More Drought News

Sue says:



We continue to prepare for our next term, which is scheduled to begin in two-and-a-half weeks. Some more pictures might make the drought situation clearer, though.



This stream bed is near our highlands campus. It usually has water in it all year around. You can see the rock baskets hold back the banks from being eroded by the heavy runoff in rainy season.







This time of year we normally would get at least two inches of rain per month. (That's "dry" season.) This month we have gotten 1/3 inch. The second picture is the cracked ground in a baret, the ditch that normally carries runoff water, outside our library.









We have had to begin washing our clothes in river water. In the third picture, you see the bucket- and sink-full of river rinse water my duplex neighbor and I are saving for our next laundry loads. Students are boiling river water to drink because their water tank is empty.

Clouds are present at night and the last few nights we have gotten sprinkles. Thanks to those who are praying about the situation. We will need a number of days/nights of heavy rain to fill up our water tanks so class can open as planned.

Maybe God is sending us a message through this situation. After all, our small area is the only one with such an extreme water shortage. Ask God to make His direction clear. And may we follow His leading too.

Drought!

Jeff writes:

In my last post I mentioned the need to pray for rain.

We went to a village church today and learned that the gardens around us are drying up. The ground is hard as a stone. It is coffee season now, so our neighbors are harvesting their coffee. It is a major cash crop here, which means they can use the income to buy food. However, soon there will be no money or food to be had. In the last major drought here, which happened in 1997, many died from starvation.

If we do not get a lot of rain in the next two weeks or so, we may have to do something we have never had to do at the college, cancel a term. Right now we are hauling river water to fill some tanks. It is not potable, so we must add purification tablets to it. Most of our student body is away on break, so the demand for water is low now. Whether hauling river water will support 100 plus returning students and their families is unknown.

Our personal situation is not too bad. We share our water tank, which is filled with rain water collected from our tin roof, with another family. I checked its level when we returned from Lae, and it is still two-thirds full. Nevertheless, we are conserving as much as we can.

Please pray for rain, and remember to thank the Lord that He has provided most of you with unlimited supplies of fresh water from the tap.

Back in Our Highland's Home

Jeff writes:

We took a lazy four days to get back to our home at the CLTC. The 500km trip can be made in around nine hours straight through, but we wanted to stop and enjoy some of our friends and the spectacular scenery along the way.

Early Sunday morning we left our good friends at Lae behind. Our journey took us up the Markham Valley. It has expansive grasslands, and in some respects it reminds us of California's central valley only greener. We passed coconut and cocoa groves, palm oil plantations, and this cattle ranch (pictured at the left).

Our destination was a village in the valley where I was scheduled to preach. We also got to meet with Agnes, whose husband Rabboni had left her. Rabboni was one of my most promising students. Unfortunately, after he graduated and returned to his village, he ran away with a divorced woman.

We came to encourage Agnes and to help her with some medical expenses for her son Wayne (pictured at the right.) He is battling complications from hydrocephalus. She is caring for her four children. Rabboni’s family helped him abduct their oldest son, who is now living with him. Agnes is fearful that they will also try to take the other children as well. Please pray for her that this tragic situation will be resolved by God’s good grace in His perfect time according to His righteous will.

Following a large feast we departed for another village where we were to spend the night. We met with a CLTC student there. Yawing (on the right in the photo) and his wife Helen are doing a one year internship in a village called Waratsieng. They welcomed us with even more good food. I preached again under the stars, and we spent the night with our Bubu (on the left in the photo), who is our college receptionist’s uncle. We enjoyed a refreshing bath in a cool creek and learned how to use a village liklik haus (outhouse) again. Their hospitality was unsurpassed, and they sent us off with lots of bananas, pineapples, a papaya and yams.

Our next stop was Ukarumpa, which is SIL’s headquarters in PNG. There I got my teeth cleaned, Sue’s laptop power supply repaired, and had an overheating problem with our car fixed. For our first time in over two months we felt cold. It was great!

Leaving Ukarumpa we made a short journey to Goroka where we spent Tuesday night. We ate in a Chinese restaurant which we enjoy. Again we lazed around to gain strength for the bumpy ride that awaited us the next day through Chimbu.

At about eight we left Goroka. Our little car had to climb the 2,478 meter (8,128 feet) Daulo pass. While were we nearing the top we caught up with a semi-tractor truck pulling a heavy load. Just as we were about to crest the last bit of road, the truck slowed and nearly stopped. I had to stop our car behind him, and when I tried to start again it would not go up the hill because it was so steep. Sue suggested I use four-wheel drive. I shifted into four-wheel low, and our little Suzuki began eating up the road again. We call it the “Beast” because it devours some of the most unforgiving roads in the world. PTL!

After a nice lunch in Kainantu, we arrived back at the CLTC. Many people greeted us warmly.

We were alarmed to hear, however, that it really had not rained here in seven weeks. There is no water left in the students' water tanks. Right now we are on break, and there are only a few students on campus. However, if this drought continues, we may have to postpone or cancel our third term. Please join us in praying for rain.

Thanks for all of your prayers. We arrived safely, and for the most part refreshed. Blessings to all of you.

