I apologize in advance for being a bit long-winded here… there is a lot to discuss on this topic, and while I don’t expect everyone to be interested in all this stuff, I have received some emails from prospective missionaries lately asking for answers to some field-life and money questions, and thought those that send emails are probably not the only ones interested.

Our Numbers.

First of all, our missions agency, NTM, does a killer job of looking out for us here in PNG. They faithfully number-crunch every year to give us a good idea of what we will need coming in every month, and that is what they call our recommended monthly support level. Any NTM missionary is allowed to go to the field at 75% of that number because there are lots of variables at play in this game of tribal missions, and you may not need all 100% of that support level… but you could need more!

Currently we can expect in any given month to hit at least 86% of our recommended monthly support level (as of January 2012, for a couple without children in a church-planting ministry in PNG, NTM recommends 6120.00 USD per month). We don’t usually hit that number, but surpass it by about 20% because of all you unexpected and sporadic givers!! Not everyone can give on a monthly basis and we TOTALLY understand that – and praise the Lord that many of you still give as irregularly as you do. This a HUGE blessing when it comes through, and Evelyn and I can think of many occasions where sporadic generous one-time gifts have REALLY helped out with a sporadic and unpredictable need. Like I said earlier, there are lots of people back in the US giving sacrificially to keep us here in this country doing this work, and we are eternally grateful!

*Note that many of the numbers here are good estimates only, and by the time any of you who might be coming as missionaries actually get here to PNG, they will likely have gone up as the economic climate there in US really affects the exchange rate here, and drives up prices here in PNG.

Right now we live here on base for about 1200 bucks a month – rent, propane, electricity, water, food, entertainment… the whole shebang. We plan on paying out about 30% of everything that comes in foreign and domestic taxes, and (hopefully this summer) when we actually start a church planting ministry, another 30-ish percent of everything that comes in will go towards that (printing, communications, travel, paying national help, airstrip and station maintenance). Currently, without a church planting ministry, we spend a lot of money looking for one in addition to the plethora of other “optional” expenses that crop up. We try to help finance some of the projects and maintenance on base here when we can, we fly ourselves and other missionaries around the region for survey type stuff or to help other missionaries with building projects or other needs. Orientation requires us to fly ourselves into a tribal location, and set up a supply flight or two while we’re there (bush orientation). We also still have to get to the other NTM base in Goroka before we actually allocate. We are saving anything else above and beyond that comes in monthly for allocation. For those of you considering coming out here to PNG as church planters… trust NTM, you want to be at least at 75%, and saving like mad once you get here if you want to be well prepared to allocate. You will really need to be at 100% if you want to get into one of those tougher-to-get-to places.

Allocation Costs.

So aside from the regular monthly costs of doing ministry out here, there is significant “start up” costs to consider as well. When calculating the cost of “moving in” to a tribal location there are LOTS of variables to consider. First of all, chances are, you will most likely need to use the Mission’s Cessna 206 to get you, your family, and your stuff into the bush. The way New Tribes Mission Aviation/Airlines (NTMA) works is basically based on weight. We have a rate schedule (which changes with the cost of fuel, maintenance and licensing) which breaks down the cost-per-kilogram for flights to and from certain tribal locations, and we have to make a minimum weight per flight round trip to get that rate. Otherwise, we CHARTER the flight at an expensive commercial rate. Our base here in the Sepik region of PNG supplies tribal works between 0h20m and 1h20m away via the Cessna 206. It is about 0.60 USD per kg for the closer ones, and about 1.60 USD per kg for the farthest.

*Note: Most missionaries fly in supplies (petrol, propane, groceries) every 3-6 weeks, and flights are usually coordinated as a team. Each Cessna 206 load can carry about 400 kg each way.

So the actual price tag on moving into a tribe depends on a lot of variables, and right now we are looking at a few different locations to move into, and the logistics of each differ CONSIDERABLY. Below is a really rough brainstorm through the logistics of our future move into a tribal group… We are really praying about the following three tribes!

