Road to Indonesia---Water and Wind

 Well they delayed cleaning our water pipes from last weekend to this weekend. They tested the actual well and that water is not contaminated, so it is in the pipes. This week we were told to boil our drinking water while we wait....unless we had not been sick from drinking the contaminated water, then it was our choice as to whether we continued drinking it.  We boiled plenty of water this week (we are used to doing that), and used some of it, but mainly just went on drinking it. After all these years and the many places we have been and the variety of water we have drunk and food we have eaten, it is very rare for us to get sick.  But now this weekend they want to clean the pipes. So last night we hurried around and made the desert and biscuits for the company coming for Saturday night supper and took our much needed showers, and then  stopped using any water from the tap, waited an hour and then bled the pipes for a few minutes until we could smell the chlorine.  (Only we couldn'

Road to Indonesia--Indonesian Missionaries

 The English church in Sentani has been here for a long time, they say.  There are a hundred or more missionaries there on Sunday morning.  I was particularly blessed last Sunday.  One blessing was a missionary translating the tesimony for his Indonesian pastor/partner in ministry.  They shared about ministering in a remote tribe with a very difficult language. They told about the chief and then the witch doctor coming to the Lord. Also how the son of the previous witchdoctor refused to return to the previous practices, but made a strong statement about his commitment. It sounded like a whole tribe being evangelized. Then another Indonesian gentleman stood up.  He is a missionary to Uganda in Africa!  He is having visa problems because of covid and is waiting at his home here. (I was reminded of a book from the 70's, "Like a Mighty Wind" by Mel Tari. He was recounting the miracles of the church in Indonesia. He was sent by the Lord to be a missionary to the US! Think of t

Road to Indonesia: Third World Life

 In response to my post about the water trouble, someone wrote and said something about never getting a break and hoping that I can keep on.  I think I may not be expressing things well. Much of what I post are normal everyday things that everyone who lives in third world countries should be expecting to do/see/experience/suffer through.  It is just life.  Even the visa issues.  Maybe some of what has happened are a bit more extreme than most. Many people were in the same boat as we were trying to make it under the wire to get into Indonesia before they tightened it up.  And they have many stories, too. It just is that the current situation for them does not involve having made it successfully yet.  Even our Bank problems out of China, I am sure is not completely unique.  It is terribly frustrating, and takes a lot of time, effort, and prayer, but it has/is happening to other people as well. Maybe with our own particular twist and turns, but happening.  So please think of us. Enjoy our

Road to Indonesia--Water and Phones

 A neighbor, and new friend, came to our door tonight to tell us that they just tested the water on campus and we cannot drink it any more until they "fix" it. We need to immediately start boiling it. (So we boiled two really big pots of water for 10 minutes each. We have lived this way many times, so it is a pain, but no really big deal.) But they will also completely turn off the water at 8 on Saturday night and inject chlorine into the line. Then we are to turn it on at 9 p.m. and run it until we smell the chlorine. Then we are to turn everything off at least over night and maybe for a day or more, while the chlorine cleans the pipes. Then we should be OK.  Sooo, we also pulled out 3 big buckets of water to sit near the toilets and to make sure that we can at least wash down even if we cannot have a shower. This is aggravation, but doable. If it "fixes" it and we can go back to drinking water right out of the tap, then we will gladly do it. It can't be too ba

Road to Indonesia--- Sports and Online Notarizing

 Just finished watching my first high school boys and girls basketball games here at Hillcrest. Any of you that know me, remember how faithful I am  at attending hs games.  This was fun.  No schools are really open here other than ours, so they are playing club teams, which are ladies and men in their 30's +.  They lost both games, but that of course is not really the point. The facilites here are very nice, and open air, so as the evening fell, it even became cooler. It is such an important part of the school experience and it is good that the kids here can have this time. Fun to be part of the community, and memories of many other games at schools like this that I have been blessed by. Sports are pretty international. But I was really, really exhausted, and walked up the hill to home for an hour in the middle and laid down. We had spent 4 hours this afternoon, trying to get our letter of permission to access our Chinese bank account notarized online. It was so very frustrating. W

Road to Indonesia---Rain and Suitcases

 Ready to take a nap to the tune of the heavy rain on the roof.  We just finished a staff meeting, and we are very thankful that someone gave us a ride home. We do not even own an umbrella yet. I could have brought one with us, but it seemed like coals to Newcastle.  But we simply have not taken the time to find one.  It is a pretty heavy rain, although not to the extent that the "embarrassing rains" that would happen in Panama....many days about 2:30 when school would be letting out.  No umbrella or rain coat was sufficient. No matter what it would soak you to the skin, so you could see through your clothes, thus "embarrassing".   The  little rainfall that we can see halfway up the moutain that we face walking to school will be pretty. It rained in the middle of the night last night and there was some water coming down this morning.  Sometimes it looks like it is almost dry.  It will pour now, though.  Yesterday we got our 2 big suitcases which we had to send via s

