Greetings from (more than) half way across the Pacific Ocean. Considering the day that lead up to me being on this airplane, I was thrilled to wake up and find myelf so far along my journey.

After staying up late to finish most of my packing I fell into bed after 1 am. It didn’t take me long to fall asleep, but our dog started barking hysterically at 2:30 am because our cat was outside. It irks me to get up to let the cat in, but in the interest of sleep, I decided to get up and let her in. Back to bed I went until 6:30 when I got up to help Sarah get out the door to school.

With a burst of energy, I pulled the sheets of my bed and through them in the washer, made coffee and sat down at my computer to check email. Suddenly I heard water running. A dash to the kitchen and I could see a rush of water coming out from under the washing machine which soon covered the floor. After turning off the washing machine, I grabbed the mop and started getting the water off the floor. I started the washing machine back to spin cycle and watched as it filled the reservoir into which the washing machine hose flows. By starting and stopping the machine when the hose was on the verge of overflowing, the sheets were spun dry and I threw them in the dryer.

About that time, Tim came up on Skype so I was able to troubleshoot the issue with him. This was not the first time we have had this problem, but it has been a while. Filling up the kitchen sinks with water and then releasing it did not seem to cause any problems. So apparently it was an isolated problem. I found the plumbers snake in the garage and began to try and snake out the hole where the hose drains into the wall. After many attempts, I didn’t seem to be getting anywhere.

Bible study wsa supposed to be held at my house, but I called a freind and the study was scheduled to meet at another home. On the verge of tears, I sat down to try and think through the problem. I briefly considered renting a bigger snake at Home Depot and trying to tackle the problem like that, but decided I didn’t really know what I was doing so it was a better idea to call a friend who is training to become a plumber. Alfredo suggested I call a friend of his who has a camera to determine where the problem is and equipment for snaking out the drain. He charges $100 and would be a good choice. So I called that guy. He was willing, but couldn’t do it until Thursday. I decided that having the plumber come on Thursday was our best bet.

I was running around the house working on packing while trying to determine what to do next. Emily called and I was chatting on the phone with her when I noticed the cat was sitting in the middle of the hall with a dark circle of something. It was a snake coiled up and the cat was kind of playing with it. Yikes. I wanted to run away, but figured I had better do something about the snake before it slithered away in some dark corner. I grabbed a plastic container from the kitchen and plunked it down over the snake. Captured! But of course it was only covered by the container. I found some cardboard and slide it under the container and snake and quickly turned it over and popped the lid on.

My Bible study friend dropped by to pick up the dvds for the study and drop off a bucket she had picked up for me from Walmart. While she was there I asked her if her husband, who is the doctor at our center, could look at the snake. I hated to kill it if is was just a harmless one, but also didn’t want to release if it was dangerous. She took it away and I was thankful it was gone.

About that time, the husband of my friend hosting Bible study was home when the Bible study came. When he heard that I was having plumbing problems, he stopped by our house to see if I needed any help. Freddy is our executive director and travels a lot. He understands how hard it can be for a wife when the husband is traveling – things just seem go wrong! I explained what I had done and he thought I was on the right track. He asked about the toilets, and I said they were fine. But after he left, I thought I had better go check them.

Sure enough the water was low and ‘gunk’ had backed up into the shower and bathtub. The plumbing issues are more serious. Dawn was breaking on the other side of the world and Tim was available on Skype. When he heard about the latest developments, he agreed it was probably the main drain that needed snaking out. We had problems when we first moved in about 3 years ago and it turned out to be tree roots growing into the pipes. Sarah and her ‘babysitter’ would need to sleep somewhere else for the night.

It was time to get serious about finishing the packing. Some glucose tests had been delivered to the house by FedEx last week for the clinic in Papua New Guinea. I got them out of the refrigerator and repacked them in their styrofoam packing case. The suitcase if full of things for other people in Australia and Papua New Guinea. My suitcase should only get lighter as I go.