Allocation Location 1 – Umeda

This place is really close to the Indonesian border, and has a functioning airstrip we could use about an 8 hour hike away. It will be closer to the 1.60 per kilo rate to make those particular flights from our base, however, there is a closer town we could supply out of which could make our rates drop a bit if we don’t use NTMA, but MAF instead. HOWEVER…. The 8 hour away airstrip isn’t very helpful for allocation OR regular supply flights, and the village we’d likely end up moving into does NOT have an airstrip right now, so we’d need a) fly stuff into that 8 hour walk away, or b) find a truck and drive stuff up a logging road 14 hours from the closer town … to make loads for a chopper to easily shuttle to our front door (choppers are about 800 USD per hour at the moment… OUCH!). NUTS. For allocation, we’d need to move lots of stuff from our base here into the bush… things like our solar system, steel roofing, water tanks or bladders, plumbing, lumber, plywood.

Depending on the number of men in your location, you can pay your tribe to clear trees and build an airstrip (you’ll need 1-200 workers, 6-9 months, and about 30,000 USD – sometimes it is TOUGH to scrape together enough people in some of these smaller tribes.). If you can’t scrape together enough people interested in making money, your team will have to pay a ministry called Friends in Action about 100,000 USD to get heavy equipment into your location and bulldoze a strip.

*Note: Big, tangible projects like airstrips are usually pretty easy things to fundraise for.

Long term, in non-river locations, it will almost always be cheaper to install an airstrip – even when your price per kilo is 1.60 USD.

Location 1 is looking to cost about 60,000 USD per team unit to allocate to (lumber, flights, building materials, fuel). That does not include our airstrip costs if we want to build an airstrip as part of our allocation costs. OUCH, right?

Allocation Location 2 – Pei

This location is a 1.5 hour boat ride from an existing airstrip called Hauna. This place is on a branch of a major river. Our team will likely need a ~20,000 USD boat motor and then a dugout canoe or two to get to and from the airstrip for allocation and supply. The flight cost to the airstrip would probably be about 0.80 USD per kilo and then the boat fuel to and from the location. Long term, this location won’t probably need its own airstrip, so will be cheaper overall, and there is also a logging company that has moved in nearby, making moving lumber in much cheaper because their sawmill is on close and we may not require shipping lumber by air. This location will still require some flights of materials into the local airstrip, but fewer flights = cheaper allocation! I would guess this location will cost about 40,000 USD per team unit to get in.

*Note: All of this assumes quite a bit – the more bush we can live, the cheaper everything will be, but we are not the only ones moving into the bush. Our team has 3 or 4 units and about 5 children between us. The whole building and allocation process will likely take 3-6 months, and you can use your imagination as to how that time will look for us (think jungle camping – YAY!).

Allocation Location 3 – Lembena

This work is likely to provide a simpler allocation process logistically as another mission has been there and since left… leaving 2 airstrips in different villages (WIN!) in the language group. We could possibly need to move into a village without an airstrip yet- and even a 2 hour hike from the supply airstrip is not very helpful for retrieving stuff from supply flights (enter… the chopper shuttle). This location is not too far from our supply base… I would guess that we’re looking at ~1.00 USD per kg to either airstrip and about 40,000 USD per team unit to get in there, but this location is a bit mountainous, and depending on elevation, solar electricity may not be the route we want to go as the mountain regions get a TON of weather that isn’t conducive to a PV system alone. We’ll NEED at least a honda EU2000i (which a generous supporter has already purchased for us) to charge our batteries when we have limited sun. We’ll likely need to fly in petrol more consistently and/or invest in wind turbines or a hydroelectric system to supplement our PV systems.

Food for Thought.

So I hope this has given you who are interested some stuff to think about. When I read an article like this a few years ago during our fundraising time, I have to confess that I was really overwhelmed by how much this job costs, and a bit discouraged. Over the 15-20 years it will take to reach ONE people group, there will be approximately 15,000,000.00 USD given to make it happen. From where I am now, seeing the Lord provide for us every step of the way, I am confident that wherever He chooses to take us, He’ll continue to provide for His work to be done. It is a privilege to be given this particular vantage point of man-on-the-ground… actually being in a spot to see God providing the way that he does. I hope the big numbers you might see encourage you instead of convince you that being a part of this work would be too hard.

