Pictures ...

Jeri and Hannah at East Cape. The Eastern most point on the island of Papua New Guinea.






Hannah learns to climb a tree.










Hairy Hannah!









Craig and Hannah at East Cape. Yes, still the eastern most point of PNG.






For our beloved friends who are educators. Perhaps you should think twice about complaints regarding your facilities. (We hope you can read, but the building to the right has "Teacher's Toilet" painted on it.)

Walking and Birthday

Hannah Walking

After several weeks of appearing as if she could begin walking at any moment we have officially declared Hannah a walker. We had several stringent criteria that we used to decide if she was walking. Some parents say their children are walking when they take a first step. To us this seems unfair and unethical. We determined Hannah is a walker based on the following criteria: (1) multiple steps made consecutively (2) steps that cover at least a distance of 3 feet (3) an equal desire to walk as to crawl. Perhaps if more parents took such criteria seriously we would have less false claims about children walking when really all they are doing is taking steps. Yes, Hannah is walking.

I guess we should also mention that Hannah is completely recovered from her malaria. Thank you to everyone for your prayers and concern.

Jeri Birthday

Tomorrow is Jeri’s birthday. Our teammates Marcus and Diane wanted to do something special for her birthday. Diane (I’m sure with Marcus’s help) decided to make a meal for us. I conveniently arranged for them to bring it by on Tuesday night (little did they know, but Tuesday night is my night to cook so I was the one who really got the birthday blessing). But, don’t think I’m just a selfish husband, I poured Jeri a glass of water to cool her down while she was doing the dishes (actually I think I did the dishes).

Jeri has been spoiled this birthday (in my humble opinion). She got a watch and two outfits from her mom. Unfortunately, the outfits were so small we had to give them to Hannah (who would have guessed Jeri was bigger than a size 12 monthsJ). From my parents she got several nice T-shirts. Then my gift arrived in the mail. I had Teri – Jeri’s twin (who ironically also celebrates her birthday on the 16^th of August) mail a couple of things. However, rather than Jeri receiving a nice package a customs payment form was all she got. 44 Kina later she was able to claim her birthday present. I guess the rest of your presents must be in the mail. We thank you in advance for your kindness and generosity.

You will have to excuse our total lack of seriousness in our blogs. Furthermore, you will have to excuse our total lack of reference to missionary things (even though that is the whole reason why we are here). However, we feel like it is therapeutic to just ‘have fun’. If you wish to hear some serious news read our newsletter (www.championschurch.org – just look for our names beside the gecko). We are happy to report that everything is going extremely well with our work.

PC, Malaria, Phone Call

Happy Hannah! Thanks Janet Cope for the outfit.






Sick Hannah









Relaxing Hannah




A quick question to any computer geeks or wannabe computer geeks. Is this normal? The pocket pc was sitting in my closet when it basically exploded. The battery expanded so much it broke the back part off. Anyone who knows what caused this leave a comment or send an email.

On Friday morning we took a trip to the hospital because Hannah had a fever. We sat down to wait in line for the doctor and were immediately ushered to the front of the line. When the Bible speaks of injustice we experience it daily getting far better treatment than we certainly deserve. However, with Hannah being so miserable we didn’t argue too much against the free pass to the front of the line. Because malaria is so prevalent here they automatically took a blood slide to check for malaria. Well congratulations to Hannah because she was the first family member to get malaria. Obviously we felt awful and wished that one of us would have got it instead (preferably Jeri if it were between the two of us J). She also had an ear infection which was what we thought the problem was. Anyways, you can probably tell by the tenor of this blog that Hannah is doing perfectly fine. Once we found out she had malaria and she started her medicine the symptoms went away in a day and a half. Today she was back to her normal self crawling around, playing, and smiling. We now know what we were told – if treated malaria poses no serious threat.

I made a new best friend last night. Last night we were interrupted from our beauty sleep at 3:30 a.m. because the phone rang. My groggy mind thought it was one of two situations. It could either be an emergency from North America or a ‘friend’ who didn’t check the time change before calling. However, it was the ex-husband of one of the ladies at church who wanted to ask her to call him sometime. Jeri politely took the message and I insisted on talking with him. I explained that it was not OK for him to call at 3:30 a.m. to give such a ridiculous message. My long absent assertive self reared its ugly head. The most amazing thing is that all the people I told today didn’t really seem to think it was a very big deal. New Guineans don’t tend to be very time conscientious, but give me a break! Just thought our readers might enjoy our plight.