Oh, and my friend who took the snake to her husband called. He’s pretty sure it is a diamondback rattlesnake. Oh, my goodness. Of course this snake appeared to be young which leads a person to wonder if there is a nest nearby. I am assuming that the cat had carried the snake into the house through the cat door. It looks like the dog and cat will need to spend most of their time inside for the next couple of weeks until we can check around the yard and make sure that we don’t have a nest of snakes somewhere!

As is often the case, it is a relief when you finally take your seat on an airplane. What is done is done and I am on my way. I’m thrilled to have slept the first 7 hours of a 16 hour flight. Overseas travel can be a real adventure and sometimes just getting out the door can be one, too.

I’m thankful for friends who had stepped in to make sure the plumbing gets fixed and the many who have agreed to step in if Sarah needs any help. I am due to arrive in Brisbane around 5 am and catch a flight to Cairns – a city further north on the east coast of Australia. Tim leaves the Solomon Islands on Friday and will meet me in Cairns on Friday night. We are looking forward to spending the weekend together before meetings start on Monday morning. On Wednesday, I leave for Papua New Guinea for meetings there.

PS At last report, the plumbing at the house has not gotten sorted out.

We need to clarify something about recent blog posts.  Tim is actually the one who has been in the Solomon Islands and has written the past few posts.  Because the RSS feed is registered in my email, those of you who get the blogs by email are seeing my email address.

We are both in Australia now.  You can read more about my trip in the next blog post.

Martha

Yesterday evening I had the opportunity to say hello, and good-bye to some very close friends here.  Kevin and Machi Rietvelt came to live in the Solomon Islands almost at the same time we did.  They built up a ministry here, essentially from scratch, that involved a wide variety of things; spiritual teaching, leading retreats, organizing the construction of school classrooms and local clinic buildings, organizing Bible studies in the prison, training local pastors in preaching, starting a disability center, starting a small school in the local hospital for children under long-term care, and on, and on, and on…..

Kevin and Machi were also very special friends to us over the years.  We enjoyed many hours of wonderful fellowship with them.  And received a lot of strength, encouragement and good advice from them. Now they are heading back to their home country of Australia to supposedly retire.  And while I know their schedules will slow down, I also know that they will never really quit ministering to others.

They have had an incredible impact here in the Solomon Islands, in the way they have strengthened churches and other organizations and through the hundreds of lives they have touched.

Kevin and Machi, we will miss you greatly.  Thanks for your years here.  And may you Fare Well in God’s hands.

Back when we lived and served here in the Solomon Islands, I was heavily involved with the Literacy Association of Solomon Islands (LASI), helping them grow in management and strategic planning, and in the production of literacy materials. I had heard good things about the work they had been doing since we left, and I wanted to see for myself, and catch up with some of my friends there. So I stopped by their office one afternoon.
What a thrill it was to have my friend MIchael show me the various books they had produced. With continued help from other colleagues, they have produced a number of books for people who have just learned to read, books to help them practice and build their reading skills. And they have continued to produce reading primers, basic reading instructional books, using the method that I taught them. The picture below is the collection of those primer books, each one in a different language. Of the 17 books there, only two of them existed when I left. The rest were produced by LASI after we had gone.

Yes, the investment we made, and that you, our partners made with us, is still bearing fruit in the Solomon Islands.

After a long night in the air to Australia, 4 hours in the Brisbane airport, another three hour flight to the Solomons, I finally arrived yesterday. All went smoothly.
It’s definitely good to be back. I woke up this morning to parrots chatting with each other as they flew from tree to tree. There was that strong sense of the familiar as I looked out over the calm sea to the ships just off shore and Savo and Nggela Islands further off in the distance.
But the best part so far has been seeing colleagues and friends, greeting each other with joy, and starting to reconnect. Yes, it’s good to be back.

Because the Solomon Islands is a small and relatively isolated country, there are many niceties (and sometimes necessities) of life that are not easily available. So whenever word gets out that someone is coming to visit, the traveler invariably gets asked to hand carry a variety of things.
And so I have a rather substantial collection of things to pack into my suitcase and take with me to the Solomon Islands for other people. You can see from the picture that my suitcase is going to be rather full, and I haven’t started packing my clothes yet.