If you are on your way over here to be a missionary – be encouraged! He will get you here if this is where you are supposed to be. If you are thinking of joining the financial support team – be encouraged! As small a percentage that a 20.00 or even 5.00 USD gift on a monthly basis might seem… it is a HUGE blessing and help to the teams on the ground here (take it from me!)!

Video bios of all of our team members to come soon, and hopefully we’ll have a tribe picked out as well! Please pray for all of this stuff to work out as we are in some pretty exciting times right now! Potential survey trip on May10… Please pray that works out! May17 we start traveling again for a brief time… we plan on going to the NTM base in Goroka to finish up our last bit of orientation and then we go to Cairns, Australia for a little R&R before we dive back into some serious allocation planning! We’re praying to move into a tribe in July, August, or September so anyone interested in coming out to help with building had better get plane tickets, tool belts, vaccines, passports and visas on your radar!

Since that time, there have been many set backs and hardships that have threatened to derail the efforts of the Kopfs and Copleys. Violence and genocide (a neighboring tribal group will not rest until all Hewans are dead) have made it impossible for the families to live full time in their original Hewa village, Fiawena. Despite these obstacles, the missionaries are excited to report that the Gospel message is still moving forward.

With all of these serious obstacles being thrown in their path, the Hewa team enlisted the help of our Sepik family (all the missionaries out here in our region have a really awesome family-like relationship) to help them move their single house (they share it) from village number two (number one was Fiawena) to village number three. CRAZINESS. This was an absolutely HUGE undertaking and an amazing opportunity to camp for a week in the beautiful rugged mountains all while working hard to rebuild this missionary team’s house. Here is a video/photo slideshow of Chad’s (one of the dudes on the building team) outlining the trip.

VideoCaption 1: The house originally stood in a village with an airstrip called Fiawena. Both the Copleys and the Kopfs had houses there but when the violence started breaking out, missionaries and many of the new Hewa believers moved a 14 hour hike away to the village of Kulufundu. They moved only one house to the new village.

VideoCaption 2: Kulufundu is where this particular project started, with disassembly of the little two-story house, and the assembly of chopper loads to easily move the house piece by piece to the new village.

VideoCaption 3: The new village is only a two mile hike away from Kulufundu, but there is a 1500ft elevation difference and can take quite a while to hike through the rugged terrain – impossible to move the house without the chopper. The new village, Yif, is home to less than a hundred Hewans. As the chopper lands at the new site, you can make out the rough outline of the new airstrip being cleared. With so little local man power, this airstrip will take about 5 years to complete.

VideoCaption 4: Once the loads made it to the new site, we coordinated with Hewans to move everything to the construction site. Nearly everything needed to stay organized, as everything was numbered and labelled to make reconstruction as easy as possible.

VideoCaption 5: My main job nearly the whole week was something we call “slabbing.” This is a rough way of cutting lumber from big local trees with a chainsaw rig often referred to as an “Alaskan Saw Mill.” I am still pretty green with this, but my partner Tony Sutton showed me the ropes, and we cut a ton of nice new lumber to replace stuff that couldn’t be reused.

VideoCaption 6: If you look closely, you will notice that there are little bees ALL OVER EVERYTHING. These pests are called sweat-bees, and are a monstrous annoyance. They don’t sting, but they drink the sweat right off your body, and she you are out here working in the sun, you sweat all the time. Real stinging honey bees join the sweat-bee party too occasionally, leaving you cautious not to just swat blindly. We all wound up with stings at some point, mouths and ears full of the insects, and blowing sweat-bee carcasses out of our sinuses for days.

This was a great trip, and an amazing learning experience. Hopefully we’ll be moving into our own people group one day soon… and maybe some of you guys will be able to come out and help us with a project similar to this one!

