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.

Signing up to The Salvation Army

A momentous occasion for which I only have a fuzzy photo. 

Samuel signed up officially to The Salvation Army and is now ranked as “Soldier” otherwise known as cannon fodder.  He is dedicated to serving God whole heartedly as a true soldier of Jesus Christ.  We have been “attending” the Grafton Salvation Army for about 10 years.  For about 4 years of that time, in fits and bursts, we’ve living in Timor Leste but have still felt connected to this church.

To Oz and Back

Last week we went to Australia for I think what will be our annual Christmas visit, except that it lasted only 12 days.  We got to see some of our rellies and experience the amazingly peaceful, ordered and safe life of Australia.  I still find myself very happy to turn on a tap, put a cup under it and get some water to drink.  It must be a symbol of the developed world.  Cynthia is very pregnant now and I had planned to stick up a photo here of her big belly but a technical hitch stopped me so you’ll just have to imagine a beautiful lady who usually weighs in at 45kg with a big bump sticking out where her tummy is.  Now she weighs 59kg – a 30% increase in weight.  To the great concern of foreign folk, Cynthia has decided she wants to give birth in Timor Leste.  The Timorese are very excited about this.  The way they are talking, it seems like the bub might come out with a chocolate skin colour as its basically going to be Timorese!   The other event is that Serenity and Israel have stayed back in Australia to spend Christmas and new years with the family.  Meal times are very quiet now and we miss them very much. 

Ajina, one of the Timorese girls that lived with us, has left to go back home to Liquica.  She came from the districts to live with us while attending an English course in Dili.  She is a part of Fini Transformasaun and will hopefully assist the group with English lessons in the future.

The Timorese are starting to plant their corn.  The rains have come a little late.  Some crops were planted several weeks ago and have failed.  Most of the seed from the Los Palos project has been sold and distributed and we need to sit down and work out how funds have gone.  People are bustling around getting ready for Christmas.  They make nativity scenes here on street corners as a community effort so thatching is happening and cans of paint are applied to brighten things up.  There is also a shopping spree here just like in Oz.  The women like to go to “Myers” for clothes.  This is tough for women on the island so our girl, Emmy, is taking “Myers” to them.  We’ve given her a $500 loan to buy selected 2nd hand clothes from the markets.  These were bundled onto the boat and taken to a couple of villages on the island.  The boat pulls up on the beach and she lays out a tarp on the sand in the shade and lays out the clothes in a big pile that the women (and men) rummage through.  In a village with no shops except for small home ‘kiosks’ and no roads this becomes a big day out for them.  While this is going on Tobias is negotiating short credit arrangements for farmers to get seed and pay later with cash, chickens or fish.  With this well researched seed we hope they can grow more food this year.  This is Christmas in East Timor.

 

Note: we are discussing how to build simple tourist cabins on the island to help improve their income base.  The long pic shows the land set aside for this.  It really is an idyllic beach.

On the Farm

I’ve always thought that a place like East Timor would benefit from regular country Australians showing the Timorese how they do farming next door.  This week we had a visit from Nick (Darwin Helicopter Pilot) and his brother Chris (Western Australian, Tug Boat Captain).  Great blokes who have their own farms back home.  Among the many adventures they had here in their short stay was building a fence out at Los Palos.  This is part of a farming project to provide work, accommodation and training opportunities for young people who come into town to go to senior high school.  They have been given a piece of land to work and this has been ploughed.  It needed a fence before the rains come.  Nick, with funds from the Palmerston Baptists, bought 8 rolls of barbed wire, pliers and some other gear for the fence.  Then we made the journey out to Los Palos to show them a few tricks.  An important part of a barbed wire fence is the strainer post set up in the corners.  Chris really took the lead here – showing the boys how it was done using sign language.  They set up the two posts, put in a top rail and then wrap thick plain wire diagonally around this – the diagonal has to go the right way for it to work.  Then a stick is poked in the middle of the diagonal and spun around to twist up the wire and make it really tight.  I really wanted to do the job with tools that Timorese had so the challenge was to tension the wire just using a steel bar as a lever.  It worked very well and got the wire very tight.  The Timorese boys were very impressed and I’m pretty sure they’ll be able to do it again by themselves.  They still have a couple more sides to do so we’ll see how they go.  It will be interesting to see if the quality of fencing improves out there as farmers share these skills with others.  What we learnt from the Timorese was to use fresh cut poles from the bush so that when you stuck your post in the ground it would come to life, grow bigger and never rot.  The tree that grows from this would then produce more poles for another fence in a couple of years.

