Well, I’m writing this update at our home in Lapilo, PNG. It still seems a bit surreal to be here after so many months of waiting. As you’ll see below the Lord was certainly with us during our trip back to PNG. Now that we are back to PNG it has been that much easier to reflect back on just how the Lord has been with us during the journey that we have been on since April and May. There have been some difficult times but also God’s rich provision. We have never felt more blessed by the body of Christ than we have over these last months.So, here is a brief-ish run down on our trip back to PNG. Our first flight was around 6am last Sunday so my sister and her family took us up to Portland on Saturday afternoon. We had one last meal with them and then settled in at a local hotel for the night.We head heard that there was the possibility for some problems at check in because of the logistics of our flight so we got to the airport early. Well, long story short…it took us about 15 minutes to get all of our bags checked from Portland all the way to PNG. Thank you Lord!
4 hours later we landed in Chicago and made our way over to the International terminal. It was here that we experienced a bit of a challenge. The airlines that we were flying with did not like the size of our carry-ons so we had to completely repack all of them. 🙁 In the end, we ended up putting one of our computer bags into the trash bin and all of us had all our pockets filled with various cables, power blocks, and hard drives. This was a bit stressful but in the end, we boarded the plane with everything that we needed.
13 1/2 hours later we landed in Doha after a mostly uneventful flight. Having said that let me ask you. Have you ever been offered 3 meal choices on a flight and weren’t quite sure what any of them were?! I stuck with choice number 2 and did OK. Just don’t ask Stephen about the chicken dishes. 2 hours after we landed in Doha we left on our next flight to Malaysia. Once again, no real drama.
We landed in Kuala Lumpur at about 8 in the morning and spent 16 hours in the airport. For 12 of those hours we were in a transit hotel where we got some food, a shower and a bit of sleep. There was only one bed and for a short time we tried to make room for all 5 of us, though that obviously didn’t work.
At midnight we left Kuala Lumpur for PNG and arrived around 11 am. We got through the Covid control, immigration, and then customs before catching a shuttle bus to a local hotel. We had a nice flat to stay in and got a reasonable night’s sleep. The next day we flew for a short 1 1/2 hours to Goroka and were driven to our house at Lapilo. As we drove inside the gate we were greeted by a good sized crowd of our friends and neighbors who were holding up banners and cheering our arrival. I wish that we had a picture of that one.
We are currently quarantined in our house but we have quite a few visits from people who come by to say hi and get caught up. We have some camp chairs set up outside our porch which allow us these visits while maintaining some degree of social distancing.
This is longer than I like but let me just say in closing that we can look back at this past home assignment and truly praise the Lord for all of the people that He has allowed us to spend some time with. You have been a blessing to our lives.
In Him,
Eric and Judith, Stephen, Daniel and Timothy
Sorry that there aren’t more pics. We don’t have a good internet connection just yet. We’ll send a lot more pictures next month.
Prayer & Praise
– Praise that we arrived back to PNG safe and sound.
– Pray for us as we unpack and get the house organized.
– Pray for the boys and us as we start school back up on Monday. We don’t have our phones (and thus our internet) set up. Please pray that we can figure this out soon as it will make doing online school a lot easier.
– Pray for us as we still have 10+ days of quarantine. Our house is comfortable but is already starting to feel a bit confining.
– Pray that we can connect with the Malaumandans here soon. They know that we have arrived but our radio is not set up and our phones…well you know about the problem there.