To update on our internet........

We were able to get a new phone (iPhone!!).  Thanks to Missionary Matt Allen.  He is a missionary here in PNG that also works in a remote area.  He has access to the internet using a satellite system of internet.  So we asked him to look for a used iPhone on the internet.  He found one in his home town where his brother also lives.  This brother was able to go and check out the phone.  Then there was a young man coming to see the Allens who was able to bring the phone with him.

For those who may not know this:  our only form of internet is the phone.  The phone we had just one day decided not to allow the internet to come into our phone.  Mark when he went to Port Moresby took it to the cell phone company we use here but to no avail.   After 2 hours they could not figure out the problem.  Their only solution was you brought that phone from America and we have been running into problems like this with phones brought in from the states.  So maybe it will work in the states when we go on furlough?  (The phone side of it still works.)

We dream of one day having satellite internet that would allow us to use our computers online and also do things like facetime or skype.  Maybe someday but until then we will be thankful with our phones  that they allow us to access emails and usually get on webpages. 

Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ;  Ephesians 5:20

Loneliness

Loneliness can be felt in many different ways. You can feel lonely in a room full of people especially if you don't know their language or you don't understand what is going on. Another way you may feel lonely is if you live in a remote place where there are not a lot of people. You may also feel lonely because you are a long way from home and can't communicate with people you care about. I also believe you can be lonely because you want to or choose to be.

We live in a remote place.  Though we live in a remote place, it is a government station.  So we don't live all by ourselves with no one around.  There are people that come and go.  These are the people we have come to minister to. 

There are times when I don't understand what is going on because I don't know the local language yet.  I have picked up some so I can sometimes get context.  Because we are a government station there are others here (from Papua New Guinea) that also do no understand this local language.  They are government workers.  Most work in the clinic here.  Since this is the case most things are done in tok pisin which I do understand. 

For me loneliness is not about the language,  or the remoteness.  Loneliness is the lack of ability to communicate with those I love from my own country.  Recently we have had a new trial.  Our internet went down on our phone.  We do not know for sure if it is our phone or the tower.  We still have phone access but since it is so expensive we don't  get many calls.  When we had internet we would get several emails a day.  It has now been 2 weeks since we have had internet.  This may seem trivial.  Maybe you don't have internet at your house, and you think that's not such a big deal.  Being 14,000 miles away from family and friends with no internet is a big deal to me.  I guess if I never had it I wouldn't miss it.  Right now I am really missing it.   I have to put down feelings of worry.  What if something happens to family and friends?  Plus I just miss the communication and being able to "talk" via email to those I love and care about!

So what am I learning?  Loneliness  can be a choice we make.  Like when our kids are "bored".  I as a mom can always find a way for them to not be bored.  They don't complain to me much about that. :)  In the same way I can choose to not be lonely by not dwelling on it.  I do live in a house with 9 people.  It is rarely "lonely" in the sense of being all alone.  I find that choosing to not be lonely is a good choice.  It sure makes my family happy rather than me moping about.  In PNG I have learned that many times we are put in situations that we have no control over.  Though my flesh hates this my spirit understands that these are times of relying on God.  We have seen God work in miraculous ways because we have been put in these circumstances.

Are you feeling lonely?  Does life not seem to be going your way lately?  I'd like to leave you with a verse...Psalm 37:5a  Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for him:...

A ROMANTIC WEEKEND GETAWAY!

Have you wanted a weekend away from it all with just you and your mate?  I have the perfect place!  First let me tell you about it and see if you agree.

To get there you must fly to Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.  From there you have to get a connecting flight with a smaller plane.  We prefer SIL as they are a mission organization and are very trustworthy.  This smaller plane must go to Kaintiba.  This is where we live. 

After you visit us for a few days you and your mate can take the most exciting walk you have ever taken.  It is long and somewhat difficult, but with your mate holding your hand helping you up and down the steep places it is wonderfully romantic J.

You must walk for 7 hours to get to this place.  Oh, the sights you’ll see on the way.  There is breathtaking scenery, beautiful waterfalls, rock formations, dense jungle with one foot trails and a rustic wire bridge over a rushing river.

Some terrain.  Rugged but beautiful!   Also the people that helped us!  (Also beautiful in my opinion!)

On break for lunch.

After you're pretty much exhausted you come up to this place called Watitago.  There you will get a very warm welcome.   The people of Watitago Baptist Church will probably put flower necklaces around your neck.  They will treat you royally (bush style that is).

in Watitago

Some things to note:  There is no running water other than the river not too far away.  Your toilet will be a bush style one - an outhouse with just a hole in the ground.  Your food will be bush style: a root vegetable like a sweet potato (called kaukau), greens and, if they are prepared for you, probably some rice and tinned meat.  You will sleep in a thatched roof house with a fire pit in the middle to keep you warm at night since the elevation is 3600 ft.  You should bring a bed roll as they just sleep on the floor.  They use tree bark that has been flattened to cover up with.  It is called malo.

A very special meal they might make for you is a mumu.  This is a delicious meal.  They first heat the stones over a fire.  When they are glowing red they line banana leaves over the stones and put greens, kaukau, and meat on them.  They cover this with more banana leaves.  In a few hours it is ready.  YUM! YUM!

Did I really do this?  Yes, I did this past weekend, but not without help.  A group of people out of Watitago Baptist Church carried our things.  My husband and I plus all 7 children and Angel, a young lady from our home church in NY, walked there on Thursday, 15 August.   Then on Friday revival meetings started.  My husband, Mark, preached 7 times in 3 days.  On Sunday we had a baptism after morning services.  13 people were baptized.  We left on Monday, 19 August, to come back to Kaintiba with another group of people who carried our things back.

Here's the crowd of people that went with us when we left.