Road to Indonesia--Animals

 In some comment recently I was asked if we had seen any animals and I said no. That is not completely true. We are within a city, although the campus is on the hill above the city and quite isolated, but it  still is not really rural.  But there are some animals. One morning this week, I heard a kitten mewing outside, but the more I listened, I realized it was not quite right. I figured out it was a set of 4 birds flying in the sky. As I walked to school I stopped to talk to the director's daughter. She is a senior at school,  and has her morning devotions sitting up on top of some sort of big cement block outside her house. I always pass her and greet her. I asked if it was the birds making that sound. She said that she had also thought it was her kitten outside, but then realizsed it was the birds. They were big.  I guess they were kites/hawks or some such.  We also have been turning off our overhead fan in the kitchen every late afternoon, because it sounded like it was a squea

Road to Indonesia-- Chinese Bank Account

 This morning we got a message from our ERRC director. The Chinese consulate in NYC has not accepted our paperwork to send to China to release our money from the Chinese bank! You know, all that money that has been accruing since last January? The paperwork that we have agonized over for a year? The one we made a hurried trip from SC to PA to have the PA Secretary of State sign and hand deliver to us? Yeah, that paperwork. It looks like somehow one of the papers got turned around when we were having them notarized, and I signed Rick's, and Rick's signed mine. So it is our own fault, but I am having trouble imagining how we did that, and why the notary did not pick it up.  But however confusing it is, it means that we can do nothing more now until June when we are back in the States and can redo all of the paperwork and start again.  Of course, by then the person we hoped could go to the bank for us in China might be on furlough in the States, and maybe the regs have changed, as

Road to Indonesia-- Shopping

 We went to town last night after work.  Going to town involves having someone getting a car from the school, about 2 blocks away from our house on the campus.  Then they come pick up whomever is ready to go to the store. The town is less than a mile down a big hill. I am getting the feel that there are about 4 or 5 stores that one goes to.  You carry cash with you and sometimes lots of it, because what if meat or cheese is available??? We were too late to get hamburger, but I did get some more frozen chicken breasts.  No cheese. But the lady who is our mentor (answers questions) through the school helped me find powdered sugar, corn starch, tortillas, garbage bags,etc. It is not easy to just find these things because some of them are in boxes which are labeled, but in Indonesian and often pictures do not give enough clues.  I can read more Mandarin than I can Indonesian, which is disconcerting. Starting all over again! We did find the floor fan and alarm clock that we wanted to find.

Road to Indonesia- HOT

 It is HOT.  I have had 3 showers in the past few hours.  And felt like taking more. It says it is only in the upper 80's but feels hotter.  I suppose it is the humidity, which has to be pretty high. Then the teacher's assitances who were working in my room the other day were wondering why it was still pouring rain in what would soon be the dry season, and they assured me then it would really get hot!  The classroom is aircondiitoned and feels really good. We also could go to the library and sit which is airconditioned, but our apartment is not. It does have many large ceiling fans, and they work well in the bedroom, but the living room is too big for an overhead fan to make enough difference. We need to go buy a floor fan to help. We do not mind that much if we have showers. And I keep looking at the TV which says that Beijing is below freezing!  Biking in below freezing weather is not nice (understatement).  I do not have a bike here and will not get one. It is very hilly and

Road to Indonesia: God Our Protection

 I am surely glad that we were all ready in place here in Papua and not taking a flight out of Jakarta right now. Not because I believe we would be in danger on the airplanes, but because of the stress it would be causing family and friends in light of the recent crash.  Air travel is some of the safest means of transport possible, but when something happens, it really happens with much loss of life. Such is the case with this latest incident. It is one of the hardest parts for those left behind, no matter which side of the ocean you are looking from, when there are problems: crashes, political coupes, natural diasters.  One feels so helpless and you don't know how the situations might be impacting others. We feel that way when hurrianes or blizzards or insurrections are mentioned in the US, and we are literally on the other side of the globe and wondering about our loved ones.  Also births, deaths, weddings, birthdays, anniversaries that we have missed down through the years and w

