Yesterday we attended the Sentani Lake Festival. This is the 7th year they've held the festival, and the second time we've attended. Unfortunately we missed the unique costumes, body painting and traditional dancing this year. Here are some pictures of that from last year.

Grubs, anyone?

However, I think we were actually providing entertainment for some of the other attendees. We felt a little like movie stars after about 10 different families asked to have their pictures taken with us:) Actually, they just wanted pictures with the kids, but our kids were a little shy about that. This was a common occurence in Java, but doesn't happen so much in Papua. I guess the festival drew a more diverse crowd, which included some people who thought we were interesting. (Or they were bored because all the real entertainment had left the premises.)

This was funny to me. This spot would let you wear costumes and get painted up for a price. Kind of like the ones we do in America, when you dress up in cowboy clothes and saloon girl dresses, only this is traditional Papuan dress.

That really is way too many pictures, but I just wanted you to know I wasn't exaggerating about the photo opps.

The Sentani Lake Festival is about the closest thing I've seen to an art/craft fair in Papua. I really miss art and craft fairs, or anything with the arts (which took me by surprise when I moved here, that I would miss those things so much) so I took the opportunity to check out each person's paintings, jewelry, weavings, etc.

                               

This picture below doesn't do justice to the situation. After some hard rains, parts of the festival were seriously muddy. This little store could only be reached by walking through the water. Have you ever walked through puddles and mud (with *pinang in it) while shopping? I've come a long way in the last few years, to say the least :) Elise had no problem braving the muddy waters.

                                         

*pinang is similar to chewing tobacco, but bright red in color.

Brent's last flight

Last week our friend Brent flew his last flight as an MAF Papua pilot.  He and his wife Melanie and their kids have been here for the better part of two decades.  It is an awesome day to celebrate all the Lord has allowed them to be a part of, and all the safety that He has given Brent as he has piloted his plane for I think 17 years.

To celebrate these big milestones.....we usually use water......

So here is Brent turning final in Sentani one last time.....

And then there was an eager crowd to receive him, most holding containers of water to empty on him, the largest of which was the trash can being used by our leaders Mike and Dave.

We will miss you Palmers!  Incidentally Brent is the pilot in one of the videos on the "videos" page of this blog...here's the link...

http://www.youtube.com/embed/w9dpmp_-TY0?rel=0

Not sure if that link still works because we have youtube blocked here in Sentani.

At this moment, watching brent get soaked, I imagined all the people that were helped through his 6000 hours of flying here.  All the people whose lives were saved, all the missionaries who were served, even all the villagers who just wanted to get to and from their village.  Brent was known to give every child on his flight a little pack of Oreos.  Way cool.....good job Brent, and blessings to your family in your next season of life!

We were very blessed to have Heather's mom and Stepdad visit over Christmas/new years.  Ellen and Dave stayed for three weeks.  This time we were a little better prepared with things for them to do.  We had a really good time together.  I put together a little photo album of some of the things we did, including Elise's princess birthday party...

I used to embed a slideshow in here, but it seems Google has re-done how they do their photos.  So until I figure out if its still possible to do that, I will just have to put a link to the photo album:

https://plus.google.com/photos/108198634910221993271/albums/5959279638434123985

But if you dont have time to go to that link, here's a couple of my favorites!

We had a great time with Ellen and Dave.  It is hard to communicate how meaningful it is when family visits out here!  This was Grandma Ellen and Grandpa Dave's fourth trip to Indonesia during this our first overseas term.  I heard a friend who's been with MAF much longer indicate that may be some sort of a record!

We have had lots of friends recently remind us that our last blog post was back in August.  To those who have frequently checked this blog, a big apology!  One reason for that was back in October, I was moved from flight to maintenance with MAF.  We have shared with many of you about that in emails and our prayer letter.  If this is news to you and you would like to know why, we wrote about it in our last prayer letter  (click here)

So the move to maintenance has meant no more flying photos and adventures to share.  So my natural urge to blog has been much less.  There has been a healing process to go along with this as well that has decreased my urge to blog.  But the more I sink my teeth into the privilege of serving as a mechanic with MAF here, the more I would like to blog about it.  Maybe not about the bearings I greased or the torque I applied on the nut, but about the awesome things that we see happening around here in and around the ministry of MAF.  And of course about our kids!

So thank you to those of you who have sought to find out about us to pray for us, and I will be trying to be more faithful to pass things along here!

Wow....almost two months since the last post on here.  Time flies when you're busy!  Here's whats been going on the last two months in pictures....in no special order whatsoever!

Buckled in and ready to go to Wamena!

A big highlight for us was another trip to our future home Wamena.  I was headed there to fly with one of our instructor pilots there and Heather and the kids came along.  On the way back, we got to stop and get out at an interior village, called "Mammitt".  It was Heather and the kids' first village experience!  

Not the greatest picture as the people are barely visible in the background, but oh well it's the only one we took!

Heather talks to Tracy, a friend of ours who happened to be in Mammitt that day.

Elise a little shy but willing to pose with some of the local kids.

Elise and Ian run around a little on the runway.  When I start flying solo, Mammitt is one of the places I will be going regularly as it is a fairly large and wide open runway, easier for us new guys!  I am very excited to be flying to this place as lots of neat things are happening there, including a new school opening up to help provide a quality education for village kids.  Education is such a need in interior villages and hopelessness can pervade these areas because it is just not available.  Mammitt has some exciting things going on on that front and we're praying future leaders for Papua are coming up right now in places like Mammitt!

A trip into Dem territory

Two weeks ago I felt a little bit like a kid in a candy store to get to fly with my instructor Tim to one of our newly opened airstrips.  It is the home of a people known as the "Dem".   I've heard that the Dem are a people who have felt forgotten, as they've seen tribal groups all around them get missionaries who have worked on Bible translations, but the Dem are still waiting.  You may wonder are the different tribal languages really that different?  Apparently they are.  There is another tribal group that lives immediately across the river, on the other side of the huge valley from the Dem who speaks an entirely different language.  If I don't have this backwards, the Dem live on the left side of the river in the photo below, inhabiting the gigantic jungle hillside.

Here's a picture of Tim and I with some of the people there, including one guy in the traditional gord!

The guy in the blue there speaks Indonesian really well and was able to tell us some about the people, though most of the people there can't speak Indonesian.  Most of them speak their "Bahasa suku"  or tribal language only.  On board with us was one of the missionaries moving in there to live with the Dem, learn their language and their customs and teach/translate the scriptures for them  It's absolutely cool that we at MAF get to play a small part in this!

On the Home Front

Every night at bed-time Ian loves to try and beat Elise to her bed and lay on it....so something like this ends up happening.

At family conference we got six of the original eight babies from language school last year together in a photo.

Had to get a picture of Ian with this little guy at a local festival featuring lots of people in their tribal dress.  Here's another photo from that....