Hera Disability Centre opens

After many months of hard work, the disability centre is open – well, it had its inauguration ceremony last Friday.  It is called, “Liman Hamutuk” which is literally translated as “Hands Together”.  It has the capacity to house 6 disabled people but also has a large activity room for running activities and training sessions.  The centre will be managed by the Brazilian nurse, Branca. 

Many thanks to John and Allison who worked on building the centre for over 8 months and also thanks for the strong support provided by Yooralla and others in Australia and New Zealand.  It is built very much to Australian quality standards with block outside and steel frame lined with plasterboard and ply inside.

 

 

There are many traumatic cases in this country of people with a disability being left in a dark and dirty hut in the mountains with no one to regularly feed and clean them.  We hope that this centre will help to alleviate this issue and also to advocate the value of human life and that a person with a disability needs to be valued and properly cared for.

On the medical theme, I gave blood the other week.  I think I was only brave enough because my mate Rob went and did it.  I get a bit nervous in a country like this when someone shoves a needle in my arm.  I think it helped me get over a traumatic experience I had in the Dili hospital a few years back when an intravenous drip I was given went wrong (thats about all I want to say about that story).

The Wave Offering

Sometimes our family does “devotions” at night after dinner which consists of reading a part in the Bible and having some discussion.  We were reading from the Old Testament in a part that some might think is a little boring when we came across a passage about a certain tribe of Israel being appointed as priests.  This tribe, the Levites, would amount to tens of thousands of people and the Bible records that the rest of the people of Israel had to place their hands on this tribe.  We started to consider the logistics of about 500,000 men laying hands on another 50,000 men.  A simple explanation is that this must have been the first mass crowd surfing event.  Those Levites just launched themselves onto the people of Israel.  I can just imagine Aaron orchestrating a huge mexican wave  with Levites crowd surfing on top – very cool.  Of course,  this has biblical support when you go back and read the Bible as it says that the people of Israel offered the tribe of Levi as a “wave offering”.  (Numbers 8)

Xakira is going well –sleeping, sucking, burping, pooping.  Cynthia does most of the work in this department.  Xakira is just starting to smile – if you use your imagination.  Bethany is going great helping the kids with school.  We are very thankful for Lynelle (Cynthia’s mother) coming and not only assisting with the birth but just generally helping around the house and caring for the Xakira, gardening and even helping fix machines in the sewing room.

 

Last week we had a few Americans stay with us as the team helped build the walls of the Nazarene church hall.  This building has been in the planning stage for around 2 years so its great to finally see some real action.  The 10m x 20m floor space is ready for a roof now and the American team is discussing going home to raise the funds to help this become a reality.  This is very encouraging for the local church folks here.

Out at Hera, John has nearly finished the construction of a disability centre for Branca.  I had the pleasant opportunity to go and do some tiling with a couple of Timorese, Anen and Apoli.  It was great to teach them more of an Aussie technique for laying tiles in a bathroom.  Pray for John that God would help him get it all finished for the grand opening next week.

 

A salvo church in Australia has been inspired to raise funds for a 3 wheeled motor bike for the Nazarene church in Los Palos to use with their youth farm project and other ministries.  We hope to make the final payment on this tomorrow.  Of course, I’ll need to take this contraption for a few test runs.  More on this story later.

Jonny, the guy with the infection in his leg came back and he’s very happy with his treatment in Australia.  He was crippled during the crisis from a badly infected dog bite.  There is some discussion about him getting hip surgery to allow him to walk more easily and we are arranging x-rays to go back to oz for inspection by a specialist.

I feel like this and lots of other cool stuff we do here is only possible by the love, prayers and support we receive from folks in Australia (and other countries).  In some way its like you put your hands up to allow us to do the surfing – thanks for the wave.

A local fisherman on our beach making the most of the muddy water.

A Load to Los Palos

Last weekend Samuel went out to meet with Pastor Samuel at Los Palos and Lino who has the corn farm.  A few things that were done on this trip:

1. Hand out drums to pastors of various local churches for storing their corn – Pastor Samuel had no sealed drum for his corn so he lost about 150kg of corn which went mildewy and eaten by weevils.  Putting new corn into a sealed, new 44 gallon drum from MAF (aviation) will save the corn.