Currently, the Kopfs and Copleys rotate into and out of Yif, and are assisting some of the most eager believers in their evangelistic outreach to the nearby Hewa dialects. At the same time they are continuing to translate the New Testament, and develop Bible teaching materials. They are praising the Lord for how His Word is impacting the lives and culture of the Hewa people, but need some serious help if they are to finish the work in Hewa in their lifetime. The rugged terrain is a physical boundary between them and the other villages, and the outside world. Hewa is one of the most untouched people groups left in PNG. Because of the terrain, moving and keeping missionaries in the Hewa villages is costly (it’s a helicopter-only location), but with so many dialects left to reach, the Hewa team is in desperate need of some more well-trained and versatile personnel to finish the task.

Since last we posted, we have lived in the jungle for two months in the Sino Tribe, enjoyed an awesome field conference, did a gnarly building project for missionaries in the Hewa tribe, completed study of our second language, joined a Church Planting Team (we are now in the process of surveying tribal groups to find one to move into) and finished our taxes. WHEW.

It sounds like a lot, and it is – I am pretty bummed that there has been little time or opportunity to throw together much video, I love doing those, and it is somewhat therapeutic as well. Even if I were to put one together, I would not be able to upload it from the spotty internet connection here on the base.

However, even though I have done no videos for the blog here per sé, I HAVE done some videos for other purposes. Below is a video update we put together right before we left for Bush Orientation, and sent to our sending church in Winona Lake, IN – CCC.

I just uploaded that seconds before this post was published, by paying per megabyte using a USB cellular modem (the equivalent of a Verizon or Sprint internet card out there in the US – except WAY slower). Looking forward to receiving our first TEAM purchase from the port here in Wewak, it comes on a ship from Australia in a week or two… a Satellite dish! Out here, a VSAT dish is the most economical way to upload pictures and photos to you all out there in the land flowing with milk and bandwidth. We as a team will need something to catch emails when out in the tribe, and the VSAT dish will allow us more than just email!

RIGHT after we returned from our two month jungle stint (which deserves a post or two in it’s own right) we were thrown into the Annual Sepik Conference. This was a killer time of fellowship for the whole Sepik missionary family to enjoy together. We got the opportunity to meet almost every missionary that works our here in this part of PNG! Awesome! It was a lot to take in RIGHT after we got back from the bush, but the Lord gave us the grace we needed to pull through and really enjoy the rad company!

Right after conference, it was team time.

Here we are. The rag-tag group of people that God will hopefully use to reach an entire people group for the first time ever! Like the bush orientation experience, this deserves a post in it’s own right, and will likely get one as this is a HUGE answer to prayer, prayer request, and praise… ALL at the same time. But, until I get team member bios scrounged together, This link will have to suffice:

Next Step

That is a link to a post written by a teammate of ours (and avid blogger herself), Jessica George. She posted about our little team formation almost right after it happened! This chick is a rad writer, and a rad mom to a rad family – totally worth reading!

NOW we need to fine a people group to move into! One day, One step at a time, right? There are some exciting tentative survey treks out into the jungle JUST ABOUT on the books, so those are going to need some serious prayer. Those trips can be pretty rigorous, dangerous, fun, or all three! VERY excited to be able to share with you the names of just two of the tribes we are thinking about going into. PLEASE PRAY for wisdom regarding:

• Umeda
• Isky

Pray also for the people in these groups. It is our belief that there is no outpost of the gospel in these groups’ native language – so we go to double, and triple check, scout the location for strategic and logistics information so we can make an educated decision on whether or not to move into one of these groups, and where exactly to move. More to come as we get it (and are able to, for contingency’s sake).

Lastly, both Evie and I are completely finished with NCLA (NATIONAL Culture & Language Acquisition). This means we are pretty close to fluent int the National Language (TokPisin) and have a grasp on national culture strong enough to communicate the gospel effectively. This has been no easy task, and we’re proud to say that we have come this far! We had some serious oral evaluations to check our progress with the language, and we were to write papers explaining a random selection of cultural topics. In addition to my paper, I did this little interview video to give you guys a sound of the language, and a feel for the spiritual darkness that even the city dwellers here in PNG are steeped in.

Bush orientation is a pretty intense time of total immersion in language and culture. It is a kind of a dry run of the whole tribal church planting experience. The living conditions will closely mirror the conditions we will face when we move into our own tribe, and so it is a good time to get a really clear picture of what precisely this job demands of us out here in the Sepik Region of PNG.

