Nieces

We have really enjoyed getting to know our nieces. They were born while we were in Papua New Guinea, so this has been our first chance to spend time with them. Of course we think they are the cutest little girls ever. We love playing with them and they keep us laughing with their little antics and sayings.

Our Trip - Chapter 2

Friday was cold and rainy. Fortunately, most of the stuff Josh had planned was in doors. We saw the Wildlife World (Australian animals) and the Sydney Aquarium among other things. I felt sorry for the animals at the wildlife world. They were all cold and wet and huddled up to keep warm. I was thankful that I was inside and not standing out in the rain looking at them. The aquarium was really cool, especially the shark/manta ray tank. They had two tubes through the tank, so you could walk through and there were sharks and manta rays swimming all around you. Manta rays look like the birds of the ocean, flying gracefully through the ocean. We took lots of video clips of them. They looked huge, but the sign said they would appear 25% smaller than real life, due to the curvature of the walls or something like that. Anyway, I figured I wouldn’t want to meet one in the ocean… That evening we met up with one of Josh’s friends and went to a concert at the Sydney Opera House. I don’t think Matt and Josh were too excited about the whole thing, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Our trip

On our way back to the U.S. we had the opportunity of visiting a friend in Sydney, Australia. We had a great time visiting him and seeing the sights. We saw everything from the Blue Mountains to the Sydney Opera House and the Sydney harbor bridge. I loved it all. For those of you who are interested in the details, I decided to break them up into multiple posts, so this one would not be super long.

Sydney was a lot of fun. Josh (our friend from Sydney) totally wore us out (and himself). We did get to see way more than we ever would have if we would have just gone by ourselves. We were leaving the house around 7:30AM and getting home around 11PM.

Wednesday, Josh and a friend picked us up at the airport Wednesday evening and drove out to the Blue Mountains, where we spent the night. It was really cold. First thing Thursday morning we headed out to tour some caves. The caves had the most amazing mineral formations. Unfortunately the camera just doesn't do them justice. There were thousands of stalagmites and stalactites and then some things that stuck straight out from the side walls. I'm not sure what they were called. Some of the mineral formations hanging from the roof of the cave looked like large pieces of fabric. By the time we finished with the caves, it was early afternoon. After a wrong turn or two, we arrived at a lookout point. It was breath taking. The weather was clear just long enough for us to get a good view and take some pictures. After that everything was pretty fogged in, so we headed back to Sydney.

Vacation Bible School

For all of you who think I fell off the face of the earth, I apologize. This entry is actually from the beginning of July, but I am just getting around to posting it.

This last week we had Vacation Bible School for all of the younger missionary kids who stayed around for the summer. Our theme was Avalanche Ranch and everything was "ranch style." I was a crew leader for a group of three and four year olds. Our team was the Cattle Dogs. A few of our Bible stories were Rahab and the spies (which scared some of my little ones), the Israelites crossing the Jordan river and Joshua and the Battle of Jericho.

My group was bit of a challenge, since they hadn't been to school yet. They didn't know how to walk in line, that in a group setting you can't just yell out whatever crosses your mind, etc. However they did come up with some funny things that made me laugh. At one point we were about to watch a little video and one little boy had to use the bathroom. As I was walking him out of the room, he turned around and announced to everybody, "I have to go potty, but it's ok. I'll be right back, so don't start without me!"

At three and four years of age, I always wonder how much they remember, so it was neat for me to see all of the kids learning their verses and remembering the Bible points for the different days.

Coffee Factory and Goroka Museum

The highlight of last week was a tour of a coffee processing plant and a trip to the Goroka museum. The coffee processing plant is pretty amazing! They process tons (literally) of coffee every day. The place is very noisy and there are pieces of coffee hull (husk, whatever you call it) falling on you all the time. At the plant they dry the coffee, take the hull off and sort it according to quality or grade. The dryers alone hold six tons of coffee each. After all that, they sell it to exporters who then have it roasted and sent overseas.

The museum was also very interesting to me, despite its size. It was very small, but it was clean and had a nice display of PNG artifacts, history, etc. I just finished reading a book on the history of PNG, so seeing so much stuff in the museum that the book had talked about was fascinating. I would have liked to spend some more time there, but the rest of the group was getting hungry.

Graduation

Last Wednesday we had the opportunity of going to and helping with the Numanohi Christian Academy high school graduation. Many of the kids' family members showed up from around the world and of course the kids were so excited to graduate. Matt was the official photographer and I coordinated the coffee at the reception. Needless to say we have no end of pictures of the graduation, which was very nice. Serving coffee, on the other hand, provided a bit more excitement than I was hoping for... The outlet next to the coffee serving table quit working at some point during the graduation. Fortunately the coffee stayed fairly hot on its own. Also, the other coffee pots that we traded the original one out with were plugged into outlets that worked. All in all, I think everything turned out fairly well.

Another exciting birthday party...

Last week was Tony's birthday. He didn't want his birthday party to be a major event (like Emily's), so it was dubbed "the gathering in honor of Tony." He did, however, mention that we were free to dress up like him or like a Belgian. Matt and a couple of other guys took him up on this in a little different way than he probably expected... While he was out, they went and "borrowed" some of his clothes to wear to his "gathering." When he saw the first guy he said, "I have a shirt just like that." Then he saw the other two and realized that it was his shirt. It was pretty funny. The "gathering" consisted of ice cream sundays and a lot of goofing around. The first picture is Tony with his "look alikes". The second picture is one of the high school guys feeding him ice cream and doing an amazingly good job of not making a mess. The third picture is the boys dropping Tony after having lifted him over their heads.