‘m sitting in the MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship) hangar in the capital city. My boss and I left the hotel where we were staying about 4 am. Tim is still there for another day of meetings before he travels to Melbourne for meetings on Thursday.

When we arrived in Port Moresby after an hour and half flight from Cairns. A vehicle and driver from the office here picked us up. We were expecting to be taken to the hangar right away for the flight to the highlands where Ukarumpa, the home of SIL in Papua New Guinea is located. But we were told our flight was delayed until this afternoon so we traveled to the SIL office here in Port Moresby.

When we arrived at the office, Jim and MIchelle, the office manager and his wife were preparing to go to the US Embassy to attend an election function. Apparently it was an opportunity to meet with other Americans and watch the results come in. Before they left I had an opportunity to chat with Michelle who handles public relations. It was great to meet her and to learn more about what was happening in the country and offer the help of our Pacific Area office.

I also had the opportunity to meet the office staff. These employees provide services such as finances and PNG visa and work permit applications. I was able to get information on how we will obtain a student visa for Sarah so that she can live and attend school at Ukarumpa next year when we return to the South Pacific.

We were planning on meeting with the head of the PNG Bible Translation Association next week, but now that we had time this morning, we took the opportunity to meet with David Gela, director of BTA and Steven Thomas who is responsible for church relations.
Tim and I know David and Steven from the years we lived in PNG and it was delightful to have this opportunity to chat together over mugs of PNG coffee.

The topic of our discussion was upcoming meetings in February of 2013 in the Solomon Islands. The Pacific Council of Churches meeting that is held every four years will be hosted in Honiara. This will be an outstanding time for our Bible translation partners in the Pacific to talk to church leaders about the translation work that is being done around the Pacific and the 462 languages in the Pacific that are still without translations.

Solomon Islands Bible Translation and Literacy Programme have requested the opportunity to host these leaders for an evening meal and program designed to educate these church leaders about the remaining needs in the Pacific. We discussed ideas for the venue, program and things that could be given to the church leaders to better equip them to share about the need for Bible translation as they return to their homes scattered across the Pacific.

As we drove around town it was fun to see signs of the recent visit of Prince Charles and Camilla. Apparently Prince Charles included some Tok Pisin in his speech – much to the delight of Papua New Guineans. He announced in Pijin that he is, ‘namba wan pikinini blong Mrs. Kwin’ (number one child of Mrs. Queen). Wish I could have been here to hear the crowd’s response to that!

Now we are at the hangar waiting for the last passenger to arrive so we can board the JAARS flight on a Kodiak which will take us to Ukarumpa. Oh, and our pilot today took me back a few years too.  When we first adopted Emily he was working in the Philippines and we stayed with him and his wife the first 3 nights after picking up Emily. Now he lives and works here in Papua New Guinea. That was a fun re-connect.

 

Saturday Tim and I spent the day exploring Cairns.  It’s a touristy town on the northeast coast of Australia. We walked down to a bus stop and caught a bus into town. We walked along the esplanade.  It was a beautiful sunny day and it was enjoyable to walk the streets and explore a market.  We went to a shopping center so we could buy a few groceries for the weekend.

It’s interesting being in Australia, because you see quite a few Pacific Islanders in stores and on the streets.  I get excited when I see one and start mentally trying to guess where they are from.  We saw a number of families from Papua New Guinea as we walked around and were tempted to interact with them in Pijin as we heard them speaking Tok Pisin of PNG.

On Sunday, we took a special excursion on the Kuranda Scenic Railway.  The rail line runs up the mountain through a rainforest into Kuranda.    We were advised to take the old fashioned slow-moving train up the mountain in the morning when we were fresh, and enjoy the scenic cable car ride back down. Great advice.  It was lovely. We had a wonderful day which I will let you experience through the photos.

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Sunday night we had a meal with our colleagues who have come in for the same meetings and this morning, we begin the meetings.

 

 

 

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