On Friday, Jan20, we leave for a village called Sino. This village has a church established there in the tribal language, and it is this tribal church that will be evaluating whether or not we are prepared to “hack it” as missionaries in the bush. This is an awesome way for new believers out in the middle of the jungle, who are not in a position to financially support the work being done in their country, to support the expanding of the kingdom in another important way. We will be discipled by the believing men and women of the Sino church, and get some serious instruction on language, culture, and how to live in the jungle.

Sino is stationed right on the Sepik river, which is a highway of sorts here in PNG. Along the river, culture, ideas, cargo, money, and language move pretty freely, affecting villages perched along this meandering waterway in as many ways as there are villages. Below are some views of the Sepik river from the house we’ll be living in. There are perks to being a missionary out here in the middle of nowhere.

Here is an image of the house we’ll call home for the next two-ish months…

Living in a home like this, as rad as it may seem, takes anyone some adjustment. This is another huge reason for bush orientation. To keep from getting completely fried with shock at the contrast, bush orientation is the perfect blend of immersion and adjustment; a great environment to recalibrate expectations, and do some planning for the future when we’ll be building your own ministry center (office/clinic/home/teaching house) for life and work in our own tribe one day.

Sino has an airstrip, so we’ll fly right into the tribe, and unload all the stuff we’ll be bring straight into the house we’ll be living in. Being on the Sepik river, however, this airstrip is key to supplying other missionaries’ Bible Translation and Church Development efforts as cargo moved into the airstrip can easily be boated up river to neighboring villages.

There are two other tribal churches the airstrip in Sino services, Uriai and Siawi. While in Sino, it is our desire to visit the missionaries and the churches in these villages and learn all we can from their hard work. Huge resources to tap, and great people who have given their lives to seeing the Gospel taken to a tongue that has not yet had it.

Here is a video describing a bit of the work in Uriai (only a canoe ride away from Sino!)

Here is a video describing the work going on in neighboring Siawi (only a canoe ride + hike away from Sino!)

SUCH a privilege it is to be so close to such giants in our faith, such faithful servants. We have a lot to learn yet, and who better to learn from, right? We are encouraged by these awesome people, and pray we can encourage them as they finish the task of carrying the truth into these dark places.

So the team at Sino is now comprised of these two couples, none of which are American. The great commission is not only something for Americans, I am reminded! From left to right in the photo above, Sien (who calls Holland home) and her husband Kelly (a Canadian) are the people who built the house we’ll be living in. We have had the privilege of getting to know them well over the last four months here, as they serve in administration roles from the base here in Wewak as the translation work they are doing doesn’t require them to be on site in Sino all the time. As I write this, they are on a bush plane heading back here from a trip into Sino where they continue to disciple believers as well (they live in the apartment directly above us when they are here in Wewak). The Tertels are the other couple in Sino (both of them are German) and have been in Sino for the majority of our stay here in PNG, so we have not really had much time to get to know them. That is going to change here soon, as they will be the only other white and english-speaking folk anywhere near us! Please pray for our relationship with this couple, and for grace as these couples from different parts of the world, who’s native languages are completely different, are thrown together for two months. We are confident this is going to be a great time, but we can use all the prayer we can get!

So we’re a bit fried from packing and prep already, planning and not having “all the information” is trying, and we sometimes feel like we are only guessing at what we’ll need and what we have to bring. Constantly feeling behind and unprepared is jarring and discouraging… but we need to remind ourselves that there is nothing we can really do to prepare completely for this stuff. We are going to have these small regrets like “I wish I would have brought ___ ” or “Why did I bring this, I haven’t used it the whole time I’ve been here!” but this is all part of the training. Please pray for our morale during this time of moving AGAIN… When we come back, there will be even more people on base here for the Annual Sepik Conference, so all of our stuff needs to go into storage, and we will not be moving right back into the apartment we’re in right now… we’ll be sharing a house with our friends’ the Rees family temporarily. The excitement never ends here in the land of mystery.