 

Drums and Seed to Atauro

The planting season is almost here in Timor Leste.  Farmers have been working hard to prepare their land for the rains and they are finally starting to come.  Farmers rely on these wet season rains to come every year so they can grow their corn and rice to feed their families for the rest of the year.  Some of the corn seed from the Los Palos project has come to Dili and will be taken to the island of Atauro.  This will be the first season that the islanders will get to grow the improved variety of corn researched by Seeds of Life.  We are also distributing drums donated by Mission Aviation Fellowship to the farmers to store the corn.  Farmers will pay $10 per drum and $5 for a 5kg bag of seed.  This payment could also be made to the skipper via a catch of fish.  Hence, we have the scene on our beach of sacks of corn seed, 44 gallon drums and an old fridge in our boat.  Tobias, the skipper puts ice in the fridge so he can bring fish back to Dili to sell.  This is a market driven approach to development work where the farmer, the transporter, the ice maker, the skipper, the fish monger and many others all play a role in lifting the economy of the country.  The bloke like me works to make all the connections and to inspire them that it can actually happen.  It has to be financially supported to some extent initially but we hope in time that they will find the way to make it happen themselves.

I hope the corn grows well this year.

Setting a Church on Fire

  Recently we went to a church service that was a little hot. They started around 8am in the morning but in the tropical heat of Timor Leste we all got hot and sweaty pretty quickly. The elderly men and women found it particularly hard. But this was not a church service to miss. The week before, someone had decided to burn the church building down. They had been threatening to do it for quite some time and now it was done. Now all that was left was the concrete floor and the chairs that were saved from the fire. The Church at Sidara had bravely persevered through years of taunting and threats. Over the last year or so, the group was finally starting to be accepted by the wider community as a legitimate gathering of people just wanting to follow Jesus. I remember back in 2004 seeing Branca go up to the village with her medical kit in her hand bag to treat the people. Back then she sat on the foundations of a small clinic being built to do her work. Now there is a thriving centre with the clinic, birthing centre and preschool. Only the church building was built out of thatching and bush materials. After the fire, the burnt poles were chopped down and the floor swept ready for the Sunday service. There was a real feeling of solidarity and never-say-die. When the service was over the men began to talk over the details of rebuilding. This will be a challenge. Decisions will need to be made about materials, quality, dimensions etc and I think these decisions are difficult for any group in any part of the world. Pray that God’s Spirit would carry them long after the smell of ash has gone and the hard work of rebuilding has begun. If you’re a member of a church somewhere that has nice things like carpet, electricity and perhaps even a kitchen then whisper a quiet thanks to God for these things and pray that He would set your Church on fire.

Sorting through Stuff

We have been getting a number of donations of materials lately from a number of different sources.  All this stuff needs to be stored and sorted and packed for delivery to a destination where it can be of most benefit.  Sometimes its time consuming, heavy and dirty work.  But sorting coloured pencils is fun.  Our house looks a bit more like a storage area sometimes with lots of stuff coming and going. 

We have also been receiving seed prepared in Los Palos as part of a small business agricultural project.  The challenge is to find ways of marketing farmers produce so that they can derive an income.  This is connected with the silo project last year and part of the income from sales of seed is used to repay the cost of the silo.  It is hoped that we can then use that to buy another silo and continue the process.  Its about sustainable development rather than handouts.

 

Tobias has been a faithful worker.  Besides running the boat trade route he gains employment doing odd jobs that I come across and assists me in various ways on our projects.  Here he is learning some metal work modifying electrical fuse boxes to secure electrical components of weather stations.  Learning how to punch a hole in metal, control the speed and pressure of the drill and avoid snapping the drill bit is all a bit of a challenge.  You cant be too precious about tools in this country as they get a hammering from learning hands.

 

Books, pencils, clothes, first aid kits and medical supplies being delivered.