2. Deliver timber and construct the window and door frames and oversee the start of laying the block walls for the youth accommodation.  This is partly in preparation for an American team coming to assist in construction this week.  (Side note: they landed in Bali when the airline Batavia went bankrupt and ceased all flights … oops)  Tobias came with me and together we got the youth working on putting together the frames that I’d precut in Dili.  We also took flyscreen and roof insulation (the boys will sleep on a mezzanine floor and be close to the roof)

3. Deliver NPK fertiliser to Lino to try to correct some nutrient imbalance in his soil and also deliver 5 rolls of barbed wire.  This high tensile wire bought in Australia is much superior and much cheaper than the barb that we used last year which was bought from Indonesia.  Note the Indonesian barb is rusting after 3 months!

4. Inspect the corn field.  Lino is trying lots of cool new things like planting in rows which will help in the various steps of agriculture like weeding, fertilising, ensuring good crop density.  Currently he’s planting at one third of the recommended crop density rate which alone may mean his yield is greatly reduced – or in mushy terms, there’ll be less food on the table.  He’s also trying a local bean which will help to fix nitrogen in the soil and add organic matter again leading to improved yields.  Lino will then transfer this knowledge and experience to others in his group including the youth farm.

5. Collect weather data recorded electronically by a weather station at Lino’s farm.  With this data, soil test results and crop info we can do some crop modelling with computer software and explore other ways to improve yield.

6. Collect soil samples of a limestone soil to see if we can use it to correct Lino’s acidic soil.  The white soil usually has a high pH which may help make his soil more neutral.  Its a bit weird in that he has limestone rock scattered around his field but his soil is acidic.  Lino new just where to find some nice soft white limestone soil for us to test – under a tree that had fallen down.

7. Finalise the accounts for the last growing season including sales of corn seed, income from the corn mill and costs associated with these.  Lino grew his first crop with me in 2011.  We then sold it as seed during 2012.  On this trip we went through all the accounts – it took ages to do this.   His loan is about $2950.  He sold about $2120 worth of seed.  Including repayments from the corn mill, altogether he repaid around $1260.  

Lino is proving very faithful in his approach and the whole farm project is going well.  The big killer for him last year was just very low yields.  He’s getting about 1 tonne per hectare where as an Aussie farmer might get 5-6 tonnes per hectare.  Together we aim to get 4 tonnes off his 1.4 hectare block or essentially triple his yield.

Bright yellow corn still looking great after 8 months storage in the silos that Lino has got through this project – without the silo, this corn would be destroyed.

The above tasks were squeezed into the Saturday.  By the end I was pretty tired and was glad to get back home and sort of rest.  All is well on the home front, although Cynthia is tired with interrupted sleep feeding Xakira.  Xakira is a remarkably peaceful baby.

Education

Many Timorese want to improve their education.  They are hungry to learn and eager to gain tertiary education qualifications to improve their employment opportunities.  After 4 years of study at the Institute of Business, Emi has graduated with a degree in Information Technology.  We hope to be able to give her an opportunity to start up a small business on Atauro where she comes from managing simple accommodation for tourists.  

Lynelle, Cynthia’s mother came over to help Cynthia in the first few weeks of looking after the baby.  She brought over three laptops to be provided for young people to assist them in the education.  She was able to give a laptop to Michael.  He is an intelligent young man who is studying to be a doctor.  His family is very poor and he did not have enough money for a computer.  He will use this laptop for his own studies as well as training other young people in how to use a computer.  These laptops are refurbished ex-University laptops from Australia and cost around $150.  If you are interested in supporting this sort of thing, let us know.  We would like to hand out about 10 this year.

 

 

 

Xakira Pearl Bacon – new student for Institute of Business

A new year, a new life

Samuel has asked me (Cynthia) to put up some news.

Obviously the most forefront headline is the fact that we have a new baby girl!  We thank God for such a miraculously smooth birth process – no complications what so ever!

She arrived on Saturday afternoon 19th Jan, at approximately 6:00pm.  I,  in midst of labouring, felt that it must have been going for  so many hours and would continue for many more, however obviously for those in the know i was in “transition” and she rushed into the world after only 3 hrs of intense labour.  She has been very peaceful, sleeping and feeding perfectly.  I am hoping that after a “textbook” birth, she may turn out to be a “textbook” baby! :) We can hope.

One of the many miracles is that my mum and Serenity and Israel arrive the day before.  So mum was able to talk through my birth plan and prepare herself to become a midwife.  This is probably a good time to explain why we ended up giving birth, at home, in a third world country and without any professional input.  Needless to say it wasn't the most obvious first choice.