So my little bush trip to the Nimo tribe went GREAT. I made it back safe and sound, and learned a TON about life in the bush while I was there. I put together a little highlight reel to share the great experience – but be warned, there is a *bit* of indigenous nudity, so I’d slap a PG-13 rating right on this post.

Video Caption 1: At the beginning, you got to see a big chunk of NTM’s Regional flight program… our Pilot Jon and the Cessna 206. This job could not be done without these two, and all the churches and individuals that support them doing this work!

Video Caption 2: We got the opportunity to fly into one of our most remote airstrips in PNG located on the land of the Iteri tribe. Missionaries have phased out of this tribe as the work there is done, and the Iteris have a growing church there to this day.

Video Caption 3: When the plane left… A slight feeling of dread ran over me – I am stuck. The nearest radio is a 2 day hike away, and things in the jungle could potentially get really scary, really fast. We then proceeded to hike through the jungle for a long time.

Video Caption 4: After a long hike over log bridges, through waist high mud, and river crossings, we made it to the village, and the real work began… for Andrew. Discipleship.

Video Caption 5: BAPTISM! There were quite a few new believers since Andrew had been to the village last, as well as some growth in some of the church leadership. It was SO great to be a part of the baptisms with these guys (and gals).

So that was it. It felt a lot dirtier than it looked in the video, and swamp hiking is not really too much fun at all- but it was so amazing to meet brothers and sisters in Christ out there in the bush.

I have way too much to talk about to bore everyone with the details here, so please… if you are interested, get the play-by-play as I write about it over at my personal blog by clicking the link below.

onechrisjon.es – Nimo Day by Day

Thanks for praying, as I know many of you did. Thankfully nobody had to attempt that hike with broken bones!

We are celebrating the season with a different family this year, one that isn’t bound by blood, but by faith and mission. We are privileged to be living out here in the Jungle!

We’re PROGRESSING in our language abilities (that is actually the name of the level we’re at)… Evie is about 5/9 and I am about 6/9 of the way through study of language #1. We don’t even know what language #2 is yet, but we do know it will be in a pretty remote location here in PNG.

Luckily, we are not here without experienced friends to help us through this whole process, and veteran missionaries are helping us with each step we take here! It is so great to have such a rad new family!

The Murrays are part of our new family, and have been part of the New Tribes Mission here in PNG for nearly 30 years. Not long ago, they were as rookie as we are now – but have always been cooler than us. They are not American (+1 coolness point), but British (-1 coolness point), They talk funny (+1 coolness point), and he is a nuclear physicist turned missionary (+1,000,000ish coolness points), and they lived in the Nimo tribal group, helped develop literacy there, helped to develop a Nimo church, and translated much of the New Testament into the Nimo language (+4 coolness points).

Monday, I will be taking my first PNG bush trip with Andrew Murray and (a buddy/neighbor of mine) Ryan Webb. We will be getting on a bush plane (A) bound for the YembiYembi village (B) on Monday morning, where we will unload all our gear to lighten the plane. We will wait on the bush airstrip for the pilot to return, as he makes a side-trip to a nearby village, but can’t land the fully loaded plane on the softer airstrip. When we load back up again, we go west towards the Indonesian border to land in a village called Iteri (C).

More about Iteri…
More about YembiYembi…
More about Nakui…

Once we’re in Iteri, We’ll be greeted by Nimo believers, who will help us unload the plane and carry gear and (the purpose of the trip really…) translated bible lessons back to their village.

From Iteri, we will have a 2 hour haul to the Nakui tribe (D), and Nimo (E) is another 1.5 hour hike beyond that. (The last 2 were impossible to find on google maps, so I had to guess based on maps in the survey department here).

Once we get in, it will probably be afternoon, and we will have gifts of food to distribute, bible lessons to hand out, and plenty of people to meet and greet.

When things settle down a bit, some cooking will probably start up, and we’ll just mingle with Nimo believers until we’re too tired to do any more!

I am not exactly sure where we’re going to sleep, but when I started scouring the New Tribes photo archives for all these pictures of Nimo, I ran across this photo of one of the missionary bush houses there. Maybe we’ll sleep in there!

