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.

Accommodation Project

Like every body else on this planet, we don't actually have a singularly obsessive focus on one thing i.e. East Timor.  I am not sure whether this is good or bad, but I know that it is exhausting.  Two years ago, I hatched a dastardly plan to try to help my father find a better place to live.  I got a teaching job for a year (which is another story) and found that I could get a loan to buy a house.  Loans are scary things and one of the major means by which we are trapped into a rather less-than-spontaneous mode of living otherwise known as "the rut".  So, in order to avoid the rut, we bought a house with the plan to build a second house with the idea that they could both support the now too-big-to-mention loan and my dad could live for free on the land.  Sounds noble, but in reality, psychotic.  The whole thing grew into a voluminous financial and bureaucratic mess.  Step in, God, please.

The new house we are trying to build.

So God decides to rock up on the scene of this disaster around June, 2010, halfway through our stint in East Timor.  True to form, he took all our stuff and is trying to turn it around for good.  We were approached by an organisation who would like to take on the two houses and use them to accommodate needy people.  The hope is that it will pay for itself and we can return to what we do in East Timor.  To make this a reality I need to work my little butt off and get the new house finished.  In the back of my head I am trying to remember that it is God who builds things and that I must trust in him.

Back in Australia

The last week in East Timor was hard work.  It always is after you’ve been going at it for several months and you’re trying to tie up projects in preparation for departure.  Firstly, we should continue Cynthia’s saga with the late night boogie dancers.  It seems as though two weeks of dancing through the night is just not enough.  Although not continuously all day and night, our neighbouring party animals were going hard and loud long into the night for the third week and Cynthia had had more than enough.  So Cynthia, all 82 pounds of intimidating beauty went out into the night … 2 am … alone … to meet her destiny.  Now it happens that the main switch to the power (including loud speakers) is on our side of the church building.  Sneeky Cynthia went up and flicked off the switch and shuffled back home before getting caught.  All was silent, with Cynthia peering out on the dark scene from the safety of an upper window in our house.  She thought she had won when, after a little while, a light bobbed around the corner and flicked the switch back on again.  Drat.  Hmmm … Plan B (note that samuel would surely have been a little more valiant had he not been fast asleep).  So Cynthia, feeling bolder from her previous sortie, decided on a new manoeuvre.  She walked back out into the dark and walked right up to the boys who were fast asleep in the middle of the amplifiers which were all pointing outwards blasting the music across the village.  Nervously she turned the volume switch and it quickly dropped to silent.  One of the boys stirred so she sweetly explained that she couldn’t sleep.  So he just said “Ok” and went back to sleep.  At last the torture was over!  In fact, that was the end of it!  They decided they were over it and didn’t need to keep everyone up night after night anymore.  Hallelujah!
The main job for Samuel was to get the units finished which after lots of hard work and pushing the guys we finally got them completed.  Though the exterior paint was still wet on the last day of work.  He built and installed the solar hot water system and installed the solar pv system (electrical) to one unit and set up wires and materials for the other two to be installed by the now trained Timorese.  Samuel always thinks they are quick learners.  Thankfully, on the last day before leaving we finally confirmed that we had a tenant for all three units.  He’s an Aussie bloke who cared for me when I was very sick in 2008.  He works for the government and if I revealed too much more of his identity then I’d have to kill you, so I’ll spare you the details.

I think I forgot to mention that somewhere a month or so back, the little white suzuki featuring in our history of work in water and Bi ble distribution has been very generously donated to our work.  It is our sincere hope that this little beauty can deliver many more Bibles to the Timorese people before it reaches retirement. 
Another interesting turn of events was that we bought a boat this week!  It was an offer of a quality boat too good to refuse and should prove very valuable in helping the Timorese.  Without inspecting the boat (a minor detail) I agreed to buy it and actually never saw it again after the money transaction of $900.  I immediately entered into a contract with another young Timorese fisherman without even talking to him.  He will rent the boat on a monthly rate so he can use it to catch more fish than he usually would in his little dugout.  It perhaps seems a little foolhardy and it probably is.  I hope to return back next year to find this a successful proposition.  I am still naive enough to believe it is better to trust and take a chance than not to try at all.  You can judge me later on this.
Cynthia has received an order for her ladies sewing group to make simple cloth library books to assist in literacy in a library in Gleno.  This is a new, exciting and very creative opportunity on top the women’s products that the Timorese ladies are producing.  Also on our brief stopover in Darwin we met a very encouraging lady.  She has now  approached some government connections in the Northern Territory with the possibility of providing reusable sanitary pads to Aboriginal women in remote communities.  Its all quite new and unknown but just the idea is exciting enough to write about.

So after some sad farewells we finally shoved a few belongings into our bags and left our friends and projects all behind in East Timor.  We shall see how it all pans out when we hope to return in Jan/Feb next year.
We had a great stop over in Darwin for the weekend reuniting with old friends from almost 10 years ago and getting our first opportunity to share our work with two Darwin churches.  They were very encouraging to us.  Some of them believe that God is asking them to help East Timor.
We finally got home to the grandparents.  Samuel pretty quickly came down with a convincing round of diarrhoea and Cynthia is now suffering with a yukky fever.  She went to hospital for blood tests which we are waiting on mainly to cancel the possibility of malaria or dengue.  Israel is getting over his boils and Serenity appears fine.  Cant complain really, drinking water comes out of the taps in Australia and you can have a hot shower (and even drink the shower water if you want to – lucky country).
We will probably not update the blog with news for some time as most of you know that life is pretty mundane in the lucky country.  But Samuel is cooking up a little miracle with the Lord.  Problem is, its so darn crazy he’d prefer to keep it a secret until he pulls it off (with a lot of help with God).
So its good to be back … in Australia!
God bless, Samuel

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