It’s two weeks since the last update, mostly because not a great deal had happened that made for comment. Let’s look back over both the last 7 days, as well as the last 14, and see if last week’s assessment still stands.
The closure of Mount Hagen airport during the general elections seems an unlikely event to build relationships with the local community. The traditional landowners in the area are the Yamke clan, and when they asked all businesses at the airport to cease operations because of issues they had with some of the candidates, MAF complied. Later on, MAF senior managers were also involved in the settlement process.
Through this, the Yamke leaders realised that MAF is not a business, but a mission and a not-for-profit organisation. Since they are local to Mount Hagen and unlikely to use our aircraft, it’s not really all that surprising that the villagers in the area knew nothing about what we do.
To cut a fairly long story short, the churches and leaders in the area decided they wanted to hold a week-long tent meeting to honour MAF. Various MAF staff have led the evening sessions and the community has held a collection for our work.
Nicki and I only managed to get to the meeting on Monday night. As I was flying on Wednesday and Thursday I didn’t want to be late to bed, and both those nights the meetings ran on very late. Come Thursday and Friday I felt unusually tired, the reason for which started to become apparent last night as a slight cold developed. Apart from lack of energy and a bit of congestion it’s not been a problem, but being fairly quiet at home has definitely been the best option.
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While in Mount Hagen MAF has enjoyed good relationships with the local community, our partner organisation, Christian Radio Missionary Fellowship, in Goroka has had serious problems in the last couple of months with a gang of criminals, so-called raskols. The latest and most serious incident came when a gang of about 10 armed men invaded the home of one of their families. Fortunately, nobody was hurt, and “stuff” can always be replaced, even if it is costly and highly inconvenient.
We’re all hoping that the gang have now crossed the line of what will be tolerated by the local community. Missions are targets like anybody else of opportunist criminals, but a home invasion raises the stakes considerably, and certainly some local people have expressed outrage, and a sense of shame, that an incident like that has occurred.
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Our plans for next year are gradually coming together, and this weekend I’ll write an email to Siama, the Dutch travel agency that we use to book our tickets. Usually they can come up with quite a reasonable deal. While it may be possible to find cheaper flights by hunting around online, it is so much easier to let somebody else do the research and have all the connections linked within the one booking.
We’re planning on arriving in the UK on Tue March 13th and leaving again on Wed June 27th, depending on the availability of seats. We’ll see if there might be an opportunity to cross the pond and see Andrew, Querida and the boys during that period, but nothing has been arranged yet.
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Richard gave us a surprise phone call yesterday. The great move of all their stuff from our house to their new one was about to take place. Richard was wondering where our car keys were so that it could be moved out of the way, but since Dave & Jane look after them, and they were away for a few days, it had to be worked around.
By now he and Bekah and not-so-little-anymore Ithaka will be in their own house, though no doubt with plenty of unpacking still to do. Even if we weren’t around to help, it was good that our home could be used for storage, while Bill & Maggie were able to cover their board and lodging until their house was ready!
So, a bit more to comment on this week, but my cold is inhibiting much creative thinking and writing :-(
