The girls have finished the first ten week term of the school year, which means they have a two week break. They are enjoying the break from school and we are enjoying having them around.

Tonight we are all heading out of town to visit friends, the Montgomerys, who work and live on another island. You may remember that Lee and Robin Montgomery are the new literacy team in our group and currently they are working in the Zabana language on Isabel Island.

Lee has been working on producing a reading primer (beginning reader) in the Zabana Language. Tim will help Lee with a final editing check on the primer and then we will help the Montgomerys to run a teacher’s training workshop to train teachers to use the reading primer. The Montgomerys have not been involved in a workshop of this type before, so it will be an opportunity for us to help them through their first workshop.

We will board a ship here in Honiara late this afternoon. We are fortunate enough to have 3 tickets in the ‘deluxe’ upstairs cabin – which means we will have space on the floor of an air conditioned cabin which should allow us enough room to stretch out and sleep. The cabin has space for 13, so we will be sharing that space. I made a last minute decision to join the family, so we probably won’t all be able to be in the cabin. Tim may end up in ‘Second Class’ which means sitting on a bench for the entire trip. We should arrive in the village of Kia tomorrow evening after about 24 hours on the ship. A pile of books will come in handy to pass the time!

While in Kia, we should be able to send out some updates by email to be posted on the Blog. We would appreciate your prayers for a safe and productive trip. Pray that the girls have fun as well.

He is risen! He is risen indeed!

We have just returned from an Easter Sunrise Service. Our church holds this service each year at the American War Memorial perched high above Honiara with a commanding view of the sea. We had over 100 in attendance this morning which is great for an event that was scheduled for 5:00 am. (In typical Solomon Islands time it actually started at 5:45 am.)

Tim was asked to preach the message at the service this morning.

Afterward we enjoyed hot cross buns and coffee together as we enjoyed the fabulous view from the memorial.

It was a blessing to again be with some of our favorite people to celebrate Easter today.

Yesterday afternoon I spent running around town with our director and his wife. We had some money that had been donated for tsunami relief so we were buying things to send out to our friend and national translation colleague, Joshua Lui. The supplies are being sent to Joshua so he can distribute the items to people in his community on Simbo Island who are in need. Simbo Island was one of the hardest hit areas.

We bought pots, towels, machetes, files to sharpen machetes, kerosene lanterns, vinyl bags for people to store their meager belongings, diapers, buckets, spoons, bowls, etc. One storekeeper donated some soccer balls so the kids would have something to play with. On one hand it felt good to be able to help purchase these items, but also humbling as I thought about how much we have and this would be all that they would own. Ouch.

Some have asked how they can help with the relief efforts. Contributions can be made to Wycliffe – designated ‘Solomon Islands Tsunami Relief’. Our group will purchase needed items that will go to the people affected. The contact information is as follows:

Wycliffe

PO Box 628200

Orlando, FL 32862-8200

Or by calling: 1-800-992-5433

Or online at: www.wycliffe.org/give

Thank you.

We are overwhelmed by all the love and concern of so many family members and friends regarding the earthquake and tsunami here in the Solomons. As many of you know by now, we felt the earthquake here in the capital city, but the epicenter of the quake and subsequent damage occurred in the western part of the Solomon Islands.

A couple of hours after the earthquake, I was in the market. I noticed there was a lot of commotion in the market and an unsettled feeling. Suddenly I realized that many people were looking out to sea and pointing. When I asked a woman what people were looking at, she told me a tidal wave. The sea was almost flat calm, but there was a small steady wave that came to shore with a ‘hissing sound’. Later we heard that it was only about 6″ high.

Of course the real story is out in the Western Province where they are assessing damage today. There are lives lost and many left homeless.

One of the islands hit the hardest was Simbo Island. If you have been following the blog, you may remember an entry called, ‘Coming Alongside’ on February 24

https://matzkemission.com/2007/02/coming-alongside.html which featured a picture of our national colleague, Joshua Lui.

Joshua is from Simbo Island and had just returned to the Western Province after attending a workshop here in the capital city. He was in the city of Gizo at the home of a relative when they noticed the water rising and quickly ran for higher ground. We are thankful that Joshua and the family members with him were unharmed although Joshua lost his bag with his belongings.

Our group here is taking up a collection for Tsunami relief which we will give to Joshua so that he can show Christ’s love to those in need on his island and the surrounding area where people are suffering. If you would like to contribute to this fund, please contact us for details.

