Heading Home

We have just a few days in East Timor left.  We are looking forward to heading back to Australia although the feelings are a bit mixed.  It has been a very hard time for us in the last month or so.  We look to God to give us strength and wisdom. 

Thanks for those who post a comment - we do read them its just we dont know how to respond.

Cynthia continues to get requests in her sewing group.  The latest one being a set of cloth books for literacy in a library in Gleno.  Very exciting but the range of materials here is limited to cheap, plasticky stuff (I once worked as a fashion designer in France so I should know).

The party by the Church is lingering on - it seems they just love to dance the night away.  The main show moved to the next suburb.  It was stormed by a not very smart machete wielding drunk who took a swipe at a few peolpe for some reason.  Then he took off leaving his very new looking car behind to get completely trashed by the mob that was there for the mass cum dance thing.  A few different riot police gangs showed up along with some Timorese Police - decked out in full black with balaclavas and a rifle with scope they looked more like assassins than peace keepers.  I hoped this would partially justify my anger at the strange arrangement around the Youth Cross but the Timorese logic seemed to flow in quite the opposite direction as they began to think that the solution to all this would be to block the road with bigger logs.  Oh well. 

I am finding it really hard to get men to work in construction.  Makes it hard to feel sorry for some people who cry poor.  But God has been kind and gracious with us, especially me and my attempt to save the world before the end of the week.  I wonder if He finds it amusing.  I have dropped just about everything to try to get these investment units done which should provide income for a couple of poor families.  My work team seems to dwindle every day but we press on and with just 4 days left we have hope that we might just make it.  I still need to install my home made solar hot water system and install two solar systems, finish off the waste water, earthworks, touch up, windows, blah blah blah.  I will try to post a pic of the finished product.  I will also try to get out to Beraka and do a few other things  along the way (yeah right)

Israel loves his new found skill of riding a push bike. He loves burning around the sea side tracks.  Serenity is really coming along with her reading and starting to read books for her own enjoyment rather than for school.  Woohoo!

I'm pretty tired, I think I'll go home now.

Taking a Stand

Getting about on the island with Graham and co.

It has been a difficult time for us over the last two weeks. There has been a rather bewildering event put on by the Catholic Church. I like to believe the best about the Church but sometimes my faith gets a little stretched in that area.

Without warning the road to our house was blocked for two weeks for the Youth Cross. This is a special timber cross about 1.8m high that started its journey soon after the infamous 1991 Santa Cruz massacre. Briefly, a young man was shot in a main Church ground in Dili by some pro-Indonesian forces in 1991. The burial was massive and many pro-independence Timorese used the event to make a protest against Indonesia. The riot squad was brought in and they opened fire on many innocent people. Within the crowd were a few brave reporters who braved the blood, shot footage of the whole thing and buried their rolls of film in the cemetery. They returned later, dug up the rolls and sent the awful images around the world. This created widespread publicity for the plight of East Timor and could be seen as the beginning of the end of Indonesian rule in the country. Fast forward 20 years and we have this memorial cross that has taken on a life of its own. All the major martial arts groups are given the role of protecting this thing taking turns around the clock. They took it upon themselves to close the road and threaten any vehicle trying to enter. Beside the cross a round stone altar was built. In this was erected a sacred pole. In the lead up to the cross arriving the elders performed various rituals including sacrificing a goat, a cow and a pig. I didn’t see all of these sacrifices but I presumed they took place because the fresh bones of these animals decorate the pole. All this is set up on the grounds of the sweet little Catholic Chapel next to our house. A pretty good program has been running each night to encourage the young people to seek peace, consider how they fit within the mission of the Church and how they might improve their lives and their community. Then the priests, nuns and youth workers leave and let the young people have a dance party all night with the large amplifiers and sound gear set up for the Church. This has been going on every night for two weeks.

