Darwin Team

Last week we had a small team from Darwin visiting the Nazarene Church in Los Palos.  There are a lot of benefits to to having people over from Darwin.  They know about living in the tropics, they are used of long trips on rough roads and they have seen buffalo before (thats gotta count for something).  Samuel went with them to Los Palos after having a bit of difficulty getting a suitable car.  Its great to see Pastor Samuel and Uli using the new training and accommodation building.  The team got a bit of a reality check I think with how poor the local pastors are when we found that they didn’t have the $40 to finish tiling in the meeting area.  But the place looks great and they even have a gas stove to cook on!  This means a lot to Pastor Samuel who suffered terribly from TB and constantly coughed with the smoke from the fire going through the old house.   We got involved in  English lessons  where we presented them with Bibles.  On Saturday night we went to a bible study where Samuel shared a message in Tetun and got to hand out more Bibles and then on Sunday morning we shared in the church service where Pastor Bruce was able to preach.  The road back is getting pretty washed out now and unknown to the team, but very soon after they got back to Dili the road was washed out and has been rendered impassible.  Now the road to the west and east are both washed out and it looks like the road over the mountains is about to go as well.  Add to this, the only ferry service to Oecussi being out of service its getting pretty hard to get around to large parts of the country.  Once roads are down this has a big impact on the economy and other services such as medical runs and aid and development work. 
We are getting enough work to get by on, hallelujah, and Samuel will be away all next week trying to fix a roof for an agricultural research station.  The mission base down by the beach is still getting built.  Hopefully this week they will have walls finished and ready for the roof.
I’m pretty sure this is an Indonesian style roof but I wonder if it has  a Portuguese influence?  In any case, I am really not sure why the roofing iron doesn’t go over the wall.  This leads to lots of leaking where the old iron meets the wall.  Then the roof timbers rot.  Mix in a heap of white ants, rat chewed electrical work and alfoil thin roofing iron and there’s only one white fella stupid enough to get up on it …. yours truly.