Road to Indonesia: Open Air Market

 Yesterday morning we went to the open air market, which happens every Saturday.  Rick's observation is that you could almost pick up any open air market and transport it to another country and they would look pretty similar, except of course that some of the produce would be different.There is alot of mud, and booths, and smells, and people wanting to sell you things.  Although we were much, much less harrassed here than just about any market we have ever been in.  Nice people.   I think I have seen alot of different kinds of fruits and vegetables, but there were plenty of new ones here.  We just ate a snake skin fruit. It is small, maybe the size of a plum, but the skin does very much look like a snake skin. the inside is milky color, but solid with a small pit.  It tastes mildly sweet, interesting. Also a pressed cakes of some white substance that they said was palm oil pressed.  They said you cook it down and it looks like snot, and is one of the staples for the country.  A lon

Road to Indonesia: Apartment, Stores

 So, which apartment did we get? We have the second floor huge, wonderful apartment. It has 3, I repeat 3, bedrooms. The living room/dining room is the size of our apartment  in China, and one of the bathrooms is the size of our RV.   The kitchen is huge, with all of the amenities, even a Kitchen Aid mixer, as well as crockpot, rice cooker, coffee maker, blender, toaster, microwave. I even have an oven! It is a duplex with one bedroom and bath that could be switched to the other side of the duplex simply by opening and closing doors.  One bedroom has just  a loan little tiny desk in it.  We have a shower, rather than a holding reservoir with a plastic scoop to splash water on ourselves like many Indonesian bathrooms. We can even put the toilet paper into the toilet (not always possible in many countries where the plumping does not tolerate that.)  And absolutely spectacular is that the school is fixed so we can drink water from the tap!!! You can have no idea how wonderful that is. Usu

Road to Indonesia: luggage

 It is never easy, is it? Our covid test still had not come back at the time we were to take the next test that would release us from quarantine. The doctor did not show up at 9 this morning to take our next covid test either. The hotel said everyone in other hotels was having this problem. Finally, this afternoon they delivered the paper which stated our first test is negative. They said they were appealing to the government to let us leave quarantine and travel on the basis of this paper.  They are sure that this will work, so we have fligths booked at 1:15 a.m. Wednesday to go to the island of Papua.  Considering how everything progresses for us, I am sure that we will eventually get to Hillcrest School, but I am not holding my breath as to when exactly that will be.  An additional issue that has just come up is that we will be switiching from international travel to domestic travel. Because of this, they will perhaps charge us $300 or more for each piece of overweight luggage, and

Time Zones, Side of the Road, Jet Lag

 I have been mentioning some of the things we just did not check on in the rush of leaving for Indonesia.  Usually we would at least look up the country on Wikipedia, and we had not even done that. Rick and I had discussions as to what time zone we might be in and were mainly trying to relate to which city that we knew was Indonesia south of. We decided it probably was south of Beijing. We got that part right, at least for Jakarta, but Papua is closer to being south of Japan. So we are 12 hours ahead of the East Coast of the US now, but will be 10 hours difference when we get to our location. Who cares? Well our family does because we recieve many calls from our children and it is hard to be sure we are not waking each other up or calling during work hours. We also watch news and football on our computer and they are on US schedule. It is one of the first things Peace and Purity asked us.  Wonderful to have kids who know what you need to deal with when communicating overseas. Peace had

Day 18 Road to Indonesia

  Road to Indonesia (Since we have arrived and are staying for a while, I guess I will drop the "day" count. Not sure where I am with that anyway.) Jet lagging, which means awake in the middle of the night. Oh well. To be expected. We did go to the second floor of the building yesterday to have our covid test, along with the 30 other people who came in New Year's Eve. Quarantine like this is a new experience for the hotel, ...and they make it sound like it might be a new experience for the government as well. The hotel said they are receiving new directions all the time and now we need to stay 6 days, rather than 5 days, because the covid results at the end of our stay will not be released until day 6. I pled my case that we did not need to stay at all since we had had covid, and they said they would process the request, but I doubt that our plea will be successful. They also said that they had been mistaken about our being able to move around the hotel after this firs

  Day 17---Road to Indonesia This is pretty much what has happened today.

Day 16 continued----Road to Indonesia

Day 16 conitnued---Road to Indonesia   The call to prayer just ended. It had been going on for 2 hours over the noon hour. I suppose because it is New Years.   We had not gone to bed last night when the first call to prayer started at 4 a.m. It has been 10 years since living in Senegal that we have heard it.   Although for very different reasons, it is a reminder to all of us to pray.   Real estate in Senegal was looked at carefully as to how close to the mosque property was. We could use it to wake us in the morning.   Being back in   Muslim country means different kinds of things and memories. After some sleep we have continued down our mental list of things we need to find out. Most importantly maybe is “Can we drink the water?” We did not think to look this up earlier, which is a grave error. At first when Rick asked last night he thought they said, “Yes.” But I think they were saying yes to the bottled water. When I asked this morning, the receptionist said, “No, It is bad f