Fresh Perspective

I know that soldiers go to war and are gone for months or years.  Spouses take business trips and are gone for days or weeks.  Some flee countries or persecution while the other has to stay behind for a time….sometimes a horribly long time.  So really I don’t have a stunning story to tell.  Deaths are not timely and planned events still must go on.  Yet living in a third world can make 26 days feel like many more, and 22 hours can be bitter/sweet way to short.  I did pull out the camera for 22 hours and captured our moments together.  As raw and as beautiful as it was.  What would you do for 22 hours out of 26 days?  Our goal was to make the best of it!  Rewind a bit earlier in the week, a full 24 hours earlier…..when I thought my husband would be home and my phone rings.  Darron’s voice is taunt and tired, frustrated and hurt.  He missed his last flight from Bali to Sentani.  The next flight would not arrive home until t...

So what do we do while Darron is away for long stents????  Stay busy, is the best thing I know to do!  Every Fall, Jan Roberts hosts a concert made up of the great talent of our x-pat community and some of the talented Indonesians too.  Aubrey participated this year, playing his French Horn in a mini band and the songs were composed by his talented teacher Mr. Lott.  It was a great evening of fun with a down on the farm theme.  Immediately following the concert I went to the clinic with our Dr. Di (who is back from furlough, PTL) and we worked on a little girl who had been vomiting times 4 days.  In the end, a tube went down her nose.  Not fun.  At 10 p.m., I drove my sleepy family home.   Friends took the older boys wake boarding on Sunday and the younger boys went to play at a friends house.  So I had an afternoon to just be quiet.  It was wonderful to have the support of my friends and just be very still for a few hours....

Yep thousands and thousands.  It’s good therapy while my man is gone.  Fortunately it is only thousands of rupiah.  Approximately, 10,000 rupiah equals one dollar.  So it’s not quite as dramatic as the title sounds.  Nor are the stores dreamy nice like America.  In fact one friend just posted on Facebook that her favorite part about shopping in Sentani is washing her hands when she gets home.  Another friend chirped in and said her favorite part of shopping was “taking a shower when  I finish shopping at the market”.  Both are so true.   I know that I have written quite a bit about shopping….. but there is more to tell you!!!!!  Imagine coming to our mall with us.  In order to go downstairs to our “super market”, that is not so super, one has to ride on an escalator.  Except this is not an escalator with stairs, but just a ramp.  That way customers can push their shopping carts onto this conveyor belt and go up a l...

We missionaries know…..we understand full well that when we say goodbye, after furlough, that it might be the last goodbye.  It makes those goodbye’s even harder to utter, then one could anticipate.  We have reacted differently, at times.  Sometimes falling into a sad tearful, do we really have to part? Goodbye.  To the opposite of a, tough….we can do this, let’s just get on with the journey, Goodbye. And everything in between.  Regardless of the attitude and the knowledge……there is also this underlying thought that surely this won’t be the last goodbye????!!! Picture:  all of Grandpa’s grandchildren at Grandpa’s farm (except Carissa) And that is how it was when we pulled away from the Cookeville farm this past July.  Waving goodbye to Darron’s parents and brother, Mike.  We knew then that Darron’s Daddy’s health was failing and yet he seemed to be doing well and rallying.  At this point in our journey, I was so emotionally spent from say...

*To my general audience, you may find this blog post a bit dry and dull as I am going to write this blog more aimed to my family about life here in general.  How the children are, and Darron and life in the day in and day out. I may even talk about the weather…..just to make it really feel like a letter to home.  You are welcome to peer into this part of our lives if you would like……   Dear family, It has been a while since I have sat down and really brought you up-to-date on our lives here in Papua.  Forgive me for blogging so little.  Honestly, it seems like we are on a bit of a treadmill of school, school, school.  Therefore, I have struggled to find “creative” things to write about.  Also after living here for 2 + years, things are beginning to seem “normal”, so I need to keep pushing to look at life through “fresh eyes”.  Overall, I would continue to say that the family is thriving and I take this as a blessing from the hand of God.  ...