Packing Again

Well here we are, last night in Oz, bags roughly packed, last minute paperwork, and 4 tired bodies.  Cynthia has been putting together a heap of materials for her sewing project and hopes to pick up some important material from Brisbane on the way through to the airport.  A wonderful lady has donated her own almost brand new sewing machine for Cynthia's project which is very exciting.  Other ladies in the community have donated enough money for 2 treadle sewing machine and an overlocker so this project is well and truly up on its way - thanks heaps for all your support.  We hope to soon send photos of a small sewing industry in action!
Samuel has been working flat out on a building project here in Lismore as well as fielding calls from East Timor for the Los Palos Training Centre.  The American, Lon who has been working on it for 3 weeks has raised the walls ready (pretty much...hopefully) for the Salvo team from Tweed to put a roof on with Samuel.  It's been a hectic 3 weeks and we haven't had nearly enough time to gather materials and research on the net for things we want to do.
The kids have had heaps of fun hanging out with the grandparents, jumping on the trampoline and riding bikes (on a thing you call concrete) as well as watching lots of cartoons.

Pray for us as we return to East Timor with our first team.

Fun Run

We are half way through our 3 week visit in Australia.  Cynthia has been enjoying being able to use the internet.  She has been researching products for her sewing project.  She also had a great talk with a group of ladies who were very supportive of what she is doing.  Samuel has been working hard on a building site in Lismore. 

We have just visited Tweed Heads Salvation Army who are sending a team over with us for 2 weeks.  Its amazing to see a whole church get excited about helping people in East Timor.  On Sunday afternoon they arranged a fun run as a fundraiser for the team’s project and also to raise awareness of the work in East Timor.

Angela Cairns (who organised the fun run) with Samuel

Every sponsored entrant had to carry 2 litres of water! to experience a little of what it is like for the poorer members of our world. 

Some youth supporting the cause!

Cynthia  and Leanne, getting to know each other.  Leanne is one of the women coming over with the team.

Sylvia - the other intrepid woman brave enough to visit East Timor!

We look forward to getting back to our home church in Grafton next week before heading back to East Timor with the team.   We plan to take them to Los Palos to put a roof on the Training Centre.

Just wanted to share a new website

Well, while I am back in Australia, I have been spending a bit of time "researching" on the internet - ok well some playing as well.  Anyway i stumbled across a great website that makes East timor look more like it really is, as opposed to how we portray it!

Awesome website about East Timor!!

It really is beautiful, and there are nice places to stay!
Check it out a bit and see how beautiful God made the place.

Maybe your next overseas holiday you could visit East timor?  You can even earn flybuys now that Quantas is selling tickets for flying on the Airnorth planes!

Return to Oz

In the last few days in Timor we had to finalise a number of jobs in order to keep projects running while we were away.  Cynthia has been working on a women's project which is looking great and she has begun a trial with a number of Timorese ladies.  Its a woman's thing so she doesn't want to go into detail here.  Two days before leaving we got to meet an American named Lon.  He flew in especially to take the Los Palos project from its foundations up to the walls completed.  He seems like a great guy with a calm composure.  He's had experience in Guatamala with building techniques in poor countries.  I think he's got what it takes to do the job.  We do not have time to inspect it together due to the remote location of the project.  So we sit down and I go through drawings and photos of the site.  There's one catch - he works in imperial (feet and inches) and I've done all the drawings in metric.  He assures me he'll work it out because he has a tape measure in with both measurements.  I believe him.  If he pulls it off in three weeks, I will return with a team of 8 Salvation Army soldiers an have a crack at putting on the roof.  But as the Bible says, its the Lord that builds the house - if not, we work in vain. 
Ofcourse, in true Samuel style, I inspect a new project possibility - the water situation in Beraka -  on the last day in Timor.  The aim is to see if we can improve the water collection point and also the water quality possibly as a side job with the team.  There are some issues in this village with many of the people wanting to give more alliegance to the water spirit in the mountain than to God whom they also profess to believe.  This has some interesting implications for how we approach any work in water here.
So we leave these things in Gods hand and return to Oz to do what we gotta do there. 

