March 7. Warmer today with more sunshine. Raining this evening. We were thankful for the use of the Land Rover today. Went out to Hardware House first and found most of what we were looking for there. We were grateful to the manager for giving us a discount on the total purchase.– plywood, floor mat, paint, and a few other household items. They will deliver most of the order to the hangar. We brought a few small items back to the flat with us to pack in a box with other things. Afterward we went to Brian Bell and were happy to find empty spray bottles. Then to Goroka Food Mart for a few more food and house keeping supplies. By the time we finished there, it was going on 12:00 so we went back to the apartment for lunch. After lunch, I packed up a bunch of our purchases and Daddy took a load of stuff over to the hangar. He was given an empty avgas drum to take the place of the one that went missing. Then he went and got a small tank of bottled gas and came back to the house. I had just gotten up from nap. He brought more “bad” news back with him. The plane flight that "C" had worked out for us for next Wednesday is a charter flight. It is a church charter which is half the price of a commercial charter, but is still more than we can pay. I got ready to go out with him to take the bottled gas and the drum over to NTM hangar. They will fill the drum with diesel for us and arrange a flight to take the fuel into Owena for us some time. While Daddy was busy working with the office on a flight arrangement, I walked around a bit and got some exercise. The cost of flying fuel in is also quite high, making us lean more and more toward going solar in Owena. When we left there, we went down the road to Farmset to get a regulator and brushes for the generator. The regulator didn’t cost nearly as much as Daddy expected it would, praise the Lord! And the salesman showed Daddy how to replace the regulator and the brushes. From there, we went to Papindo and met Philemon there. He was hoping to go back with us on the plane to Owena, but we didn’t know before that it would be a charter and not affordable. We bought a few small items at Papindo, and then Philemon went with us to Chemica to help us pick out an axe. We decided to wait until tomorrow and look at the SengDa Hardware. It will probably cost less. We dropped Philemon back off at Papindo where he and Lynn were waiting to take a bus back to where they are staying. Then we came back to the house. I started fixing supper, and Daddy took the vehicle back to the Venters. The Venters are having their share of trials too. Their solar water heater broke, and they have had no water for a couple days. Have had to get water, take showers, etc. at the neighbors’ house. Then Brad didn’t get to finish fixing the water heater because he was called up to Hagen to pick up a plane that had had engine problems on a bush airstrip, and an engine had to be flown into the bush place and put in to replace the old one. On top of everything else, Daddy has made phone calls and stopped at various guest houses around town throughout the day, and there is nothing available. After Monday, there will be no place for us to stay as someone else will be coming into this apartment. So we are kind of in a bind with no place to go and no flight available back home except for a charter which won’t be until Wednesday. While Daddy was gone to MAF to take the car back, I started cooking supper. We had looked forward to chicken to go with our kaukau. I got out the chicken legs and started trimming them so I could cook them skinless. There was so much fat on them, and the skin was so thick that I had a whole empty UHT carton full of skin and fat. What was left was mostly bone and hardly any chicken. Well, into the pot the two legs went with a chicken bouillon and some water to make gravy. After the chicken was on cooking, I peeled and sliced carrots and put them on to cook. Even though there was hardly any meat on the chicken bones, it was still very tough after an hour and a quarter of cooking. I pulled off a very small piece and couldn’t even chew it. It was like rubber. Well, we at least had gravy to go on our kaukau, and carrots to eat with it. Don’t know what we’ll do with those tough bird legs. While supper was still cooking, I put out a plea for prayer on the EBC list. Since we were late eating supper, I did the dishes right away as soon as supper was done. Wow! What a day this has been! What a week it has been! Is this a sample of Murphy’s law? No! This is a sample of I Peter 1:6,7, 6 “Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: 7That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.” I realize our trials aren’t anything to compare with what the believers were facing when Peter wrote this epistle. When trials pile up one upon another, however, it can be very discouraging. I’m thankful that, at times like this, the Lord puts a song in our hearts and reminds us of verses such as Habakkuk 3:17-19, 17 “Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: 18Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation. 19The LORD God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds' feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine high places. To the chief singer on my stringed instruments.” Tho’ sometimes He leads thro’ waters deep, Trials fall across my way, Tho’ sometimes the path seems rough and steep, See His footprints all the way. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Sweetest name I know, Fills my every longing, Keeps we singing as I go.
