The pouring of the classroom floor...

 The Interface staff, excited about the new classroom floor! Diemo; Hank and Marg (Lesley's parents); Marco; Pete, Lesley, Josh, Kelsey & Micah; Drew, Bobbi, Annie, Gracie, Malachi and baby Levi; Jonny; Jacob and I; Julie

 Ready for the cement!

 But first, the guys had to fix the cement mixer!

 Hard at work!

 Time to mix!

 Samson and Buka's son dumping the mixed cement.

 Moyolopi is lifting the barbed wire. Hank kept telling the guys to do this every 5 minutes, "upim wire, upim wire!". It sounded like a broken record. :)

 Nice and smooth!

 The guys started pouring cement last week Monday and finished this week Monday... pouring for a few hours each morning. And this is the final day of pouring!

 When the last part of the cement was finished we all got to put our prints or signature in the cement, even little Levi. :)

Lesley signing her hand print.

 Janie's turn to sign her name.

 The finished product!

 Beautiful!!

Now the guys are finishing up the floors in the bathrooms with tile!

New Staff!!

 The Peachey Family - Mike & Cherie, with their children, Ashlyn, Savannah, Hannah and Jack. Cherie will be replacing me in the kitchen when we are home for 9 months. Their oldest daughter Ashyln has graduated from high school and gets to help her mom in the kitchen. Mike will be taking on many of Jacob's roles around campus, fixing and building, etc.

(And we just found out that Anna, a single gal, has applied and been accepted to come as in Interface Student and stay on as a volunteer for 6 months, to help in the kitchen too!) 

The Ray family - Travis & Nikki and their two daughters Sierra and Brooke. Travis will also be taking on various aspects of Jacob's ministry around campus. Nikki will be helping out in the office!

Bobbi Scholl with the new addition to their family, Levi! They all arrived back this month!

Janie Miles also arrives back this month as well as Jack and Janie Housley!

Back in the Kitchen again...

 We started the new year off right with new Kitchen uniforms! They love their new outfits! 

And I got one too. :)

Top row: Sone, Linet, Suzanna, Loli

Middle row: Rose, Beth, Julie

Bottom row: Efeke, Ninike, Piku

 The Ladies also wanted a group picture on our new stairs.... we used to just have a ladder to climb up into the loft area where we store our totes. So they were so excited when the guys built this for us!

 Deep cleaning of the kitchen... scrubbing the floor!

 This is Sone and Suzanna sporting the other version of our new uniforms! :)

 Sunday we hosted a Transitions Workshop. The High School Juniors and Seniors came out for a workshop to learn how to enter back into their home countries after growing up here in PNG for so long.... it is a tough time for many missionary kids as they head home.

 It was just a one day, one meal affair so Julie, Jacob and I and a couple of the national ladies helped.

Since our classroom has been torn apart, half of the dining hall was turned into a classroom for their sessions. This is also where we meet every Sunday for our Staff church service.

Digging in to get the job done!

 Hank Demark, Lesley Doerksen's dad, and Pete Doerksen. Hank is here for 6 weeks to head up the new Classroom floor project!

 What a mess!!

 Buka and Morobe

 Jacob, Marco, Brent, Jonny, Morobe, Heti, Pete, Diemo, Buka, Samson, Hank, Moyolopi

 The national workers were interested in the map of the world that is posted in the classroom.

The work continues...

 Jonny, Jacob, Marco and Buka working on the floor... out with the old and in with the new (in a month or so).

Generator is fixed!

 Pete and Jacob just fixed the front seal on the generator after waiting 3 weeks to receive the part needed. The generator is fixed so they are happy! Jacob continues to use his four-wheeler every day... it is his portable shop. :)

The Classroom Floor project begins!

 Jason teaching in the classroom this past summer...

 Our students taking in all that Jason was teaching...

And here is our classroom today! A big mess... with lots of work yet to do. The guys have just started pulling up the floor. But it is a HUGE process because we don't have a jack hammer. Instead the guys are using a concrete saw, sledge hammers, pick axes and a hammer drill. And of course lots of shovels and wheelbarrows to get the old concrete out of the building. Please pray for them to be able to finish this part of the project in time. Hank, the concrete expert, is coming Feb 17th to head up the project of pouring the new classroom floor!

 Without a jack hammer, this is a great learning process for the guys!

 Jacob says, "Not bad for 1/2 hours worth of work!" :) --- It actually took three guys three days to do this much work. :)---

Village court at Interface...

Recently we had a theft at Interface... but then last week all our Bena neighbors worked together to catch the guys that did it. And one morning they all came to have a village court in our property. They forced the thieves to return everything they had so almost everything was returned. It is a very different type of "court" because there is no judge but rather some prominent village men who try to guide the proceedings. And as issues come up, everyone elects a person to deal with them yet sometimes there seems to be no one in charge. Everyone gathers around and random people say what they think. Some people listen and some people don't seem to be paying attention at all because they are just talking with each other. We aren't quite sure how they come to a decision on what needs to be done. :)

  But in the end we brought the two guys to jail and Jacob gave a speech to everyone. He let them know how thankful we were that they supported us and helped us. This was very encouraging to see our Bena friends helping us. The whole community really came together and said this behavior has to stop.  It was encouraging to see how they really worked together and supported us.

The Dog training begins!

 Jacob is just at the beginning stages of training our German Shepherds. So far he has taught Kema to sit, stay and heel. :)

Kema is thinking... school is so hard. :)

And he is doing really well at heeling! Jacob is happy! Jacob is working on training the two workshop dogs. And he is teaching the German interns how to train dogs as well... they are training the other three dogs on campus! All the dogs are doing very well and learning fast!

Momore's tribal dancing...

 A typical Saturday afternoon in PNG.. an unexpected event once again... Momore came down in his tribal outfit and wanted us to come and watch and take pictures of his dance. He was on his way to a game to cheer a team on. :)

What a mess!

 Julie, my co-worker, and I had fun organizing! The loft in the office is our storage area but has never been organized since we moved the office in 2009. We were so happy that we finally had time to organize it! This all the stuff from the loft after we hauled it downstairs to start the process.

 We found papers, papers and more papers from 1992 through 2010! And we found child care curriculum, toys, crutches, luggage and even a rat chewed curtain.

Julie found this curled and dried gecko in with the toys.

 Ahh, the finished product!! Nice and neat!

We have to keep our financial paperwork for 7 years, so now we can easily find it all!

Nate's mama...

 Nate, chef that replaced me in 2009 while I was on home assignment, has a mama in the village. This little old lady calls Nate his 'pikinini', child. Here is Nate's mama, Wie, with Jacob. She was so happy to see us and hear that Nate had sent some things for her.

 Nate sent a package with pink slippers, a pink hat, pink socks and a pink bathroom to his mama.

 Her son Merena, helped me put the hat on Mama Wie.

2012 is here!

 Julie organized a fun fondu party for us all! We had pork, chicken and crocodile as well as zucchini, mushrooms and cheese to dip in the oil fondu. And a yummy artichoke dip and chips, veggie platter and of course pineapple! It was a fun time! Robyn and Carmen joined us, missionaries from our NTM Center, that were at ITF for little break.

 We welcomed the new year with some sparkling juice!

Hanging out by candlelight as we welcomed in the New Year!