A Death in the Family

A death in the family


Over the last 2 months, our neighbour has deteriorated from being able to walk around in his garden to lying in his bed unable to speak. He has destroyed his liver through drinking alcohol. He is only about 50 years old. Last week it looked as though he would not recover. I spent some time with him in prayer and read, as best as I could in Tetun, Psalm 23. I talked with him about how he needed to prepare himself to meet God. Early this morning he died. Cynthia heard the mourning and woke me up. It was a sad time. He leaves behind a poor wife, two sons and four daughters. The three younger daughters are 15, 9 and 6. They are very upset. People started streaming in from the villages around and before the sun really had a chance to get up men were bringing in tarps, ropes and bamboo poles – a place had to be set up for people to mourn. Next came cartloads of timber, large buckets full of pots, pans, bowls and knives – to cook and prepare meals for all the people. Tables and chairs were carried in and set level. Without asking, money was given to by sacks of rice, sugar, betel-nut and other necessities. A pig squeals – there will be meat for lunch.

Over the next two days more pigs, goats and a cow are killed. The body is buried with wailing, prayers, flowers and candles. It’s a very hands on experience. A few of the young men dig out a previous grave. Out comes the old coffin, grave clothes etc and the cement lining is repaired. As the coffin is brought to the cemetery the men begin mixing cement to make the cover slab. They place the coffin beside the grave and have a bit of a discussion as to how to lower it down. Some argue for the “just sort of lower it down with your hands” approach while others argue that it might fall and it would be a good idea to let it down with rope. The rope idea wins and rope soon materialises through the crowd. They need to spin the coffin so the feet point to the east, loop the ropes and lower the coffin. There is a crowd of about 200 people. As men mix concrete and set crude formwork for a slab to cover the grave the women begin the prayers. Soon the concreting is completed, flowers are added and candles are burned. For the next 4-5 days the vigil continues. People go about their daily business and return in the evening to sit with the family through the night – until the sunrises. Night after night. Various explanations are given for this vigil: to look after the grave, to chase away evil spirits or to help the family not to think about their loss. You may start to think what a fascinating and wonderfully supportive culture. That is true, but there is a sinister side that starts to make me angry. You see, so many people come and they all want to eat meat (its usually vegetarian around here) that they start killing the poor widows pigs and goats. Not only is she poor, with three young girls to feed, she has lost her husband, and now they eat her animals. Money is collected for the widow and then gets passed on to an older brother (possibly to pay for a cow he bought to be killed an eaten by the crowd.) The night vigil turns into more or less a gambling party with multiple groups sitting around playing cards, bingo, gambling, smoking, shouting out their wins and generally having a great time. As the nights wear on the money gets bigger. The young girls in the family seem to be forgotten in the midst of the festivities. This is happening all around our house. I walk around in dismay and disbelief knowing that these people will eat her out of house and home and then leave. I am assured that they have no big intention of helping this widow in the future. They ask me if this is different to Australian culture.

We have quietly hatched a plan that will provide for this poor widow and her family. We want to offer an investement opportunity in a beach villa that will rent out to repay the loan and provide for her. If you are inspired to help this lady and have money to invest then please contact us.

One Week to Go!

Our new cistern lid

We have been in East Timor now for nearly 8 weeks. On Wednesday the 9th we return to Oz for a family reunion and work and then come back to East Timor with a group of 8 Salvos. We have been trying to fix the loo for this team which involved painting a makeshift plywood cistern lid with paint. Serenity was keen to help so I gave her the oil based paint and away she went. She then dutifully cleaned the brush in the kitchen sink with water which was a disaster. Her hands were completely covered with oily paint that needed thinners to get off (a painful experience). Now she knows there are two paints in this world – one of which deserves a little more respect.

Cynthia has been very busy on a sewing project. She has found some very suitable material but had some trouble last week just trying to get enough thread especially since Samuel takes off to remote locations leaving her stranded with the kids. But she is nearly finished and ready to trial her product with the Timorese women.

We are all feeling much better with only Serenity and Israel having a lingering eye infection and various other minor and mysterious tropical ailments. Thanks for those who pray for us.