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March 5. Up by 6:00 to wash clothes. A beautiful sunny morning, different from most mornings here in Goroka which are cloudy and foggy for the first hour or two after dawn. Put the first load of wash in as soon as I was dressed. Two small loads of wash, and it took over an hour with that machine for each load. That includes extra time spent unwrapping the clothes a couple times from the agitator. Half way through the second load, Daddy went off to MAF to get the Land Rover. When I finished…. March 6. I tried writing in my journal after we got back from doing a little shopping yesterday morning, and what you see above is as far as I got. No matter what program I tried to work in, it would stop working and tell me it was not responding. Now it is nearly 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, and Daddy just brought the computer back from the workshop. They didn’t have time to work on it yesterday. So, as I was saying, When I finished hanging out the clothes, Daddy and I went out to do a little shopping. We didn’t really have much grocery shopping left to do, and we didn’t want to do the hardware shopping yet because items would have to be delivered to the hangar, and we did not want them to be delivered until we know when our flight will be. Before we left, I was trying to send some picture e-mails to Connie and Christy, and I couldn’t get the one I was working on to get out of the outbox into the drafts so just ran off and left it. Why I didn’t think to just shut down outlook I don’t know. So I don’t know how many times the computer sent the e-mail before we got back. Several apparently from what Connie said. I finally got the e-mail deleted after we got back as Connie had already written to say that she had received the pictures. Daddy had already left the house again, intending to pick up our diesel drum at the MAF hangar. We had sent it out from Owena when MAF came in for a load of coffee about a week before our flight out. When we arrived, "B" told Daddy that the drum was no good (it was too dented up) and the company probably would not refill it. NTM has gotten them filled for us like that before so Daddy told Ben he would try NTM. When Daddy went back to get the drum, however, it was nowhere to be found; and "B" was not around so the other workers couldn’t ask him. Daddy also checked to see if they had a flight for us yet, and "C" asked Daddy if he had talked to Brad about arranging us a flight. When we arrived in town, she had said that she would talk with him about arranging a flight. Apparently she hadn’t done that. Daddy went on over to NTM anyway to see if they had any flights available. They said they might be able to take us next Tuesday, but we would have to pay both ways unless somebody has something for backload. While he was there, he asked Suki about the diesel and told him our drum was lost. Suki said they have extra drums to sell for K50. (It costs K220 to get a new one from the company.) It was while Daddy was gone that I discovered that my computer did not want to work. It was really hard not to be frustrated and upset. Then when Daddy came back with all this other news, that made it even harder. We had our dinner and nap; and after nap, Daddy took my computer down to the workshop. What should I do for the afternoon? Had hoped to get all my e-mails answered and other computer work done in town so didn’t really bring anything else out to do. And, of course, we thought, we would be out shopping a lot too. Just brought the book of hymn stories to read in the evenings for a break from computer. Maybe the Lord allowed the computer to go down so I could spend more time in prayer (which I did) and more time reading the book and singing the hymns (which I did). It seemed like the hymns in that section of the book were just the right ones for rebuking the discouragement and uplifting the spirits. I wonder why our Bible reading together has been the book of I Peter too.?! Daddy took Venter’s car back before supper. I did take time also to wash and cut up a popo we had bought at market in the morning; and also wash, peel, cut up and cook half of a bundle of kaukau we had bought. For only K1 (about 30 cents) we were able to get a bundle of ten nice kaukau. I only cooked half of it, and it filled a good-sized pot. I enjoyed a small plateful for my evening snack. So that brings us to today. This morning was quite different from yesterday morning. The night was very warm, and we woke up to the sound of rain. It has been cool, cloudy, and raining off and on most of the day. I still had no computer to work on this morning and part of the afternoon. After breakfast and a little extra quiet time, I decided to pack up the rest of the groceries we had bought. Daddy was gone downstairs to see if CRMF’s van was available today, but it wasn’t. He also checked on my computer, and they were running scans on it. After Daddy was back upstairs for a while, we decided to go down and see if they had any scrap paper I could use to write on. They gave us a few sheets of scrap paper, and I worked until dinner time on translating some missionary songs. Nearly completed two songs before dinner. About 11:00, we remembered that we had wanted to get some meat this morning to go with our kaukau for dinner. But it was too late to walk to the store and back and then have time to cook chicken. So we decided to have our lunch instead. Oops, that wouldn’t work either because we also wanted to get bread at the store. Daddy wouldn’t have anything for making sandwiches. Well, we would try make a “potato” salad with the kaukau. I thought it tasted good, but Daddy said he likes his kaukau better with ketchup. The bottle of ketchup we had bought was already packed. Finished the second song after nap and translated a third. Then Daddy walked to West Goroka stores and bought a couple chicken leg quarters and a loaf of bread at Papindo. After he got back, he called downstairs to see about the progress on my computer. Praise the Lord, it was ready. They did find a virus on it and had put a new anti-virus protection in the computer. So here I am catching up on journal notes. And now it is supper time. After supper, I wrote several e-mails, played a couple computer games, washed the dishes.
