Sandys office window view

On a normal flight day, Sandy gets to see some magnicent views from the air. He took this picture on Wednesday while he was in the South of the country near a place called Mt Karimui.


 

The sound of distant drums....

The saga of our elusive drums continues.

After four weeks in country, our drums were finally cleared from customs as of last Friday. Hooray!

Unfortunately, due to heavy rain over the weekend, a bridge on the ONLY road from here to Lae has collapsed and no vehicles are able to get through!

Life in PNG is never dull.

Repairs to the bridge are supposed to take a week.

(And the pigs are all refuelled, pre-flight inspections complete and ready to taxi!)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RACHEL

Rachel was 8 years old today. We celebrated with a trip to the pool, a movie night and sleep- over with friends, and enough sugary food to take down an elephant.

Happy Birthday Rachel!
 

Thanksgiving

I know we are not Americans, but with THANKSGIVING coming up this week, we have decided to take a moment and count our blessings.

Some things that we are thankful for…

• Email and the Internet. We are very thankful that we are missionaries in the computer zippy age.
• Noisy children who live in our house. (Noisy kids are healthy kids).
• Our second hand 4x4 car…thanks to MAF UK, we can now safely navigate through the pot-holed roads of Mt Hagan without scraping off the bottom of the car.
• Narelle is thankful for the gas stove and rain water tank MAF have in the houses here in Hagan. The power and water can go off and on as many times as it jolly well wants to….we can still whip up a meal and wash the dishes after!
• Sandy is thankful for the availability of Cadburys chocolate in Mt Hagan.
• Rachel and Meg are thankful for friends to play with, trees to climb, books to read, bubblegum and Christmas.

Found this quote scribbled on a bit of paper in my bible.

“A thankful heart and mind are among Gods most useful tools for rooting out discontentment, grumbling and even bitterness. Developing an attitude of thankfulness is not simply a matter of positive thinking. It is a matter of obedience, since for the Christian, giving thanks is a command, not an option. (1 Thessalonians 5.18)”

WE CAN FLY IN PNG!

Hello Friends!
It’s been a while since we last reported in. It has been a hectic few weeks with dramas a-plenty.

Sandy finally received his PNG licence yesterday after 6 weeks of pushing and prayer.
Special thanks to our friends in MAF South Africa who did some running around for us in speeding up the licensing process…..much appreciated guys!!!

As of Monday Sandy will begin operational flying with one of the instructor pilots. The check out phase in the highland areas will involve flying the routes between all the different major valleys 5 times, and the lowland routes will be covered 3 times each. Any new airstrips will involve briefings before going into them and a number of landings at each of the more difficult airstrips. Once the routes have been covered the required number of times Sandy will be let loose to fly on his own.

Up to this point, Sandy has been flying with another pilot observing and doing the flying when the plane is empty (he had a student licence that restricted him to flying cargo).

He spent two nights out at the MAF base at a town called Goroka this week. Along with moving general commuters, Sandy went and helped pick up a local Pastor and his family from an outlying village where they had been doing church work, and brought them back to their home in Goroka. They also moved coffee for a church community, to be sold in a bigger town.

At one village airstrip a man came up to Sandy and introduced himself as the local school teacher, who a month ago was flown out by MAF on a medi-vac. The teacher was critically ill with malaria and pneumonia, and was unconscious when our pilots picked him up. He came and thanked the pilots for their help, and said he was feeling much better now and that he was glad that they had been there to take him to hospital.

It is exciting to be a part of a work that is making a real difference in the lives of the people of PNG.

Swimming Fun

 

Where theres smoke....

 

 

Pilots in a Pool

 

The week that was...

Hello friends.
A wee update on what we have been up to this past week. Thanks to all who are praying in regard to the issuing of Sandy’s PNG licence. Please continue to pray that it will be all sorted out this week and that Sandy (and the two other new pilots), can start flying as soon as possible.

All MAF PNG pilots (23 of them altogether) gathered in Mt Hagan for the annual pilots meetings. Lectures in topics such as first aid, crew resource management, and dangerous goods where covered. Meetings galore! All the managers had time together (each of the 6 MAF PNG outstations has a family overseeing their particular region), and all the flight instructors. Then the families joined the pilots for a big get-together on the Wednesday night. It was exciting to meet our extended MAF family, get to know people better and hear more about the vision and goals of MAF PNG from our General Manager and his wife, Mike and Kathy Jelliffe.

It wasn’t all just book work and meetings this week. Some fun was had in the pool at the Highlander Hotel, where the pilots did some activities using safety rafts and life jackets. Another day they had a chance to try out their fire-fighting skills, making sure that everyone knew how to operate extinguishers….and they also got to set off some out-of date flares. Who knew that being safe could be this much fun???

Narelle and the girls and finished off their school week with a swimming afternoon at the previously mentioned Highlander Hotel. All the home-school families got together, and one of the mums (Narelle Bubb), who is a qualified swim instructor, organised an afternoon of swimming lessons for our kids. There are some lovely things about living in Mt Hagan! The kids had a ball. (Thanks to Michel and Nicki Duncalfe for photos.)