Our First Month Back in PNG!

Hi Friends,

We’ve been back in PNG for over a month, and it already seems like there is lots to update you about. If you're someone who just wants the overview without the "fun" details, feel free to skip right over all the italicized portions below.

ARRIVAL & ADJUSTING

We were so thankful that the Lord allowed our travel to PNG to be safe and mostly uneventful, right up until the final leg of the trip, which got a bit more memorable.

The last leg included a flight cancelled 15 minutes after posted boarding time, a scavenger hunt in a very hot large concrete room to find 9 suitcases dumped amidst 5-8 cancelled flights worth of luggage, a 2am arrival back at the airport the next morning only to discover there were no staff to assist until after 4 am, running to catch our flight with only 10 minutes to spare at which point a security guy decided that the ticket counter was wrong and insisted that Josh had to go back and get in line to check our stroller, Josh handing the passports to me and telling me to fly to Madang without him, and then Josh dramatically making it on our flight at the last possible minute. 

Our decision to break up the trip to PNG with a couple of overnight stops seemed to help all three of us more gradually adjust to the 15-hour time change, and ultimately, we were so grateful to arrive safely and together.

We spent the first week getting settled into our temporary apartment on the Finisterre Mission base in Madang, stocking our fridge, meeting the other missionaries here on base, visiting some of our PNG friends, and napping when Rowen napped. 

We’re in a one room apartment, which creates some interesting challenges at times for Rowen’s naps, but the upside is that we have a small AC unit which we get to run during Rowen’s naps too, and since we’re all in one room, we all get to benefit! Not going to lie, having AC for the first time EVER in PNG feels like quite a luxury!

 

Overall, our boy seems to be adjusting well to life in PNG.
Consistency of nighttime sleep took a hit during our travels,
but his naps have gotten quite consistent and easy,
and overall, he’s thriving! Since arriving, he figured out
how to stand while holding on to things and is even taking
a few steps while clinging to our table legs, which means
we have entered the season of LOTS of falls and head bumps!

Rowen meeting Mama Betty, Autumn's PNG "mama"

He crawls all over our one-room apartment and loves
unloading the pots and pans on our kitchen island.

BUILD TRIP #1 IS SCHEDULED

Please pray with us as Josh prepares to leave on July 28th for the first build trip for our house in nDo. This 9-day trip will be a little shorter than future trips, but hopefully it’ll allow Josh to get the posts for our house set, meet and visit with some of the men in Maweroro, the village where we’ll be living, and have everything in there prepped for our second and much longer framing build trip next month.

HOUSEBUILDING PREP

In light of the upcoming build trip, Josh has jumped full-time into preparing for that and subsequent trips.

"What does 'Housebuilding prep' include" you might ask?

• Scheduling build trips
• Working with our Logistics Coordinator Frank to figure out available helicopter and mission plane flights from two different assisting organizations, and scheduling flights to take Josh into and out of the village in nDo for the next 3-4 trip.
• Purchasing construction materials
• Lots of trips around town to purchase needed building supplies. For those of you who remember our last time in PNG and the 9-month saga of trying to get the wood we had ordered and paid for to actually be delivered, you can rejoice with us that this time, the Lord allowed all of the needed lumber for our house to be in stock at one hardware store, and ironically, it was delivered to our base before we had technically paid for it. A PNG miracle!  
• Prepping the building materials
• Numerous days spent cutting and welding metal posts for our house, as well as purchasing lumber, marking and cutting it down to length. (Since we pay based on weight to fly supplies into the tribe, we don’t want to pay to send in extra feet of boards that will just be cut off and unused.
• Weighing and creating very precise manifests
• Each flight has a certain amount of weight allowance and a certain amount of space allowance, and Josh is working to get the materials sorted into groups that meet those allowances and also make sure that certain supplies arrive in the village at certain times. 
• Lining up planes, helicopters, and a small boat or two to get LOTS of constructions materials into the village in nDo.
• Some of our supplies have already been picked up here in Madang and delivered to the village over the past several weeks. In a few weeks, there will be a "shuttle day" with plane trips and one or two boat trips from Madang to a halfway location where the supplies will be dropped off for at least one night (Josh will spend the night with them  to make sure that supplies don’t “walk off”), and the next morning, a helicopter will make multiple trips to “slingload” our supplies up to the village. There are so many moving parts to this process, and Josh & Frank are putting in lots of hours to have plans and back-up plans in place for all this.

It feels like we’ve been moving quickly since arriving, and it’s a blessing to see the Lord bringing details together, especially for all of the complicated flight schedules for our building supplies. In a country with a shortage of mission pilots, and with both organizations that offer flights to us having to prioritize their own missionaries first, it’s such an answer to prayer for how quickly the details for the supply shuttles have come together.

TEAM NDO

Last week we were thankful to get to fly to a different mission base in the mountains of PNG where there is a clinic. We spent a week with our teammates, got Rowen’s shots and health check-up, and did a little fun shopping at the store and market there on the base. We were grateful for the chance to visit with our teammates in person for the first time in nearly two years, and it was fun to get to introduce them to Rowen. 

Team nDo: Autumn, Rowen, and Josh Miller; Zach, Annie, Oliver, Jude, Cassidy & Ellie Cann

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In many ways being back in PNG feels so normal, and at the same time, there is much that is new for us this time, from new teammates, prepping for living in a new place, and obviously having Rowen here with us. We so appreciate your prayers for us for faithfulness in the big and small responsibilities before us, for joyful hearts in the middle of hot, busy tiring days of work, for wisdom in making the many decisions to come, and for hearts that trust our Savior during the unexpected twists and changes to our plans that are sure to come here in the “Land of the Unexpected.” We are grateful for each person who is giving, praying and supporting us in this work!