March 4. It must have rained all night. Everything was quite wet this morning. Since it looked like we wouldn’t have a vehicle to go shopping today, I decided to use the time to write e-mails. So after breakfast and quiet time, I started working on the monthly updates. The ones for mailing would be done first so the file could be sent off to Christy for printing and mailing. While I was working on that, Daddy went downstairs to talk with Michael about getting together and talking about solar power. While they were talking, Daddy asked Michael if he knew anywhere we could hire (rent) a car. Michael said that actually we could use the CRMF van. That was a surprise as before they had a policy that it could not be used by guests. We could only use it for an hour or two at a time, however, as they quite often need it to go out on an errand. When Daddy came back up, I was in the middle of acknowledging supporters on the update letter, but left that for the time being and got ready to go out shopping. It was about 9:00 and we could have the car until 11:00. We went first to Goroka Food Mart as they had expected the container to come in over the weekend and said that they would start putting new stock out on Sunday. They were still busy stocking the shelves, however, so we only bought a few items and will have to go back, probably tomorrow. Afterward we went to Seng Da and pretty much finished buying what we need from there, except for freezer and fridge food which we’ll get later in the week. Last stop was Papindo, but all we found there that we needed was a pack of sandwich bags. It took us about 20 minutes to get back to CRMF from there, a distance of a little over a mile. By the time you dodge all the huge potholes and hang on for dear life going through the ones you can’t avoid and get through all the traffic, stopping behind traffic a half dozen times or so for pedestrians before you get past the crosswalk, that short trip turns out to take quite a while. Right after we got back, I started working on the updates again. Then Michael said he could meet with us, and we spent an hour or so with him talking about solar power. Even though it is a big investment to begin with, in the long run it should save a lot of money and we would have the power whenever we need it for whatever jobs need to be done. Buying generators every few years and buying fuel every couple months adds up quickly, and generally involves many problems and headaches. Daddy was still talking with Michael when I came up to get lunch. But first of all, I sat down and finished the e-mail with the updates to be printed and mailed. Even though it was only about 1 MB, the system was extremely slow in trying to send it, and every time I would get an error message, even though Connie said they received the e-mail six times. When Daddy came up, we had lunch. Just needed to put leftovers on our plates and warm them in the microwave. Then we had nap. I guess I had a long nap, although it didn’t seem like it, as it was already 3:00 when I got up. The rest of the afternoon was spent sending the e-mail updates. That ended up to be a frustration. It took about an hour just to get the first one sent. A single page was about 1 MB in PDF and would not send. Maybe I could try jpg. Nope, that was almost as big as PDF. At last, I managed to copy the document to Word (with no border) and it was only 20 KB. So I hope everyone can get the Word document in. I just won’t be able to send people pictures or anything with a border or background. It doesn’t make for a very attractive or interesting document, but there is no way around it. Finished up those e-mails just before supper time. Took a break from brain work, or should I say, from brain stress, and played a game on Daddy’s computer. Then I got supper on the table. After supper, I played a little more and then did the dishes. Then got busy writing today’s journal notes. Even that was a hassle as Publisher kept “not responding” so I had to wait until it started responding again. With all the hassles and frustrations, I am thankful to still have a song in my heart. There’s within my heart a melody Jesus whispers sweet and low, “Fear not, I am with thee, peace be still,” In all of life’s ebb and flow. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Sweetest name I know, Fills my every longing. Keeps me singing as I go. ~Luther Bridgers “Unto you therefore which believe he is precious….” I Peter 2:7a |
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