I have a major issue with mixing sacrifices, altars and ancestor worship with Church functions but I thought that this was not the time or place to say something. I am not sure if this is right. I also have serious concerns about the Church asking martial arts gangs to guard a Church function but I chose to be quiet on that as well. But when they decide to block the road and blast the night away for two weeks I think that perhaps they are going a little too far even in the lower realms of human sanity. So Supersam, bald and short as I am, decided to take a stand. I started with the boys themselves, went on to the community, then the leaders, the village chief, the secretary of the martial arts alliance (if you’re thinking some timid pen pusher you’ve got another thing coming, this guy is a night owl and the meeting took place at dawn, he is the second in command) and then on to the UN police. All we wanted was freedom during the day to enter our home with our vehicle without fear of intimidation and the freedom at night to sleep. Seems as though it was a little too much to ask. But at least we got access a few times to run our various projects and we got through it all without physical injury.  Just this morning Cynthia got so angry about the noise she started climbing ladders at 7.30am pulling down their tarps and shifting their amps while they all slept.  They all seemed to accept that after over two weeks it was time the party stopped - she's my hero.

The kids have been suffering from some tropical diseases such as fever and boils. We put our Community Development worker back to 1 day a week. The people from Maquili have put in a proposal for a small business making coconut oil but its ringing with warning bells so I probably won’t go ahead with it at this stage.

Cynthia: “Sewing project, busy, only Sinta and me. Starting a second experienced sewer this week, arranging everything so Sinta can manage it while we are in Australia. Had many problems with treadles, Got to a point where both were unusable, and it was a black out so we couldn’t use the electric machines. Samuel spared some of his time to do a big overhaul on them and tightened up a number of loose bolts, and re-aligned some pins, so at the moment they run lovely! Praise God!
Delivered our first bulk order to an NGO. (Unfortunately, they were not yet able to pay us which puts a rather large dampener on the excitement of the delivery.) Sinta was very amazed to see the invoice come to $215! (Mind you Samuel took me to buy more fabric supplies and he insisted I spend up) So $240 of fabric is sitting under our table and getting sewn into bags etc.


The mending jobs keep coming in with up to 6 jobs a day. With each of those bringing in $1-2 plus with sales of bags we are easily covering expenses and Sintas wages with a small profit.

Who would of thought we could start an enterprise that runs at a profit within 2 months?

Not me! I give thanks to God for all the gifts that enabled it to start, and for finding such a suitable employee.”

I have had to put most of our work on hold to complete the beach front units. I have been working very hard on this in the midst of all the aforementioned dramas. The evil spirits really know how to put up a fight. But I know a good bloke who once made a stand and died in the effort. When all seemed lost he came back to life. I’m holding out for a miracle from him.

We have drawn up a chart of our structure which I will endeavour to get on this blog.  It shows the different things we are involved in, hope you can read it and if you cant I am sure it looks impressive:

We are returning back to Oz on October 30.  Thats just over a week away.  Those who are familiar with my stupidity will know that I will be working myself to the bone.  Predestination - gotta love it.

Thanks so much!

Perhaps a strange thing to write on our blog but we have just checked our bank account and found a few sneaky folks have slipped us some more donations.  We want to thankyou so much for your help and we pray that we will use this money faithfully and wisely.

Samuel

A team from Darwin arrives

After a jam packed 2 weeks it is hard to know how to keep you up to date with all that has been going on. So we will do it by brief points:

A team of 5 people came from a Baptist Church in Darwin – Crossroads Christian Church? (I think I got that name wrong, how embarrassing.) In 10 days they did 4 main jobs:

1. A reno job on the office of Wycliffe Bible Translators – the poor bloke was trying to translate the Bible in a dark little room stuffed with boxes. So the boys put in shelves, gave it a lick of paint, installed a large fluoro light and delivered some new furniture – a desk, comfy chair and pin board. Sr Carlos is very happy and it gives him a lift in his work.

Nick, James and Graham - hot sweaty in the office with Sr Carlos the Bible translator and his wife.

2. Trip to the island of Atauro (cue wicked laugh – ‘Aha,ha,ha,ha,haaa’) very nice big boat going over. We checked in on Dunalva’s Preschool building project which deserves far more time than I am putting into it. They are up to the walls. She is so brave and I wish I could get out there with my tools. We then walked several km’s around the rocky coastline with 70 odd scriptures in our packs to visit Maquili. We discussed a small development project with them. They want to buy a coconut shredding machine to make oil to sell. It’s a big vision involving pigs and biogas (my pet subject). The boys are happy to enter a microfinance arrangement with them if they can come up with a decent business plan. This will take the place of my chook pen idea. Oh, well. We returned on a dawn voyage in a small boat that regular visitors to this blog know only too well. The novel thing this time was that we actually got the boat driver to deliver us right to our beach front from the island. Very cool, shame you weren’t there.

