Recent Pictures

Hannah likes helping in the kitchen -making pizza and licking beaters!

We have some beautiful sunsets here in Alotau!

Retreat

From April 6^th – 8^th we attended our first camp with the church here. We stayed at one of the area villages, but didn’t get the authentic village experiences because of a few short cuts like – generator for power, trucks to carry the water, and our very own camp tent. But otherwise, it was exactly like living in the village.

One of the many lessons we learned was that Hannah is lucky that she was born into a dimdim family (the local name for white expatriates). Both nights she played around in the tent rummaging through items until after 11 p.m. She was most perturbed when she would ask for her bed we would point to a towel and say “bed”. She wasn’t buying it and was not sufficiently satisfied with the accommodations. So on both Friday and Saturday night we piled into the car and drove home. Fortunately, it was only about 10 min. to the house.

At the retreat all the food was cooked over the fire so that was a new experience for us. We ate local veggies and fish. There was lots of rain, but we were not to be discouraged because of the nice kitchen the men made. During the day we had classes and played games.

We thought we would attach some pictures so you could see what things were like.

You're Invited!

Free Online Tour of our almost done new house!

Sorry, the tour does not include any outside pictures or downstairs pictures because the camera batteries died (or went flat as the New Guineans would say) before we got to either of those places.

The house is close, close, close, to being completed, but as always they are waiting on a few things to arrive before the house will be officially completed. The main thing is they are waiting for is a booster switch for our solar hot water heater. If the sun is not doing its fair share we can electrically heat the water – only once the switch arrives.

As you first enter the house from the front door you will notice the kitchen. We are quite happy about how much space there is in the kitchen. Jeri really wanted a nice functional kitchen as she spends so much time in that room. Cooking and cleaning certainly carries extra responsibilities here. First, we have no dishwasher and so we do all our dishes by hand. Second, we do not have many of the key ingredients you likely take for granted and so Jeri makes so many things from scratch. For example, any recipe that calls for Cream of Anything soup she must first make the soup. Any recipe that calls for sour cream she must first make the sour cream. Any item that requires syrup must be hand made. She makes everything from salsa to enchilada sauce. Sorry I know this really isn’t a key portion of a house tour, but though this would be a good chance to let everyone know how amazing Jeri is and how much she does to keep our family functioning. Did I tell you that in addition to all that she is 6 months pregnant and running around chasing a twenty-one month old all day?

Beside the kitchen you see our living/dining room. We also intentionally made this a bigger room so that we could easily host people into our home. Hosting is such a big part of the culture here.

In the back of the house we have three bedrooms (all quite small). The kids rooms are 9 feet by 9 feet and our room just a touch bigger.

The big green thing outside is our major water source – our tank that collects rainwater. Since we will not be connected to town water for who knows how long, we will live off of rain water.

So there you have it – an official tour.

Once the house is complete we just have to wait for the power to be fixed. It was installed at the beginning of the year, but a fault in the line has forced them to shut all the power off again until it is fixed. They are guessing a month, but as I hope all of you know in PNG a month is never just a month.