Celebrating Christmas

On Christmas Day, we gathered in Mt Hagen with 6 other M.A.F families to celebrate Jesus birth. Much laughter, food and fun was had by all. When we got home we had phone calls and emails from our family around the world. A beautiful day!

Home School Christmas Concert

The MAF home school kids entertained us on Saturday night with a fantastic concert and Christmas celebration. Great fun.

Flood Relief

This was sent to us to encourage us in our work, a great shot and a great story.

This was taken at Boure in the Oro Province. These people have lost all their gardens in floods after a cyclone - no food for a fortnight until the day this was taken. The RAAF used Boure as a forward supply destination for cargo that was then shuttled out by MAF and small helicopters. The people had a meal when the first load of supplies arrived then enthusiastically unloaded Caribou and loaded helicopters and our Twin Otter, sweating in the hot sun all day - hard physical work as tonnes of supplies passed though this place. They kept this up all week - even till today when our Otter dropped a load of fresh vegetables for their community - their first fresh vegies (we had only done shuttles out of this place before today). As you can see from the photo, (remember they had just had their first real meal in a fortnight) they were fully engaged with our crew.
Enjoy...

Thanks to Tom Teal Sinclair for the report, and Richard Marples for the picture.

The Bread and the Wine

A friend sent this to us this week. Her son was expressing his understanding of communion – I think its beautiful!

He looks at the plate and then takes the smallest piece of bread (that's where the whole explanation started - he felt like he needed to tell my why he was taking so long carefully scoping out which piece of bread he wanted to take.) Then he went on to explain..... the bread is the body of Jesus, so he takes the smallest one, because it is the little baby. (At this point he wanted me to put my bread next to his - which thankfully it was bigger than his so still fits in with his theory - I am the mommy bread....) So his is the baby bread. Then he puts it in his mouth, but he doesn't chew it, he just puts it up on the top of his mouth until it gets "easy enough to swallow." In other words...soggy.... Then he swallows it whole, because he doesn't want to break up the baby. Then, he takes the juice, and drinks it. And that's the blood. So when he swallows the juice, it becomes the blood again and it hits the baby bread in his tummy, and because it's the body of Jesus, it comes alive again when it gets the blood part. They mix together and become alive, "And when I swallow the juice, and it's going down to my tummy, it doesn't even say 'I'm trying, I'm trying'.... It says 'we did it!! We did it!!! And that is how Jesus lives in me, Mommy."

And that, my friends, is what communion means to my son....not bad, huh???

Bikes and Bush Creatures

Our next door neighbors son has a pet Tree Kangaroo, and this morning we spotted them both out for a nice bike ride.

Christmas in Mt Hagan #2

Nativity scene in local shop. Coming to see the baby Jesus.

Christmas in Mt Hagan

Here in Mt Hagan, people are gearing up for Christmas. School is out, and people have begun holidays so the town is pumping with the crowds.
The shops are full of tinsel, and carols have been playing for weeks already. We especially love the life size singing and dancing Santa that our friendly grocery has set up in his store. He is a jolly fellow; bopping away and singing a never-ending melody of ‘jingle bells’. He is a bit of a crowd pleaser. There always people standing around him. And rightly so. Not only is this big plastic man dancing and singing, he is dressed in bright red from head to toe and he has white skin and a large snow-white beard. It is no wonder that people, young and old alike find it hard to keep their hands off Santa.
Last year, we were (quietly) delighted to see Santa fall over several times after receiving non-to gentle inquisitive prods and pokes from people walking past. The storeowner would yell at his customers, and poor Santa would be propped up again – it didn’t seem to affect his jolly attitude, although his face was getting pretty banged up. This year, our store owner has thought ahead and plastered a large sign in pidgin on Santa chest saying… “Everyone, please don’t touch Papa Christmas. It is not good. He will fall down. Thank you!”
Lets hope Santa is left alone to dance away many more Christmas’s in Mt Hagan.