Resting in God's Arms

Sue says:

There are times that, try as we might, things just don't turn out right. I have been reading a J.C. Pollack biography of Hudson Taylor. I appreciate that the biographer includes struggles that Taylor went through in his daily situations.

We had such a time recently when we noticed our debit cards were to expire.

Before we left the States last time, we had tried to get our bank to issue debit cards for a longer period of time so they wouldn't expire while we were overseas. The bank said it was cooperating, but after claiming to issue cards twice, we never saw them.

Now they were expiring while we were far away. We stopped putting our money in a bank here because the exchange rates were too unfavorable. We found that we get a better rate by depositing in the States and having our US bank exchange as we withdraw by debit card.

Now we had to ask a bank here to withdraw a large amount to keep us until our new cards could arrive. A man in Lae was shot recently while withdrawing after hours from a teller machine. We went to a well guarded bank during regular hours. Yes, they could help us. Phew, stocked up for a while.

We found out our son had received new cards for us in the States. The one reliable overnight carrier that has an office near us in Lae, though, doesn't any longer have many receiving sites in the US. It turned out there was one in a town ten miles away from our son.

The cards arrived in just one day more than the carrier claimed. Pretty normal.

Next we had to activate the cards by calling a toll free number in the US. By cell phone, somehow our call was intercepted by New Zealand. We got in a loop of operators and no one had the right info about how to get through to the toll free number.

OK, try Skype. Sometimes the Skype connection echoes and has long delays. People hang up because they don't realize we're on the line. We were worn out by this long process. We'd been asking God to please help us along the way, but now we were really past our own strength. We'd done all we could do. We couldn't make our connection work.

The connection was golden! It was faster than we'd ever had before. The operator sounded as though she were speaking from right beside us. Oh, joy. We are able to access our funds one again. God was our rescuer!

Jeff says the Old Testament word salvation can also be translated rescue. There are times each day I just need to rest and let God rescue me, just resting in His arms like a little baby does in the arms of an adult.

Behold, God is my salvation (rescuer),
I will trust and not be afraid;
For the Lord God is my strength and song,
And He has become my salvation.

Isaiah 12:2

Do you know the song? I'm still catching the tune at some points.

Fences Update

Jeff writes:

We decided to allow the police to handle things with our neighbor.

They invited all parties to attend a reconciliation session at the Chinatown police station. However, when the police came to inform her about the meeting time, our neighbor was not to happy about this, and in the process she gave them an earful. When the time did come to meet, she did not show up. The police went to get her, but she had fled.

Keep praying that this situation will be resolved. We are all resting a bit easier now as we hope to complete our fence this weekend.

This first photo shows the result of her whack at my head. I was blessed to be on the other side of the fence from her, so it was pretty easy to dodge her blow.

On a lighter note the second photo is great example of why Lae is called "Pothole City." This gigantic crater is at the end of our street.

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors?

Jeff writes:

The folk at the CLTC Lae Centre have been having problems with two of their neighbors. Apparently this husband and wife team are intent on driving us off of some of the land we own.

A while ago these people tried to clear some of our land to make a garden. When we stopped them, trouble started. To alleviate further problems the staff here decided to build a fence to clearly mark the property line.

As construction was underway, the husband and the wife began to vandalize the work knocking down welded sections of fence.

We were nearly finished with the fence tonight when the wife attacked it and us with a long piece of fencing iron. She tore holes in the fence and started shouting obscenities.

I ran over to see what was going on and yelled at her to stop. She took a swing at me. When threatened with the police, she just got more upset.

Donald, who is our dean here, tried to reason with her. She poked him with the fence iron and hit him on the arm. For a time there it looked like things could quickly get out of hand. However, Donald remained calm.

In the past she had demanded money for the work they had done to clear their garden on our property. Once again Donald offered to settle with her, but she has to date refused.

It appears that she and her husband want to use these tactics to intimidate us. They have threatened the employees here with machetes and axes, and this is just another step in the process.

So far the police have not really been effective. Unhappily in this country might does too often make right.

Please pray for all of here tonight as we sleep. Also pray that this pair will not succeed in their plans.

Flower Blooper

Jeff writes:

Well this is embarrassing ... apparently we wrote down the wrong name for our now unknown flower. We thought it was a barringtonia, but a Google search has proved us wrong. So if any of you know its name, please share it with us. In the meantime we will check with our local sources to see what we can discover.

Don't you love a mystery!

More Botanical Marvels

Sue says:

At the risk of making it appear that all we do is look at beautiful new flowers, here are a few flowers found in the yard at the Lae Campus.


These seem to be a type of bird of paradise.



This flower is called elkonia. It hangs downward on the stem.

These hide razor wire over our fence. They appear to be in the pea family.

We rejoice in all these beauties that God has made. What an imagination He has!

Also, we rejoice that God is giving us new connections in this new place. Last Sunday Jeff preached at a United Church (union of Presbyterian and Methodist!), and the next two he is scheduled to preach at separate Assemblies of God fellowships. We appreciate getting an overview of the different congregations in this area.