A land of milk and honey

A family is well and looking forward to a visit to Australia in April.  We think about baked things – anything that comes out of an oven because we don’t have one.  We also think about fresh milk.  Here we still have a traditional breakfast of cereal like muesli, corn flakes or weetbix and for milk we have UHT Milk.  Fresh milk is difficult to get and may cost around $6/L.  Right now Timor Leste has also run out of UHT milk so we are rationing our last box.  We like a bit of honey on our breakfast too.  The local honey is usually too fermented so Serenity and Israel tease dad about his “no drinking alcohol” promise to The Salvation Army.  We think we’ve got a good supply now.  It doesn’t taste so bad even though it comes packaged in a stubby.

We’ve been working hard to try to do the paperwork to take Xakira to Australia.  This includes applying for her to become an Australian citizen.  You might be pleased to know she officially became an Australian Citizen on the 8th of March.  They must be lowering the standard in Oz because she still doesn’t know how to play cricket, she can’t speak a word of English and she doesn’t have a fancy education.  It must’ve been her good looks.  Unfortunately I dont have too many pictures of Xakira but we’ll try to remedy that soon.  Until then, here’s a few random events over the past week:

The girls in the sewing room got a task of sewing 500 special bags for drying corn for research in Seeds of Life.

Samuel desk – a bit cluttered as he tries to wire up a special system for measuring weather in a remote location.  It worked in the office but success in the field still proves ellusive.

The sunset is swinging back up north again which means we see some sensational artwork as the sun sets into the ocean.

Tobias, Israel (being shy) and Samuel in the boat assisting with a preliminary bathymetric survey (sea depth) off the end of the runway.  We’re using a GPS, depth sounder, lap top and some mapping software.  Its an effort to demonstrate that the runway could feasibly be extended into the sea rather than cut off access to our village.  (We must leave the outcome in God’s hands)

We see plenty of strange and what you might call dangerous activities here.  Its an OH&S nightmare from an Australian perspective.  One topic is towing vehicles.  Timorese are never really big on using rope so they tend to tow a vehicle with whatever they can find.  You even find motorbikes towing motorbikes!  You wonder what the police are doing and if they allow it?  Well the pic here shows a police motorbike that has stopped working.  The policeman is getting towed by another policeman using a piece of string that looks a lot like a lace out of their boots!

We are always thankful to God for his provision and keeping us safe and so healthy lately.  Pray that Bibles or scriptures of any sort could come into the country because, unlike UHT milk, we haven’t been able to get decent amounts of scriptures since August last year.