Hi praying friends,
Just a quick update to say that Nya and Noah are doing well; Nya has had no repeats of her fit, praise the Lord and Noah’s sores are healing up well. Thanks so much for your prayers. Simon is sick just now with bad sinus headaches and bone pain, hopefully this comes to an end soon. Reports from our language consultant say that we are progressing well in language after the six week test. They gave us some good advice also showing us how to be more productive in language learning and how to divide our time in a more productive way. They feel that both Annika and I can get the language in good time and are encouraged by how we are working. Please continue to pray we can work well together and free each other up to learn as well as having time for the kids and family time. We find life here is pressured, with us being the centre of the community’s attention; they have continual requests which can be draining and hard to manage. There are always little relational issues to straighten out and it is very much like dealing with children a lot of the time. Pray for love to rule in all of these challenges. One of the bigger challenges just now is the airstrip; one lady in particular is causing all of the problems. Her clan own the land and want royalties from that, our policy is to not pay for the ground or rent it. Right now however there is necessary maintenance taking place on the airstrip which makes them think there is money going around. And there are two village men employed continually to look after flights when they come in. They run the kids and the pigs off the airstrip so the plane can land safely and they organize cargo on and off the plane. These men are being targeted and pressured to share their work money with their clan; they feel it’s not fair that they all don’t get money from this. This issue may sound small but it quickly escalates; just yesterday the fence we fixed to keep the pigs off the airstrip was chopped open as people are angry; our tractor shed was broken up with axes only a few months ago. And there are now threats that the airstrip will be closed; they do this by putting logs across it or digging a ditch in the night, this makes it impossible for planes to land and we have no way to prevent this. If this does happen then we will have to walk out through the jungle for three hours and then take a seven hour car ride just to get to our main centre. You can imagine how that is not what we would desire with two small kids. Our food and supplies would then have to be flown in by chopper only a few times in the year as it is so expensive; this will also not be ideal, if you forget something on the shopping list you have to wait four months! So please be praying that all of this can be resolved somehow and that we can find a road to keep the airstrip open. That being said we see the whole thing coming to a head soon so please pray for wisdom.
Thanks for your prayers,
Simon, Annika, Nya and Noah