I couldn’t help but wonder what our bush house will be like one day… can’t wait to meet some tribal believers, and see the Nimo church and village in action! WHAT a privilege!

We can only bring about 7kg of stuff along (food, gear, backpack, toiletries)… and I am going to be taking my waterproof GoPro Hero, 3 8gig SD cards, 3 spare batteries, and a little tripod to get some video of the journey. I will hopefully be able to catch some great footage, but last time I used the GoPro here, the humidity kept fogging the camera housing and messing up the video! Hopefully, the anti-fog strips my mom sent me will work out, and the video will be clear as crystal and uploaded in a few weeks! Until then…

Video Caption 1: We have TONS of these huge fruit bats here that everyone calls “flying foxes” and they swarm here at nights. Reminds us of that part in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, where they are all riding the elephants under a canopy of huge bats. It really does happen, and apparently you can even “fish” them out of the sky by swinging an empty hook around on the end of your fishing pole! These things are nasty looking, and seeing them dead in the markets smoked and splayed is pretty nasty!

Video Caption 4: Our buddy willie is officially a man in his village, and has been through the coming of age ritual which involves some drugs, some starvation, some dehydration, some hunting, and finally some scarification. They carve themselves up to look like crocodiles here on the septic river. Pretty intimidating, huh?

Being so close to the sea, and almost right on the equator, we get lots of direct sunlight, which makes for lots of humidity and rain. Lightning strikes more frequently and intensely the closer you get to the equator, and it is lightning that has stolen internet from our entire base for this whole last month! We hope to get it back up again by christmas, but until then, we must travel to an upscale hotel on the outskirts of town to stay connected, as 3G has not quite made it to our neck of the woods yet!

There is so much green here, TONS of edible stuff grows wild here, and if all you did was forage, you could (and many do) thrive here. We have a great many creepy crawly friends we share our house with – Geckos, roaches, rats, and ants are the most prevalent of our house guests, but every once in a while we will find a creature we had never seen before! It all comes with the territory, and our friends and new family here in PNG are teaching us to take it all in stride!

Our Next-Door Neighbor’s Blog

Oh, and by the way… you should check out our next-door neighbors’ blog – their family has recently just returned from their bush orientation in a tribe called Mariama, and we regularly find her writing accurate and entertaining.
We think you’ll dig it!

These are most of the Kreer Heights Hoodlums, the the boys Chris hangs out with.

The older boys are involved with a weekly Bible study that we (our mission) has started. It is a great experience for all involved, discipleship and teaching done here will hopefully bear fruit in the form of a nationalized church planting movement one day.

The last month has been a blur, and here is a really inadequate highlight reel thrown together on our phone from the videos we’ve been collecting with it. We’ve been here 6 weeks, and it feels like 2. A bit of a better video is in the works here, coming down the pipe, for sure.

Lots more to come, there is almost too much to cover, so we’ll have to cover it all as it becomes more pertinent to ministry here!

Life has been all about orientation lately… seeing how things work here in PNG. We live in a city in PNG called Wewak, and the bases here are populated by support workers and 3 other orientee families. Everyone works hard to keep missionaries in the jungle equipped to do ministry there – Really an amazing place to be. Because we will one day be supported by these guys when we are in the bush, it really helps to know the kinds of things they can and can’t do, so we know what exactly we are asking of them when we need, for example, literacy materials printed, or medical supplies flown in, or a house built in the middle of the jungle. Good stuff to know!

Video

Step1 LAX

Our flight left LAX at 11:20pm Pacific time on Saturday, Sep10. The day of our flight was filled with family and farewells in ChinoHills, CA – about an hour from LosAngeles International Airport [LAX]. We had all of our bags packed ahead of time, and really got to enjoy family and friends before our departure.

Qantas Airlines was our service to Brisbane, and the airline personnel at check in were very accomodating of all of our excess baggage. We ended up paying only half of what we expected in overweight and excess baggage fees!

The flight was an overnight, and went smoothly, the 747 landed 12 hours later at 06:15am local time on Monday, Sep12.

