Formative Experiences Fishing Lessons I take my kids fishing and wax eloquent about the two main types of misery.
Raising Children Saying Hello To Postpartum, Diapers, & Sleepless Nights We welcome a beautiful baby girl into our family! Adi is very happy because, in her words, “Now my children will have an aunt.”
Papua New Guinea It Was A Relief To Drive A Car That Didn’t Complain About My Driving We return from Papua New Guinea and begin our furlough.
Papua New Guinea We Felt A Bit Like Convicts Attempting To Escape We leave for America but not before making an important stop in Port Moresby.
Moving I Wish I Was Rich Enough To Burn Down The House & Start Fresh... But I'm Not. I hate moving. Janice dreams about it.
Airplane Mechanics Work Team Frees Mechanic Held Hostage By Airplanes A "Global Response" team traveled from Ohio to perform the rescue using only rivet guns and wrenches.
Family Experiences Elliot Has A Birthday Party Elliot turned six today. He’s pretty excited about it. I was pushed into an existential crisis, just like last time he had a birthday.
Pregnancy Another Tax Deduction It's hard to hide a pregnancy when you live in a little compound. We're not ashamed to be pregnant but sometimes it's nice to have something you don't have to share, even if it's only information.
Cultural Expectations A Blurry Dash Towards The End Times "I came to the mission field to change the world but so far the only thing that has changed is myself." - Anton, Russian philosopher
Cultural Expectations We Survived Our Bush Orientation Every new Samaritan Aviation family goes through a “Bush Orientation” which sounds like a formal thing, but it’s not. Basically it goes something like this: the family gets flown to the bush, kicked out of the plane, and temporarily adopted by a missionary family who lives in the village.
Cultural Expectations Dumping Money Into A Slot Machine And Hoping. AirNiugini has many fine qualities as an airline but the thing it does best is lower your expectations.
Pets Other Than Children Kiwi, The Green Car Alarm A screeching Eclectus parrot teaches me a lesson about contentment.
Papua New Guinea Phantom Potholes & Life Lessons Elliot learns to use a drill, Adi learns life lessons, and our new espresso machine keeps our guard up all night.
Potholes Simple Solutions Versus Wild Ambition Mechanics without pilot licenses are a bit like penguins. We’re basically flightless birds. This is why we don’t care much about the weather. Pilots do.
Being Sick Anyone In Their Right Minds Know That Animals Don't Use Toilets We eat antibiotics like Tic-Tacs, we try not to curse the world, and Elliot gets new underwear.
Christmas Our First Tropical Christmas Sweating while caroling and other strange ways to spend Christmas.
Airplanes Airplane In A Box Even the most stoic mechanic will leap around and shout like a spirit-filled Pentecostal if the airplane goes down when it was supposed to go up.
Haus Sik Dying From Boredom Is Entirely Preventable It's disheartening to have a patient heal from tuberculosis or some other horrible condition only to die from boredom a week later.
Pets Other Than Children Common Cockroaches & Exotic Marsupials It can be an unsettling transition to go from sipping coffee to having a marsupial in your hair without any time to get used to the idea.
Raising Children Do Fish Even Sting People? Because of the sun’s death rays we’ve been spending a lot of time at the ocean.
Being Sick Death Warmed Over is Better Than Death Served Cold, But It's Still Worrisome. Janice picks up some strange tropical disease and Adi gets stitches which causes me to muse about suffering and its effects.
Cultural Expectations I Know What's Wrong With My Faucet, But What's Wrong With My Feet? I have a revelation about feet while walking to the hardware store to look for a new faucet.
Cultural Expectations Speaking Funny Language learning is shifting from memorizing vocabulary to the next step: Embarrassing oneself.
Language Problems So Far We've Been Spreading Diabetes More Effectively Than the Gospel. But thank you for your patience with us. Good things take time!
Papua New Guinea My Fate Was To Stand There For An Eternity Wishing I Were Dead. We move to Wewak, Papua New Guinea to start our first term with Samaritan Aviation.