Samuel’s big job in this last week was to prepare supplies to load a truck to go to Los Palos. The Los Palos project is to make a building which will house a pastor’s family as well as provide a training centre for the youth. It takes about 6-7 hours to get to Los Palos from where we live in the capital of Dili. The price of a delivery truck varied from between $200-$500. At these prices we wanted to make sure the truck was full and actually got there. Of course, any attempt at being organised and efficient in this country is like trying to catch the wind. Aaah, but I may as well try. So we began stock piling steel mesh, reo, heaps of roofing timber, plywood (ceiling), roofing iron and besser blocks. In the meantime we haggled around for a truck and found a young man to return with his 4 tonne rock truck the next morning at 2 am! Well being in Timor, you are not really sure whether that means 2 am or somewhere before or just after sunrise. I stayed up until 11pm trying to sort out all the receipts for the project (as well as 2 other building projects running simultaneously with this one). I was planning to sleep in the truck. It turns out the truck driver decided to just stay up and play cards, got bored and arrived at our house – honk, honk!- at 1.30am! After 1 ½ hours of loading we came to the realisation that over $4000 worth of gear just wasn’t going to fit. So we loaded up our small truck as well and by 4am we were ready to go – no breakfast. Down the road we met up with the American missionary who currently directs the Nazarenes. We had previously loaded his ute with as much iron as we could, plus a water tank and drum. Things were going reasonably well apart from reo continually sliding off the truck and then a little disaster – a bearing got so hot on the big truck that grease and steam spewed out of the bearing cap and the tube burst. Changing this and another 2 flats set us back 3 hours. There was no attempt to back off the bearing on the wheel.

Convoy to Los Palos

At last our little convoy set off again and we eventually made it to Los Palos. (Add in another flat on arrival at Los Palos – brings it to 4 again, you might be beginning to think that the roads are a bit rough around here). I was very sleepy by the time I rolled in but there was heaps of construction work, planning, checking and training to do before crashing to bed. The next morning I did the waste water plumbing and finished off the windows and doors with the boys. My Timorese mate did most of the drive home that day which was a little exciting. We passed a rolled car and another accident. So I thank God for a successful mission and getting back home safely.

Nazarene Youth Centre

Pastor Samuel and wife, Pastor Uli, and bub very excited - about their new home 

Another highlight of the week was meeting with Carlos the Bible translator and buying over 1000 scriptures to distribute for about $420.

Hope you had a nice week.

Bibles from Wycliffe Bible translators

Sick, sick, sick

Rosina - a girl who lives with Anen's family preparing a meal next door

The video here shows our neighbours laying the foundation to build a beach villa to rent for income - its an investment project that we hope will provide income for this poor family.  We haven't got the money to complete this but we do have some interest in someone investing in it.

This week most of us were sick most of the time. The sickness seems to be some sort of fever that leads to a cough and lung congestion. We all seemed to get this to varying degrees. Israel also got a bad eye infection (the mucus drying on his eyelids and gluing them shut while he slept) as well as a heat rash. Cynthia found this week very hard as she was weak with her sickness and also worried about caring for the kids. On top of this, the blinkers on the truck died (ants got into the flasher unit) and Samuel spent ages going around town looking for the simple replacement part. After 2 days he came home with something that would “make-do” but unfortunately rewired it incorrectly, fried it, melted the battery terminals in the process and spent another couple of days going through the wiring. (God please send a mechanic!) He checked one last dingey spare parts shop and found another “close-enough” part, wired it in and hey presto, it worked! I get pretty frustrated when a 15 minute job takes 4 days but our life and times are in God’s hands. Glory to Him.

a tonne of timber for Los Palos roof

In these times its hard to find the good bits that make you think its worth while but then we think of the projects going on around us - the Los Palos training centre is moving forward and the builder was able to lay most of the foundation; Anen our poor neighbour has started laying the foundation for his beach villa rental project and Maun Je has started a new villa as well with another Aussie investor who has seen our work (very exciting that past work is growing!) plus lots of other stuff - this gives us encouragement to keep going.  In the end though, we give thanks to Jesus for his love.

Our first villa project with Maun Je - back in 2008

Anen in his family begin a new beachside villa