3. Finishing work on the Los Palos Youth Training Centre – the guys finished some tiling, tidied up the electrical work, installed the waste water plumbing, doors, kitchen bench top and even found time to make a very cool cob (mud and straw) oven to assist in cooking. Its an experiment (like our whole life) based on the Patsari oven for poor communities in Mexico. We’ll send some cool pics when we get them.

4. Installing an insulated ceiling with fans!!!! for Cynthia’s sewing room. Woohoo.

As well as all this, the team has been very encouraging for us as a family. The 12 yr old boy and 17 year old girl had a great time with our kids. Inlcude 2-3 days travel time and you can imagine it was hectic. Whats new.


Cynthia is selling more bags than her sewing group can make. She just received her first order of 100 cloth pads for women through HIAM Health. Woohoo.

God bless,

Samuel

A normal week



Kids on the beach - Israel in the water, Serenity and her Aussie friend, Emily, playing in the sand.



This week it seems we have just been going along on our mundane normal life. Not many interesting stories to tell. Just the same old, same old. We get our runs of sickness such as diarheao and headaches etc. The kids are doing well although they seem to be suffering from not getting enough dad-time. We got our first (and only) bit of mail this year from the post which I thought was a bit of a miracle. I bought up the whole supply of wholemeal bread made in East Timor that I know of – all two loaves.

The community work is progressing. Now that they are getting the idea that we are coming back, they are starting to talk about ideas to try. Simeao took seeds, buckets and watering cans to Tibar to help the growers get going.

The community in Maquili is a bit uncertain about doing a chicken pen project so I have decided to run a chicken pen at our own home and see if we can make it economically viable before moving the business to them. We hope to source materials and chooks from Maquili.

Beraka are slowly getting the idea of the importance of water and are planning to build a holding tank towards the top of the line. We are helping with design and transport of materials.

More drums are going up to the farms to store corn safe from rats and grubs.

The beach house project is going well although a little behind schedule.  We hope the team coming can stay in the first unit next week.

A team is coming from Darwin next week which we are looking forward to so we’ll spend a bit of time preparing for that – I’m cooking up a bit of an adventure for them. Stay tuned…

The sewing room is going well and Cynthia is putting a new girl on next week. The challenge now is to find some buyers for the products, especially some organisations who think the women’s product is worthwhile.

God bless for now,

Samuel

Watering gear and seeds to help boost family gardens.

Beach house - getting a verandah roof made of palm leaves

Drums heading up to the mountains.  Each is numbered for tracking.

Getting Organised

Click on this video to check out village life (about 4Mb)

This week we have put on some new “staff”. Sounds all official, but really I wonder if we are just mucking around. Cynthia has found a great young woman called Sinta for the sewing room. Cynthia finds it hard to teach in a group setting so she has taken on Sinta as an employee to work in the sewing room. We hope that she’ll be confident enough to become a coordinator of this project and bring in other suitable women to be able to sew products. This week they have been working on women’s products as well as sewing up bags for school kids to carry their books. Cynthia is working hard on the numbers to try to make this a financially viable endeavour (so it pays for itself). Serenity is also proving to be one of the best sewers amongst the women. She is even on the payroll (is this child labour?).

Cynth in her element - materials, threads and sewing machines

Sinta - our new up coming Sewing group coordinator - she's a great worker.

Cynthia with Laura in the sewing room.  2 years ago she nearly died of dengue, this year her father died of alcohol poisoning.

I have put on a guy fresh out of uni to do community development. His name is Simeao. It’s a new area that we are going into and sort of riding on the back of water projects – its like the next step after getting water into a community. My hope is that if he can carry some of the responsibility, training and implementation then I can be freed up to do other stuff. (I get a bit busy.) I introduced him to the community of Beraka and we had a long talk with the community about why the water system is not going as it should. It seems there’s just one man at the top of the system who wants the water to go his way and to no one else. Pray for him. We have organised for the construction of a small dispersal tank to hopefully deal with this problem. They have a serious problem with evironmental degradation – many trees are being cut down for firewood and the creek has caused massive erosion in the last wet season covering good land with river rock making it unusable for crops. There are some good opportunites to provide seed and we are considering a small loans project to get in some vegies to sell to market. Simeao and I also went to his home community of Maquili on the island.