In fact, one of our colleagues has referred to us travelers as “Pack Mules of the Pacific” because we do this so often.
While it certainly limits personal space for packing, we have had many friends hand carry various items to the Solomon Islands in the past for us, so I don’t mind doing the same for others.
I leave for the Solomon Islands tonight, 16 hours to Brisbane, Australia, 4 hours in the airport there, and then 3 hours to Honiara. I’ll be there for 2 weeks, then back to Australia to attend meetings and connect with people in Cairns, Melbourne, Then on to East Timor to work with colleagues to prepare education materials.

Kathryn Boswell, one of the participants in the trip to the Solomon Islands this past summer shares her experiences. Kathryn Boswell's Solomon Report 2012

It’s hard to roll all the exciting things that happened in the Solomon Islands on my recent trip, but this newsletter will give you some of the highlights!

Click here to download this pdf file: August 2012 Matzke Messenger

 

Enjoy!

Martha

Thursday was my 53rd birthday.  I didn’t think anyone here knew, but thanks to Facebook, they did.  The morning started at the Language booth and a steady stream of visitors. About mid morning, a friend (who also taught Emily and Sarah at the International School) turned up with a chocolate cake and candles!  That was a fun surprise.

Later, some of the ladies from our mission group here and the 3 lovely young ladies from the Discovery Team took me out to lunch. We went to the restaurant by the sea that has the dolphins. We had a nice lunch and enjoyed some of the chocolate cake from earlier.  (Karen, who organized the lunch is trying to keep the candles from blowing out.)

After lunch, I asked to be dropped off at the bank where we took out our mortgage. A bank officer checked on the balance of our mortgage and then I called our rental agents and asked them to come down with a check.  A few minutes later, I was able to pay off the mortgage and walked away with a receipt.  We OWN our house in the Solomons.  Anyone for a Dave Ramsey shout?  (We aren’t debt free because we DO have a mortgage in Dallas….) What a sweet way to celebrate my birthday.

We bought the house in 1999 – 6 months before we were evacuated and left the country for a year.  We continued to make the mortgage payments through that year we were in the USA, wondering if we would see the house again. The house is full of happy memories and a few headaches of termites and months went we didn’t have a renter.  So it is with great joy and thankfulness to God for his provision.  We look forward to living in the house again and in the meantime are grateful for great renters.

By mid afternoon Kit, one of the Discovery gals, and I headed back to the dorm where we are staying, while others stayed at the booth.  Our dear friends, Patson and Judy, were heading down to the Festival to see the panpipe group group from their home village and we went along as well.

One of the features of the Festival Village is a custom style house from each of the Solomon Islands provinces.  Patson, Judy and their kids are standing in front of the house from their province of Makira  along with a custom style canoe.

 

 

 

 

 

As always it’s fun to see the cultural groups.  This man is from the Solomon Islands.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And these beauties are from Fiji.

After being at the show for a couple of hours, a friend picked me up and we went up to their house for another birthday celebration.  I woke up thinking no one would know it was my birthday, but in the end, felt loved and celebrated!

 

 

 

 

Except for singing American the Beautiful on the way home this evening, there was little to make it feel like a holiday.  This morning I worked at the Languages of the Pacific booth.  We are getting quite a bit of traffic and interest. Each day we are asking people to tell us how they say a particular word in their language.  Today it was ‘paddle’.  The words are written on the whiteboard along with the language name.  People are very interested to see the words in the different languages. We also have maps and ask visitors to sign the map where there language group is located.

In the early afternoon my colleagues came down to take the afternoon shift, freeing 3 of us to go see the Festival.  First we went for lunch at a new restaurant by the sea where they have a few dolphins swimming in a small lagoon.

Then we went to the Festival Village.  It was great to finally see some of it.  There was dancing from Malaita Province and other places around the Pacific.  The Festival Committee has done a wonderful job.  The Village really is well done and amazing.  I’ll include some photos.

I hope that I sleep better tonight.  I’ve had trouble falling asleep each night and am feeling pretty tired. Enjoy the photos.