Step2 BNE

Our layover in Brisbane International [BNE] lasted a few hours, which we used to browse the Duty Free, brush our teeth, exchange some currency, and snag some Australian Coffee (WIN).

The cleanliness and friendliness stood in sharp contrast to LosAngeles, and watching people driving on the opposite side of the road was a bit disorienting (we’re used to it now, though!).

Step3 POM

Port Moresby International [POM] is where our travels really started to get interesting. Our PacificBlue flight was delayed about an hour and our schedule started looking pretty tight. We were pretty worried about making our last flight to our final destination.

One of the first things you notice walking into the POM terminal is the way the air hangs with humidity. Next, is the excellent way the wet stagnant air conducts the strong scent of body odor. Welcome to the third world.

We had to clear Immigration and Customs in record time in order to make our next flight, and once our bags had been collected, inspected, and X-Rayed, our Mission’s Government Representatives helped get us onto our AirNiugini flight for our final Destination, Wewak.

Step4 WWK

The last leg of our giant leap was (surprisingly) the longest, and (surprisingly) the most stressful of any this far. Thinking we were in the home stretch, and thankful that we made it through customs without hitch and in time for the last flight had us walking on air.

We boarded our flight from POM with about 65 other nationals, and 5 or so other white skins sprinkled in. AirNiugini is a way that many nationals commute between jobs in Moresby and surrounding industrial areas and their homes in the more rural parts of the country. The smell of the airport hung steady in the recycled air in the cabin of the plane, but (surprisingly) you get used to it.

The flight to Wewak [WWK] from POM is usually a 2.5 hour affair that stops about halfway through at the regional airport of Madang. Passengers were let off who lived in the region, and others commuting to Wewak boarded. The plane was refueled and then we sat.

The Flight Attendant then announced over the F100′s intercom that due to technical difficulties, passengers would all have to get off the plane taking all personal items with them.

We grabbed all our carry-on baggage, dragged it into the one-room “airport terminal”, and found seats on one of the wooden benches awaiting further instructions or information from an authority. It never came.

Hours later, we realized how reliant westerners are on some sort of authority to constantly provide information and instruction. We found ourselves fighting frustration that nobody was communicating what was going on with the flight, or what to do with our stuff, or where to get food or drink… High and Dry. It didn’t look like anybody was doing anything. Everyone just sat in wait.

To make the rest of the long story short, We ended up staying at a “resort” in the region, awaiting another plane to finish the flight to WWK.

Tired and frustrated at the lack of communication, we set out alarm for 04:30am so we would be certain to catch the shuttle back to the airport in the morning (nobody knew when it would come, but we did know that the flight would leave between 06:30am and 08:30am).

FINAL DESTINATION
We arrived at our final destination at about 07:45am local time on Tuesday, Sep13. We were greeted at the airport by friends and new family, but were disappointed to find that our bags had been left in Madang.

View Larger Map

We were driven to our new home in Wewak (see the green arrow in the map above), only a five minute drive from the airport. We were exhausted from the adventure, but excited to experience this new place. Everyone stares at you with what seems to be a scowl, but a wave or greeting quickly turns into a smile. So many people walking the streets or driving tough looking Toyota HiLux pickups on the “wrong” side of the road reminds us of pictures we have seen of Africa and Haiti.

One small step taken… Visas and Plane tickets secured. September 10 at 2300h is our ETD – to arrive 2 days later at 1730h local time. We’ll be in the air all day 9/11 (headed AWAY from the USA). This day has been a long time coming!

Wewak is the city where we’re headed (black dot in the dark red shape in the map above – click the map for the wikipedia article on The Sepik), in the part of PNG known as the East Sepik Province (a.k.a. “The Sepik”). Known for its CRAZY long, winding and unpredictable Sepik River, This region is home to about 350,000 natives… PNG is BEAUTIFUL!

This is an HQ for all the missionaries that work in this region, and will be home for us during this next 1-2 year phase of mission work. Here we will determine the people group we will end up working in, the best way to reach them, the teammates we will be reaching them with, and learning a trade language. LOTS of work to get started on soon, and we can’t wait to dive in! Please keep praying!