Today was the day we have long been awaiting! We packed two crates in Michigan in November/December and delivered them to shippers in the Detroit area just before Christmas. They were trucked to Chicago… somehow got to the west coast (train, truck, ship?) and were sent by ship to Sydney where they were transferred to another ship heading to several ports here in the Pacific. The ship arrived here yesterday.

We picked up our two crates from the wharf and have been unpacking them. We took the girls out of school to enjoy unpacking their belongings. For Sarah there was great joy when we got down to her violin.

The thing Emily was most looking forward to having was her new guitar! We packed it in the crate without her knowing it. On her birthday in January we gave her a gift certificate for the guitar along with photos. So today was the first time for her to actually hold her guitar. She is thrilled!

There’s still lots of unpacking to do, but it was lots of fun to rediscover our belongings today – it felt a bit like Christmas!

Emily was very happy to come back to the Solomons and get involved in the church youth group here. She is enjoying Bible studies every other Wednesday afternoon, Sunday School and gatherings on Friday nights.

This past Friday we hosted the youth group at our house for a games night. In typical Solomon Islands style, the shoes were left at the door. You can see here the most popular shoe style!

Most of the kids got to our house on the back of a flat bed truck driven by one of the youth group leaders. There were about 50-60 youth present and the evening started with a time of worship. Solomon Islanders love music and singing!

Tim shared a devotional and then we played some group games. It was a lot of fun to host the youth group and we hope we can do it again. We are thankful for our roomy living room we were able to add to the house a couple of years ago which makes entertaining so much easier.

Here a group of kids was thinking up a short skit they could present using all the props we gave them in the box. They came up with some very creative skits!

The house next door to us has many people living in it. Sometimes it feels like we are living next door to an entire village! The bits and stories we hear about some of the residents sound like episodes out of a soap opera.

One of the inhabitants is this three month old baby shown here with his sister. Often we hear the baby crying (and I tend to get rather annoyed). On Monday he cried the entire day! Then I saw the baby with the grandmother who was trying to comfort the baby. She told me that the mother often goes to town for the whole day and leaves it with the family. Because all babies here are breastfed, he has often been hungry; hence the hours of crying.

Nearly in tears both by the sadness of the situation and disgust with my own attitudes toward the crying baby, I got in the car and went to town to by a bottle and some formula.

I find myself struggling with the whole situation. Part of me hates to ‘enable’ the mother to not take care of the child because the more care we give, the less she is likely to give, but another part of me only sees the need of this innocent hungry child. A child like this would be in serious danger if it got sick with malaria or another illness, besides the basic malnutrition. I may not be able to right all the wrongs of the world, but I decided I couldn’t let this hungry child die due to lack of proper nutrition.

Now the baby’s sisters often come to the house to bring back the empty bottle or ask for another one for their brother. This week they have also come to help weed our yard or help around the house – even insisting on weeding in the pouring rain. Today the older sister came with an armload of orchids for me to plant because she knows I like orchids. While she was pulling weeds, she asked, “Are you going to church tomorrow?”.

“Yes. Would you like to go along with us and go to Sunday School?”, I answered.

She quickly answered, “Yes!”




Our ministry here is mainly literacy, but it’s not hard to find ourselves in ministry ‘outside the box’ of our job title. I guess for any Christian, it is part of our job description;

And if you give even a
cup
of
cold

water
(or bottle of formula?) to one of the least of my followers, you will surely be rewarded.

Last week I received this Certificate of Appreciation in the mail for 25 years of service with Wycliffe. It represents teaching missionary kids in Mexico, Philippines, Texas and
Papua New Guinea. Since 1998 we have been serving here in the Solomon Islands as literacy specialists. Wherever I have served with Wycliffe, it’s been great being a part of giving people God’s Word in their own language.

When I look at this certificate, I can’t help but think of the many people who have supported me through the 25 years in friendship, with prayers and financial support. It’s only through your partnership that this has all been possible. You will always be special to us because of the way that God has used your giving in our lives and ministry.

This morning I was looking forward to a full day that I could dedicate to working of the Bible page for the newspaper. I’d collected some more information, downloaded a new font and I thought I was good to go. As I was doing something else in the house, Tim sat down at my computer to check on something and the computer monitor was blank.

After several hours, Tim has not been able to boot the computer despite trying many different things. He has gone to borrow a computer disc from someone else in town that has Macintosh computers to see if that will help the situation. Would you please pray that the computer would boot up and that Tim would be able to get it fixed? I really use my computer a lot! There are no repair shops in country that we know of that can fix Mac computers so if Tim can’t get it working, it quickly gets complicated. (I am writing this from Tim’s computer.)