100 people attended. This year was the first time we catered the Lapilo Conference which took place at our NTM center about a 45 minute drive away. This picture was taken in the gym at Lapilo looking out over half of the people attending. We cooked for about 200 people, one meal per day. It was fun cooking for so many, quite a challenge!

The missionaries were very happy to have their meals catered this year... I think it will become a yearly tradition. :)

We made 9 pans of lasagna using 9 gallons of sauce with 10 kgs of meat.

 This is a cake I decorated for the High School Graduates as they celebrated the occasion with all the other missionaries here at the conference.

We transported the food via truck... so our methods of carrying food were thought out well. We had a warmer to keep our food hot for about an hour. The last day of the conference we came across a truck stuck in the road. We were thankful that we were able to go around him.

We were also able to help pull him out with a rope and some man power. We were just a few minutes late for our catering event. :)