National Bible Seminar

 Heti and Buka had the opportunity to go to the Madang region, for a Seminar put on by national believers.

Traveling by plane, was a scary thing for Heti and Buka who don't leave their village in the Bena very often.

And then they had to travel by canoe too! Buka, in the front with our co-worker Pete, heading into the tribal location.

 There were Bible teachers from 8 language groups. And believers form 14 different churches from 3 provinces of PNG that attended! Many larger churches were able to encourage small struggling churches, because they were small and struggling at the beginning too. This was encouraging for Heti and Buka! they also learned more about the basics of the church and focused on the foundation, Jesus Christ!

 Pray that Heti and Buka will know how to apply all that they learned to their life and church here in the Bena!

Buka, taking notes...

Our Generator is working!!

This is our one and only generator that is working, and we sure are thankful for that! We used to have two generators that ran alternately each day. One generator wasn't working for the last couple weeks... and during this time, the other generator died completely! So we had no power so we had to come up with back up plans for many things... how to pump water to our wells, how to keep our refrigerators running, how to keep our frozen food frozen, how to run our washing machines, etc. Meanwhile the guys (Pete, Jack and Jacob) were busy working...

Here is our Old Faithful generator that finally died after thousands of hours of use, a rebuilt engine and thousands more house of use!!

We were very thankful that Jerry was able to come out to help! And we were very thankful for a willing Cummings Generator Technician that walked Jerry and Jacob through the reprogramming of the generator's computer from Lae, PNG, over the phone! And now we have power! This generator isn't as big as the one that died, and it is also pretty old, so we do have limited generator run times with longer times of power via battery. But we are happy to conserve knowing that it will make our generator last longer. Our new generator is on its way!

The new Interface sign...

 Jacob has been working on this this new Interface sign for awhile. It seems there are always other things to do and this got put on the back burner. But now the sign has been made!

 And we asked Robin, a missionary at the NTM Center to carve and paint it for us.

She is doing an excellent job. And soon I hope to post the finished product!

Here is Ragan and Ope, last summer, showing off our ancient sign. So it will be great to have a nice new sign!

Training dogs...

  Jacob still enjoys training the dogs. All the dogs are learning well. And it is so amazing to watch 5 of our dogs all together without fighting! I will post a picture in the near future! This picture was taken soon after Kima (left) and Bruno (right) were introduced to each other for a weeks time. Now they are both living in the workshop without fighting!

Giving the Charcoal grill a try...

 Is it working?

Relaxing on a Sunday afternoon eating burgers...

 Even our kitten, Socks, was interested in how this charcoal grill thing was going to work.

Catering for the NTM Center Conference...

  Every year we cater three main meals for three days of the NTM Center Conference, about 200 people. This year we have extra help, the Cherie and Ashlyn! I got to start training them, as next year they will be catering the conference because we will be home at that time.

Julie and Ninike, two of our faithful dishwashers. We couldn't cater without them!! 

Here we are all loaded up and headed out. Marco, Jonny, Diemo and Julie are helping us too!

 Unloading the drinks and food.

 Marco is quite excited to be helping us! :)

 Ashlyn dishing up the macaroni salad for lunch.

Cherie dishing up the potato salad.

 As soon as their meeting was finished we rushed the food in so they could eat right away. Julie rushing in with the potato salad and kaukau (sweet potato) chips.

 Jonny with the banana and tapiok chips.

Setting out the utensils for everything.

 Cherie and Ashlyn getting out the hot food, sloppy joe meat and rolls.

 The kids were happy to start eating. :)

And I think the adults were too. :)

 In need of more sloppy joe meat...

Our turn to eat

All the missionaries did their own dishes and then some of the kids helped us with the other dishes in the end. Such a huge help! It is always fun to be able to help out at the conference by cooking meals for them! We are glad we can do it!

Our new kitten...

 After two years of constantly setting traps for rats and mice, and no end in sight, we decided that we had to get a barn cat. :) We like our new little kitten and we hope she turns into a great rat/mice killer. We are hopeful because she is already chasing bugs and killing large grasshoppers. :)

 We named her Socks, after my grandma's long time cat of 16 years. Socks Sr. passed away last year. :(

Socks likes the hammock too, but doesn't last long because she can't sit still. But it looks like she is enjoying reading about wood projects.

Papua New Guinea Land Cruiser in Germany?

Last year Jonas, Till and Richard were here at Interface with us for about a year. Recently they had a little reunion in Germany and sent us this photo. They said it was very unusual for a Land Cruiser to be seen in Germany. But this is the type of vehicle we drive here!

A walk through the village...

 Before Conference we took a walk through the village to visit people and hand out the work schedules for the ladies that work in the kitchen with me.

We came across Sone, cooking in her "kitchen".

 She is going to cook up some kumu (greens) with kaukau (sweet potato).

 Sone is a good friend of ours. She helps us around the house when I am working long days in the kitchen. Such a blessing!

Heading out for a drive...

 We took a four-wheeler ride to the old school house... this is the road we traveled on!

 The Bena are starting to fix up their school and rugby field because the fighting is over! Jacob asked one of our workers to cut this field for them with our tractor.

 Classroom buildings

 Inside of one of the classrooms. The Bena have started repairing and cleaning up the school's buildings and land. They have a work day every Monday.

 We were amazed by this crazy gum tree on the property.

Pray that the people will continue to fix up the school and that they can reopen it soon! Right now some kids are going to schools a long ways away and others aren't going to school at all.