Throughout the pregnancy it was assumed that we would return to Australia for Christmas and stay on for the birth  in late Jan.  However, God had other plans.  Towards the end of the year Samuel and I were discussing dates for holidays etc so he could arrange it with work.  It started to become a little stressing for me as i realised that Samuel actually didn't have a lot of holidays to take, and how could we guarantee that he would be in Australia for the birth.  Anyway, when I’m stressed, I generally pray about it, and did so that night asking God to direct our plans for travel dates to Australia. It was quite a shock to wake up the next morning with the new idea of giving birth at home here in Timor, and what was even more surprising was i felt peaceful about the idea.  So I discussed it with Samuel, and quickly sent off an email to  2-3 people to ask their feelings about this possibility and to pray for us about it.  Reply's generally came back saying that if I felt God was leading this, they were comfortable with it.  So i took it to the next level and began to really consider al the implications of this new idea.

To cut a long story short, I was able to fly until mid Dec, so we had a short trip home to Oz.  Serenity and Israel were very brave and decided that their year long desire to have Christmas and birthdays in Australia outweighed any qualms about being separated from mum and dad for 5 weeks.  So they stayed in Oz with my parents and enjoyed many first world delights.  Samuel and I had a 5 week empty nest trial.  I was able to rest a lot and spend time preparing for the new school year and “nesting”.

All this time I had been trying to find a Western midwife who could assist at the birth here in Timor.  I put word out around the expat scene here, as well as contacting various missionaries looking for a lead.  Nothing eventuated.  I still felt an unexplainable peace, and knew that if God had a plan for me to have a midwife, he would provide one, even if it was at the ninth hour.  Also in case He didn't have plans for me to have a midwife, I began to really research birth and how to deal with possible complications. 

Mum had offered to accompany Serenity and Israel back here in late Jan and then stay on for 3 weeks to help out around the time of the birth and after.  So I let her know that it was possible that it would just be Samuel and herself assisting with the birth.  She also began to research and prepare herself for any eventuality.  So there you go.  I do feel a bit guilty as lots of AID organisations here are pushing locals to go to hospital for a birth, and here I am defying their ideals.  However I feel that for some unknown reason, God really wanted it to happen this way.  And hey, Im not convinced that Eve had a midwife….

And that is that! Praise be to God for pulling off such an unusual experience in such a perfect way.

 

Other news which is also quite significant is that we have also had a lovely young woman arrive with mum and the kids.  Her name is Bethany and she will be helping Serenity and Israel with their schoolwork each day, to allow me to focus on baby needs and not feel worried about their education missing out during this time.  She seems to be settling in well, and the kids really like her.  I am sure she would appreciate prayer, as this is her first third world experience, not to mention living in a new family with all our weirdness….

Anyway Samuel is still balancing many roles.  We are still trying to chase up more supplies of bibles, Oh, I nearly forgot, our little Suzuki (the bible distribution car) is back on the road with a new motor installed.  It arrived tooting last night :)  It will be nice to have a running vehicle again.  

I will try to arrange some more pics soon.

Weather Station on the Island

Yesterday, I went to the island of Atauro to install an Automatic Weather Station.  Its been a bit stormy lately so launching the boat was particularly dicey with a decent shore dump.  The trip over was best described as “wet” or “adventurous” or, depending on your perspective, “prayer-worthy”.  But don’t worry, we wore life jackets and I even chucked in a couple of flares.  The boat is technically unsinkable but I’m not sure what that means if its loaded with cement, steel poles and mesh.  It conjures images of an underwater off-loading attempt as the boat sinks into the 3km deep ocean ravine that separates the island from the mainland.  Did you know that once the human body goes deeper than around 15m it becomes negatively buoyant and you just keep sinking?  Those thoughts aside, we happily made it to the lee of the island absolutely soaked including my phone which I fear has gone the way of numerous phones and cameras that stay by my side till they reach an untimely salty end. 

The main job was to install a new automatic weather station that uploads data to a satellite system so we can access it via the internet.  This is a pilot project to test the application of the system to the government meteorological unit.  Its just a small but essential piece of the puzzle to assisting the nation in improving the people’s living conditions.  For us in agriculture, its about collecting data for research to improve crop yields and help us to prepare for droughts.

   

We also got to make some connections regarding the local school on the island which an Australian school wants to help.

Unfortunately, the ocean was too rough to get around to Atekru to discuss a new small business project making tourist cabins to improve the village economy.

Cynthia’s got a couple of weeks to go before giving birth so I hope to not go into the mountains for a while now.

Our annual report for 2012 should soon be available.

Heaps and heaps of dolphins on the way back (much calmer seas).  Atauro is in the background

Getting closer

Cynthia is due to give birth in late January.  All is going well so far and she is feeling confident.  Pray that we find a suitable midwife to help with delivery in Timor Leste.

The bravest girl I know.