Tupela Morobe Meri

This is Mama Grace and Mama Jen, two teachers at our school. They are such beautiful women, who have hearts full of passion, dedication, thankfulness and love for God. Here they are dressed in their provincial colours all day for the Meri Bung - women's bible conference. These women are very close to my heart!

Anna-Rita

This little poppet is Anna-Rita. She's a precious little girl who is part of our congregation. Her mum and dad have studied at the Bible College in Port Moresby and are now back in Lae, living in Biwat - one of the settlements. She was very little when she was born but 6 months on she looks reasonably healthy, is happy and interacts well with others. Praise God! She has a few sisters and is part of the largest extended family in our church. Our prayer is that she grows up free of the sickness and disease that is so prevalent here. Settlement life is tough, so we pray too that she can grow to know God and His love even in the difficult circumstances of life. Here's some photos for you all xxx

Yumi go raun raun lik lik lo taun

I drive in and out of Lae city quite regularly at the moment because I'm doing a lot more with our school in town. The drive used to be around about 40 minutes due to the state of the roads - gravel, potholes galore, ditches and traffic going all over the place - attempting to avoid the potholes! Lae is affectionately known as pothole city but since the road crews have been working on the highway the trip into town has been cut down to 20 minutes - on a good traffic day! It's rather marvellous!

There's a few sections of road that are really beautiful, especially when you look up above street level. Here's a few examples of some of my favourite parts of driving in Lae.

I love the trees here - a little tunnel of greenery. So pretty.

Coconut palms against a sunset sky. Doesn't get much more beautiful out you really think about it! It was hard to capture the colours on this shot but you get the idea!

By the way -  yumi go raun raun lik lik lo taun means let's go around town a bit

Changes changes

As many of you know, our small RM compound is positioned within the broader Lae City Mission plantation. It's a beautiful plantation, full of tropical plants, flowers, coconut palms and lots of other gorgeous greenery. Driving in through the gates has always been a favourite experience of mine because you see the lush, green gardens and it feels like you're driving into an oasis (after having been out on the rough, dusty, dirty, people filled roads). Both sides of the driveway are full of trees and other plants, and you feel like you're driving through a tunnel of trees... that is, until a few weeks ago....! 

LCM is currently working on a project to build a children's orphanage on the property. Their current orphanage is in quite a rough area of town, so to keep the children as safe as possible, they are going to move it out here to 11 Mile. The first stage of the project was to mark out the area, so we started noticing caution tape around the place, marking out where the building would be placed. Then, a few big trees were cut down. No biggie. But then a few more.... and more.... and more.... until about 15 had been cut down! This was happening about 100m from my house - where I live and work - and every time I heard a tree being felled, a little piece of my heart broke! All those beautiful trees!!!! Cut down in seconds..... (Stu, you would have had a great time with the boys here, getting that done. Plenty of whooping, cheering and excitement when a tree felled in the right direction :) )

After about a week of felling, roughly 15 trees were removed, but a lot of the trees along the edge and the little plants and bushes were left. That was great, I thought, because at least their would be some garden around so the building wouldn't look like it was plonked in the middle of nowhere.  But then.... the boys started chopping down everything that grew and lighting fires madly. I reckon there were about 20 fires going on in the small area of space the boys had created. One fire for each guy! 

Last Saturday when I went for a walk, I noticed more work going on. By this stage I had given up hope that any greenery would be left... and by the time I got back, this is what I saw....

A cleared patch of land....

With barely any growth left....

To make way for progress. A part of me is very sad to see the beauty disappear, even though I know it's for a good reason! 

I though that was the end of it all, but no... this whole week, they've continued cutting, trimming and clearing and now there's nothing left. An empty patch of land. Waiting for the building to begin and for the children to arrive! The day the kids arrive will be a great day. It will make all of this destruction worth it :)

Jungle Pathway

Here's a little glimpse into what the surrounds are like here. Here you can see that this pathway leads into the jungle. It's quite something to have a jungle right behind the fence! So pretty isn't it :)

Paul

This is Paul. He's one of the workers at the school property. At the moment he's doing upgrades on the toilet block (making it into a toilet and shower block - it's made an incredible difference!), building drains and generally doing renovations around the property. This year he and Greg have also built an extra classroom and when the land ownership debates are resolved, in God's timing, they will start building the school on the property next door.

Paul has been working very hard this year – he’s worked some very long hours to get the building projects done and has not taken any time off. He's a really strong man and doesn't seem to be affected by the various sicknesses going around. Usually that is!

Last week he was very sick! He told me he felt weak, achy and had a headache but just assumed it was from working so hard. After a few days the pains got worse so he rested over the weekend, still thinking he had been working too hard. Monday brought a very different story! He woke up with fever and chills - typical signs of malaria - so he took the day off to go to the doctor. 

The doctor did the malaria check and found out that Paul had 360 parasites in his body. Yes, 360!!!!! That is off-the-charts high and it’s unfathomable that he had been working with that going on in his system! Anything over 10 is high and Paul had 360!! Apparently one of the doctors said, “Yu strongpela man tru!! Klostu bai yu kamap ded man!!” which means, “You are an unbelievably strong man, you’re nearly dead!” The nurses were horrified and couldn’t believe that Paul was even managing to walk by himself, let alone work. Most people would have been laid up in bed for days already. That just confirms how tough Paul really is!! He took the week off work, but it was a struggle for him to do that. When I popped in one afternoon he was there painting. I promptly told him to go and rest! He told me he realised that his body was too weak for working, but he was so sick of laying down that he thought he’d do a little bit J On Sunday he told me that he only stayed for about an hour because he got too tired. No wonder!!

It is very common that people get malaria here. There are a lot of mosquitoes and with the wet season upon us, there are even more. Many of these mozzies carry the malaria virus. Most people from PNG tend to have malaria in their system, which can stay dormant for many months before flaring up when they are a bit run down. I would say it’s as common as a cold/flu in Australia. We get colds, they get malaria. The people here also are not as ‘afraid’ of malaria as we white skins tend to be. Medication is available and you can get it relatively easily – and once you’ve taken the treatment, you feel significantly better – until it flares up again that is……

I’m praying that Paul’s vicious malaria will improve and that it won’t come back again. He did tell me he will go back to the doctor or hospital and get checked out again after he has finished the antibiotics, just to make sure he is better. With the severity of his malaria it’s possible one course of antibiotics isn’t enough. I’m very thankful he’s being wise. May God heal his body! 

A few cool people

I'm going through my photos from my phone camera at the moment. My phone is breaking.... the screen is slowly blacking out due to having received too many hard knocks in it's lifetime... and a few days ago my dear phone, that's been with me for 4 years, got treated pretty badly..... which didn't make my phone happy. Since then, it's been dying a slow, black death. Jono says it's got phone cancer. Whatever it is, it isn't going so well. Currently I can barely read messages and I certainly can't use it for browsing on the Internet BUT I can still receive and send calls and texts, so that's a great thing!!

As a result of all of this sickness, I downloaded all of the data on my phone. While browsing I came across this photo of Bob, Mum and me.

Bob is the General Manager of Lae City Mission. He and his wife Ann live at the top of the giant hill behind our houses. He's a great guy and such a blessing to all of the boys here - and us too of course!

Here we are looking hot and sweaty after walking up the big hill in the heat :)