We arrived back in Papua New Guinea on September 16th and are in full swing in our ministries here again. Steve is back in the hangar, and Donell has begun learning a new ministry in the PNG Business Office.
Our son, Sean, was able to come to PNG for a couple weeks in October with a team from Hume Lake to help put on a camp for our junior high and high school kids here. He led the worship team for the weekend. It was great to see him once more here in his place of birth. He is back in the States now and has moved up to Idaho to live with his brother, Ryan & family there. Pray he settles in and is able to find a job there.
Donell has continued physical therapy here for her shoulder (praise the Lord for our therapist in PNG!). It is still painful at full extension, but she has most of her motion back since her surgery on August 30th. It will take more time and exercise for her to finally be pain free.
When one of out pilots complained of a problem while flying, our mechanic staff investigated. We quickly found a loose part, and began reinstalling it. Suddenly, I dropped a tiny piece of it, and it “disappeared.” All four mechanics helped look for the piece I had dropped. We were all joking “tongue in cheek” that God wanted to show us something more importantly wrong with the engine, knowing full well that God does that. Sure enough, in our searching for this tiny piece, we found a serious problem we hadn’t seen before that would have given us trouble in the near future. As soon as we discovered that problem, we found the tiny piece we had been looking for and replaced it. God sometimes uses our mistakes to direct our attention to greater needs in our lives as well as in safety.