safe and sound

Phil got back yesterday from his trip interior with our friends. It was a long, muddy trip in.

Here they start one of the bikes... again. Puddles, mud and pouring rain.... not to mention gaping holes made their trip exhausting.

They forded a swollen stream by balancing on makeshift bamboo rafts... while sitting on their bikes.

Phil and Paul, Tim and Darren helped wire Paul's house, pictured above.

No one got shocked, hurt, dehydrated or anything else. We are so thankful for that. Also our friends' house got completely wired, and is ready to go!

Trail? What trail? This IS the trail... Oh good. I thought maybe we were lost. Thank God for Darren and his GPS... and Tim and his machete (Tim is in the blue shirt to the right, throwing himself into some stubborn "brush").

They even found two possible options for an airstrip. :0) That is very, very good news. Here, Darren (one of our pilots) scopes out the land, looking for level ground.

not our puppy :(

Yesterday afternoon, I resisted one of the biggest temptations of my adult life. Some friends in town here found a litter of puppies for sale. There was one left, "he's so cute and tiny and cheap!" What should i do? i can tell you what i WANTED to do...

With Phil being out of town, i thought that maybe now was not the best time to add a little puppy fluff to our lives. Oh, but i WANTED TO!!!! Look at this little girl's face. I wasn't the only one.

For now, she gets to snuggle our neighbors' new little bundle of joy.

And for now this poor little fuzz ball gets to be "loved" by my darling two year old mother-hen-in-training. Here she's discovering his "little baby puppy laws!" [claws...or paws... something that rhymes with either one of those words].

Oh, alright. Nadia is not the only one who's loving on the new puppy on the block. :0) But can you blame me!?

bye-bye daddy

This morning Phil left us for an "expedition". He's not sure how long he'll be gone, but we think it will be at least a week (likely closer to 2 weeks). He went interior (meaning, into the jungle) to help a friend of ours wire their "new" house (the house that they're renting from some tribal neighbors).

He and two of our friends are driving dirt bikes on this road today. It's a bit of a haul: the trip takes about 6 hours on a clear day without rain or stuck trucks like the one pictured above. The guys are each carrying their maximum load of supplies and hoping that it doesn't rain on this already miserable road.

This photo is from a friend's previous trip into the same village. We're so happy that there is a road at all - But it makes for one very exhausting trip.

In the meantime, Nadia and I are holding down the fort. Here, she's playing with her new paints from Memere!

This little girl is one of our neighbors here. She is four years old. Look at the size difference in these two. They are 2 full years apart, and Nadia is significantly bigger and taller than her kakak (older sibling). Genes and a regular diet including milk are just two of the reasons for the difference in these two little buddies.

so...where on earth!?

If you click on the map above, you'll see two green stars and a little red arrow. The southern green star is our old town, the northern green star is our new town. The distance between our two cities is about 1,000 miles. For you Americans, that's about the distance between Chicago and Boston. Just as in the States, these two cities have a lot in common, yet have so many differences. We're learning those differences and trying to adapt accordingly.

From here (Java). Above is pictured the ancient Javanese Bhuddist temple, Borobudur.

To here (West Kalimantan). Above is pictured our city's monument to the Equator.

Kalimantan Barat

We have arrived safe and sound in our new town. We're planning to live here for the next several months, getting to know the local dialect (thank God for our year learning Indonesian on Java!) and culture, as well as praying about and researching a tribal location to which we can move and begin working. Nadia is pictured below running out of the front door of the house we're living in for the next few weeks while waiting for "our" house to be ready. She loves it here!