Darwin Team

Last week we had a small team from Darwin visiting the Nazarene Church in Los Palos.  There are a lot of benefits to to having people over from Darwin.  They know about living in the tropics, they are used of long trips on rough roads and they have seen buffalo before (thats gotta count for something).  Samuel went with them to Los Palos after having a bit of difficulty getting a suitable car.  Its great to see Pastor Samuel and Uli using the new training and accommodation building.  The team got a bit of a reality check I think with how poor the local pastors are when we found that they didn’t have the $40 to finish tiling in the meeting area.  But the place looks great and they even have a gas stove to cook on!  This means a lot to Pastor Samuel who suffered terribly from TB and constantly coughed with the smoke from the fire going through the old house.   We got involved in  English lessons  where we presented them with Bibles.  On Saturday night we went to a bible study where Samuel shared a message in Tetun and got to hand out more Bibles and then on Sunday morning we shared in the church service where Pastor Bruce was able to preach.  The road back is getting pretty washed out now and unknown to the team, but very soon after they got back to Dili the road was washed out and has been rendered impassible.  Now the road to the west and east are both washed out and it looks like the road over the mountains is about to go as well.  Add to this, the only ferry service to Oecussi being out of service its getting pretty hard to get around to large parts of the country.  Once roads are down this has a big impact on the economy and other services such as medical runs and aid and development work. 
We are getting enough work to get by on, hallelujah, and Samuel will be away all next week trying to fix a roof for an agricultural research station.  The mission base down by the beach is still getting built.  Hopefully this week they will have walls finished and ready for the roof.
I’m pretty sure this is an Indonesian style roof but I wonder if it has  a Portuguese influence?  In any case, I am really not sure why the roofing iron doesn’t go over the wall.  This leads to lots of leaking where the old iron meets the wall.  Then the roof timbers rot.  Mix in a heap of white ants, rat chewed electrical work and alfoil thin roofing iron and there’s only one white fella stupid enough to get up on it …. yours truly.

Just some pics to fill the gap

While Samuel is off gallavanting around the island, I thought id do a little of my style of blog update...

Feregrina - pointing up to Serenity who was taking the photo from her upstairs bedroom.

Israel surrounded by beauties - Naomi and Feregrina

the missionary kids science lesson - building a flashing lighthouse! The 4 of us mums take turns every week.  Sometimes its a little daunting, but they are all such sweet kids!

Serenity took this lovely picture of Cynthia holding Israel, the corner of Atauro on the far right.

"Our" beach :) there were about 50 small outrigger canoes fishing where the river flowed into the sea.

Serenity the model! well she was looking at Israel.... This is what our front yard will look like when the new building is finished.

This is the view from the side of the new building - a little swampy from all the heavy rain, and lots of coconuts to fall in heavy winds :)

Asika the bright eyed beauty - we cant resist taking photos of her!

Serenity and Asika standing on the upper floor of the new building with the beach in the background

The freshwater creek altered course a little after some large waves, and ran parallel with the beach for 50m or so. Very Picturesque.

Israel and Asika making a fishing line - the blue boat in the background is ours.

Well i thought i better stick up a photo of me too, just so you know im still alive :)

The back of the new building - a small verandah leads to the office, with a storage room to the right for all Samuel's annoying tools :0

Hope you enjoyed the images.  I am sure Samuel will have a story or two to add when he returns from Los Palos!  Stand by for more exciting news.....

A Turning Tide

When we lived on the Clarence River the tide would go out and come back in each day.  At the very lowest point, the mighty river came to a stop.  If you saw it for the first time you might be tempted to think, “What’s going to happen now?!” It is a moment in time that may not last long but its a powerful moment when it happens.  And then, the tide turns, slowly at first, it begins to flow back.  Thats what it feels like for us.  A very dark and low moment in our lives has happened.  We did not know what would follow but it seems like little by little things are looking up.  We have lots of opportunities to help folks out here and encourage them.  Things are still simple, difficult and tight but Samuel has had work all week and has even put together a business card to pass around (very professional!)
Bellekria (The sewing project) has had an exciting order of 50 bags from a lady in Darwin. Sinta and Cynthia were discussing how much fabric to buy to make up the remaining bags, and realised they had enough already in store to make all but 10, which means less outlay.  Cynthia also received an exciting offer from the lovely specialist fabric shop in Brisbane.  They have offered her a bulk amount of odds and ends (perfect for small projects like cloth pads) at a greatly reduced price.  Its all stored in New Zealand, and will save them hours of measuring and listing each small piece on their internet shop if she buys it all.  So far she has $240 donated to purchase this fabric. Very exciting.

East Timor and the results of the job interview

We have finally walked away from the work in Lismore.  Of Course Samuel worked right up to the last moment before hopping in the car to go to Brisbane.  One of the more notable accomplishments in the last week (in Samuel’s mind) was the construction of a composting toilet complete with solar powered exhaust fan.  I hope it works.  The most notable accomplishment was really Cynthia holding things together, organising final appointments and getting supplies ready to leave Australia for an indefinite period.  We are really going out on a limb here.  We do not have enough money to do any more than just arrive in Dili and hope we get this job.  And we certainly don’t have enough money to come back again if this fails.  Still Samuel is adamant that you only live once and every once in a while you should take a little risk.
Stephen from CRC Churches graciously picked us up in Darwin in the middle of the night so we could sleep in a bed for a few hours.  The kids loved their dogs.  Thanks for everything guys. 
We arrived in Dili Wednesday morning  and were very happy to see old friends and East Timor.  We were welcomed back to the little family cluster and are able to stay in the original shared house arrangement from last year.  We spent the day relaxing, swimming, sleeping and Samuel studying documents and acronyms for the job interview.  Serenity and Israel got a little sick with fever possibly due to all the changes in aeroplane aircon and tropical humidity but seem to be ok now.