Simeao - uni graduate who is my new Community Development worker, checking out the rocky slopes on teh island.

It’s a fascinating village. They make awesome fish traps and seem quick to learn and try new things. They are already implementing some great ideas such as diverting precious waste water into banana and paw paw gardens and using quality composting toilets. I negotiated with one man to provide a $400 loan to build a chicken pen as a small business endeavour. All going well, he can sell chooks or eggs and pay back the loan over 2 years. Part of Simeao’s work will be to monitor this area of microfinance as well as provide education for the communities. (No harm in dreaming.)

On the roof of the beach villas with a labourer we employ - Juli

The beach house project is still going ahead. I put in a couple of days to give them a boost on the roof – it’s a bit technical with valleys and hips. We’ve put on another builder to help with this work. We hope to get one ready at least for a team coming in 2 weeks from Darwin.

Amau - Maun Je's second in charge.  A real nice guy who now becomes our head builder.

Scriptures are slowly getting distributed on an adhoc basis. We are also getting out our little activity book designed for primary school kids. Its been pretty exciting but unfortunately our wizz bang new printer is being very temperamental. We got it rigged up in a dodgey sort of way to external ink tanks so it seems the ink ink is running out externally everywhere!

Our truck made its first trip into the mountains this week to deliver drums to farmers for rat and weavel free storage. This is the work of an organisation called Drums on Farms. We are assisting with transport. It’s a two way street where they get cheap transport and we get enough money to pay for fuel, a driver and extra money that will help keep the truck maintained for all the work we do. Anen is training up a young man to take on the role of driver which we desperately need to free up both Anen and I. His name is Natalino and I hope that he will be also able to drive Simeao with supplies to community development projects as well as (dream big) support a vegie run to bring all those wonderful vegies from the community to the city.

It’s a big plan for a little guy. I suppose its just a little plan for a big God.

We finally got a tap rigged up to a basic water dispenser. Israel is fascinated with this contraption from which you can just put your cup under, turn it on and get a drink.

God bless, enjoy your week. Be grateful if drinking water comes out of your tap today.

Our back yard, yeah its tuff.

From the Ashes

It has been a difficult and emotional time for us in these last two weeks with the sudden death of our good friend Maun Je. Personally, I really felt the need to wind back a number of our projects and just spend time with the family group we live with who have lost a good friend, brother, father – basically the patriarchal leader here. You may remember that earlier this year we lost another father to alcohol related liver damage. There are only three houses in our ‘cluster’ – of the three families, two of the men have died leaving behind two widows, 9 children and about 10 other young people (from their mountain families) being supported through school. All this responsibility rests in the hands of the last remaining man – Anen, a 27 year old young man with his own wife and two young children. I have been slowly growing to trust and admire Anen over this year, being the neighbour on our other side.  Now as we stand side by side at our friend’s grave (right outside our front door) our friendship is forged stronger. On top of all this, we are in the thick of an investment project with Anen that is literally dramatically life changing for them in terms of finances. The problem is that Maun Je was our head builder. He was the sort of man that, when he walked on site, you could breathe a sigh of relief knowing that everything was going to be ok.  Now he is gone we must find strength in Jesus, that great and humble builder, the one who is always 'onsite'.   I believe that when someone dies, God knows whats going on.  Its just that I dont.  But I trust in Him and know that it is no good sitting down.  We must stand up, thank God that we are alive, pick up the tools and go back to work.  A number of Aussies have visited us in the last couple of weeks.  We thank God for them.  It is because of their encouragement and other donations (for which we are truly grateful) that we have decided to to get organised and become a more determined force in our struggle for people's lives here.  As part of this "getting organised" we have decided to appoint coordinators over various areas of our work and take on 3 new staff (we currently employ around 4-6 people).  With God's help we will rise from the ashes with a new resolution.