New Staff have arrived!!

Drew and Bobbi came from the States with their three children, Gracie, Malachi and Annie. We are so excited to have them here! Drew will be in charge of all the logistics of Interface which involved many different areas of running this place.

Pete and Lesley with their four children, Josh, Jessica, Micah and Kelsey have arrived too!! We are also very excited to have them here! Pete and Lesley worked in Guinea, Africa for 13 years before joining us here. Pete will be working in the shop with Jacob and eventual become the Boss Man. Right now both couples are studying the language and culture full time to help them in their future ministries here. We are very glad they can have this training! But during this time Jacob and I are quite busy keeping up with everything: maintenance, school runs, airport runs, Interface bookkeeping, cooking for groups and snack shop. But we are happy to be exactly where God wants us! We look forward to the time when we can work side by side with the two new families! And we are very happy to have our short term workers here now from Germany and one intern from Liberty University! We have enjoyed getting to know them, giving them orientation and teaching them how to cook!!

The fireplace is finally used...

Our fireplace has been ready to light for the last 3 years! Thank you Sally. :) And when rainy season came, I got really cold one night because we were hanging out at the Interns place outside (65 degrees F) eating and chatting. So when we came home Jacob put shorts on and I light the fire. It was so cozy!!

Nice!

Kuela had a baby boy!

Isn't he cute?! They are still waiting to give him a name. I went to visit Kuela, good friend, in the hut where she had the baby! The baby is only 1 day old in this picture.

She let me hold him... and she took the picture. She hasn't had much practice with cameras before. :)

A couple weeks later, Kuela and the baby came to visit me. The baby is in the bilem, string bag hanging on the post, covered with a blanket. :)

He is sleeping very soundly in this comfy bed. :) Kuela just carries him around like this with the bilem swung onto the top of her head.

The fun of cutting up trees...

Jacob was very sad when the expert tree feller came with three guys. They cut the dead tree down and then cut it up too. Jacob really wanted to use the chainsaw! The same day though, after the experts left... another tree just fell down all on its own.... Jacob was excited... He could still have fun with the chainsaw!

Tobi conquers the tree!

Till conquers the tree with a machete, amazing! :)

Welding...

Jacob really enjoys welding in the shop. He is getting a bit of practice because the nationals bring him their tools to fix.

Supply buying for our conference...

I always enjoying going to the Veggie Market in town to buy all the veggies for the conferences. We usually buy a lot so the ladies are quite happy to see us coming their way. :)

Our vehicle, White Land Cruiser, is the second one in line. Tobi is sitting on top of it waiting for us to bring all totes of veggies back one by one. He helps us pack in the veggies and guard the vehicle at the same time. :)

The Land Cruiser is now very full, 8 totes of veggies on top, 6 coolers of meat and 2 boxes of bread inside. There was just enough space for our two security guards, Kino and Tobi. :) We are all ready for the Strengthening Your Interpersonal Skills Workshop... at least we have the food anyway. :)

Finishing the grass roofs....

After our Interface team left, Jacob and the guys had more time to finish buying 100s of bundles of kunai grass and replace the rest of the grass roofs.

Jacob and Samson hard at work!

Don't they look nice! The guys finished them just an hour before our first good hard rainy season rain! Thanks Tobi for coming over from Germany to help out for two months!!

More Goodbyes...

We had a final meal together with Julie before she headed home to Canada for Home Assignment. She arrives back in PNG at the beginning of January!!
(Daniel, Till, Tobi, Janie, Julie, Beth, Jacob, Ethan and Robert)

 Jacob and Robert played their final chess game just a couple days before we had to say goodbye to Robert and Daniel, two of our German Interns. They are playing on a chess board that Robert and Jan made and gave to Jacob! Very cool!

Robert, Jacob, Daniel and Ethan... waiting at the Bird of Paradise before Robert and Daniel boarded the plane on their way back to German. :(

We also had to say goodbye to Clayton and Cindy and family... due to a breast cancer diagnosis they had to leave for the states. Peter and Rachel and family also had to move out to our NTM Center because Peter has become the new Field Chairman. We appreciate all your prayers for Cindy and her recovery from removing the cancer. We also appreciate your prayers for us as we are very short staffed!!

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. :)