We checked out the new mission base and its looking great.  The boys are doing a good job and laying the blocks for the upper floor.  It even comes with a jump ramp out the front (which the builders are using to barrow up concrete for now).




 
Thursday morning I sat for the interview with a panel of 4 men – 1 Australian from the University of Western Australia and 3 Timorese.  The Australian didn’t know much Tetun and the 2 key Timorese didn’t know much English so I answered a set of English questions briefly in English, then translated the questions into Tetun and then answered them extensively in Tetun.  Interesting way of doing things.  You might be happy to know I shaved, bought an opshop paisley tie and Cynthia even ironed my pants (quite a feat in Timor).

…

Dumb job, who wants a job like that anyway.  Grmbl *;;###’^^  grr, grmmf.

When Cynthia realised I was not succesful in getting the job she went inside and broke out in tears.  What a disaster.  Samuel is ever the optimist and figures God probably has some other plan in mind.  Cynthia is not sure if heaven exists.  It was probably the paisley tie that did it.
So now what? Go for a swim.  Its a nice beach here.

A Wing and a Prayer

It seems as though the time has come for us to return to East Timor.  It has been 4 months now since we came back to Australia - 4 grueling months.  I could possibly say that this has been one of the most difficult times in our life.  We have gone from one demanding struggle to another.  Samuel works stupidly long hours yet has not been in a full time paid job for over a year.  Our financial planning has gone unbelievably pear shaped and we are desperately poor.  We now have no car (since Samuel rolled it) and have not had our own house to live in (been bunking in with the in-laws.  Because of all this we feel we must get a job and try to get out of the hole we (or more appropriately - Samuel) have created.  So we plan to return with barely enough money on a credit card to buy 1 one way tickets to East Timor.  We are not really sure if we'll have enough money to get
through the next lot of bills coming our way but we do have something to look forward to  - a job interview!  I know its not much, but they say Samuel is on the short list and the interview is in East Timor.  To say we are going out on a limb is a bit of an understatement - the limb has already broken and we are plummeting into the abyss.  What we need is some wings and a prayer.  Its a nice image when you think of our little family rising out of the darkness in the safe hands of a God who catches us - if He does.  You know what He's like though, a little on the mysterious side and He is prone to teaching lessons.  So I don't know how its going to go but I do think we should go.  Its a destiny thing.

Please note that the above whining is definitely not intended to make anyone feel sorry for us and donate some money.  What it is about is telling a story so that if God rescues us in some incredible way you can go, "Wow, thats so cool!"  Alternatively, if God doesn't exist, doesn't care or is busy doing more important things and we go splat on the abyss floor then you can say, "The idiots, I hope Samuel will finally learn his lesson!"  So this is just for your entertainment, but feel free to pray for us.

What's this?  A bush you say?  No!  This was our home - an igloo made from straw bales.  We used to live here with our little 12V power system and bucket loo.  Now its overgrown with vines.  Sniff, sniff.

Going Under

This sweet calf stood against the river all night!

(levee wall rear right).

Although we have experienced some disasters we give thanks to God that we are alive and together as a family.  The floods have been so devastating for some people.  Our house is near a little town on the Pacific Highway called Ulmarra.  The town was pretty safe from the floods as it only just managed to come over the levee wall at a trickle.  Its still pretty scarey though because the river is about 800m wide in this area and the levee wall is about 3 feet high near the pub.  Its a very powerful scene to see this water rushing by and starting to bubble up through the ground around your feet as the massive volume of water presses right through the pores of the levee wall.  Our farmhouse was not so protected as the water rushed over the levee wall at about 30cm deep all along the 300m of river bank - a rough calculation means about 100 tonnes of water going through our property every second!  Our farm is on the outside bend (the erodable side) of the river.  So even though the wall has held for a number of floods it is always a matter of concern for us.  But we thank God that the water came to only 15cm below the floorboards of the house.  Even though we lost a bit of fence and possibly a wheelie bin we are very happy that the farm survived.  In another life, Samuel is a member of the NSW Rural Fire Service so he got busy (surprise, surprise) with the clean up.

Cleaning up an intersection on the road to Yamba

Israel turns 5 and hugs his cedar tree in the flood.  It was planted on the day of his birth.

A Hard Road

Disaster.  Christmas day we were taking a large load of scaffolding from the building site back to the builder about 100km away.  We were doing it on Christmas day because Samuel's family lives up in Lismore where the house is being built and Cynthia's family lives down south near the builder.  Dumb idea.  It was raining and coming down a hill Samuel lost control, we left the road and slammed into a large camphor laurel tree, rolled and finished up upside down on the road.  By the grace of God, we all lived.  I am still a bit surprised.  We all climbed out of a rear window that had smashed and hugged in the rain with blood running down onto our clothes.  Its a hard road sometimes. 

As you can imagine, the whole thing has shaken us up a bit and rattled our nerves.  We look to God for strength and wonder sometimes at how to go on.  Samuel feels pretty bad about this.  Just for your interest, we actually really loved this car.  Samuel used to make his own fuel for it - yep, it was a veggie oil car.  Samuel would filter out the chip crumbs and pour the veggie oil straight into the 2nd fuel tank.  We had many great adventures in this car.  But I have learnt that we should be thankful for what we have got and not be too sad about what we have lost.  I am so thankful for my beautiful and courageous family.  Hallelujah.