We weren't alone but we still had the time of our lives!   My husband and I were talking on our way home when I thought of the title for this post.

So what do you think?  Does it sound romantic to you?

Do we fully rely on God?

28, March, 2013

Do we fully rely on God?

How many times do we say that we are trusting in the Lord for things?  I am not so sure we really mean that. 

Just yesterday our faith has been tested in a different way from the average person living in a developed country.  Our airstrip was closed.  So you understand what this airstrip means to us I will explain.  We have no roads coming into Kaintiba other than those that people walk on.  No cars can make it here.  There are no roads to any city or even a town.  The only way our family can get in and out is by airplane or helicopter.  As for the helicopter we know it could be done but have not made connections for that to happen. 

Why did it close?  It is poorly maintained.  We have been trying to work on that but due to lack of money and manpower it is a slow process.  Every time we have gotten problem areas filled in a plane comes in and blows out the work that was just done.  Yesterday two planes came in back to back.  The first one was Matt Allen a missionary pilot.  He is aware of the airstrip and was able to land to the side and not hit the areas being worked.  The 2nd plane was a government charter.  It was bigger and heavier and landed in the weak spot of the airstrip.  He almost got stuck but managed to pull it through and get up to the top of the airstrip.    Taking off you can get off the ground before the problem areas so no worries there. 

Matt had to come back yesterday after that.  He had left some people here to come back for.  He told us he was closing the airstrip for 2 weeks.  My understanding of that is that a pilot can call the head tower in Port Moresby and tell them they want the airstrip closed.  The airstrip is then closed until it is reported that the problem has been taken care of.

Yesterday we  were pretty down hearted about it all.  I kept thinking about full reliance on God.  We trust more in that airplane than God.  God has put us to where we only have Him!

We usually have cell phone service.  That is often interrupted.  The tower is in a remote area so when it has a problem it can take it awhile to get service back.   We can't even call anyone and ask them to pray about this. 

So how will I get this posted?  I will wait a few days then if the network doesn't come back on I (or my husband) will have to climb the mountain about 20- 30 minutes walk and get a different tower from the coast.  Once again we have been put in a position to fully rely on God.

Another thing is that Mark was planning to go out for a supply run either this week Friday or next week when the plane came. Then planning to bring the supplies back in on the 9th of April.  So what are we doing now?   We are asking God to show us what to do.  Many ideas have been discussed.  We have no clear direction at this point so we wait! 

Some verses come to mind: 

Isaiah 40:31  "But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength;  they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint."

Philippians 4:19  "But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus."

Luke 1:37 "For with God nothing shall be impossible."

The situation may be resolved before this even gets posted but it is just a little more about life in PNG!

Until Next time,  I'm happy in the service of the King!! Christi Helzerman :)

This is looking down on the airstrip from our house...  We live in a beautiful area.

Bridging the Gap

We are here in PNG to bridge the gap for lost souls to go to heaven. We also have a more physical gap that was recently bridged. The bridges in PNG often decline rapidly. People may decide they need that piece of wood for their fires or to repair their houses. This bridge was recently fixed. It had been in a state of disrepair for 2 years or more. It has been with just the I-beams to cross for at least a year as that is how long we have lived up here. We were pleased to see that recently the local people repaired it! It was nice to be able to walk across it without fear of falling into the water. Now what will we have to show people who come visit? I am sure we can find something in this land of natural beauties and ruggedness. Maybe it will be a stone bridge, or a breathtaking waterfall. Anyone want to rough it? Do you like to hike, camp? Maybe you should plan a trip to this remote area of PNG and have a look for yourself! We'd love to have you come for a visit. We do our best to accommodate with what we can get into this remote place. (friend's comment: I am posting this for Christi since she doesn't get internet long enough to put it up on the net herself. She wrote this March 11. The photos of the bridge before it was repaired are captured from a video that my daughter took on Feb. 17, so the quality is not as good as Christi's phone camera takes. The video was taken as the men left for a three-day hike back into the mountains to visit a remote village. I tried to give you a feel for how hard it was to balance as you crossed. I personally could not walk across it, but had to wade through the water upstream.-JRP)

A Trip to the City

Have you ever thought about what missionaries have to do when their passports expire or are close to expiring?  For us in the bush of Papua New Guinea it is quite a process. 

We live an hour’s flight from the city.  There are no roads out of our place to get us anywhere unless you walk!  Having said that we now come to the start of our trip.

Monday, February 4, 2013 we left our bush station of Kaintiba in the Gulf Province of Papua New Guinea.   We flew in a  SIL plane called a kodiak.  (It had enough seats for all 9 of us plus our luggage and that was about it.)

For Serenity, our youngest, she was quite scared about the flying.  She was 1 when we came here.  That flight I don’t think she remembers.  She has not flown a lot since then.  The few times she has she always wimpers while the plane is taking off and also every “bump” in the airplane.  About halfway through our one hour flight she decided to color instead of cling to my hand. J  She is now too big to hold on our laps so she has to sit beside us and hold our hands.

After arriving in POM (that’s our shortened version of Port Morseby the capital city in PNG) we were picked up by an SIL van to take us to our sleeping place.  It is a guest house called Mapang.

We then walked to a grocery store just around the corner and got some fixings for lunch. We bought peanut butter and jelly, bread, some chips and OREOS J.  After the cupboards being pretty bare at home the last week or 2 we were delighted to have pbjs for lunch!

We continued walking to a store kind of like a small mall.  Inside one building was a downstairs and upstairs with several shops.  We went to a small coffee shop which was more like a café really.  No specialty coffees just  a regular cup of coffee and some foods. 

We made up the sandwiches and Mark bought a milo for himself and chips (french-fries to Americans), and a watermelon slice for me. 

We make quite a sight –9 American “white skins”.  Even here they count all the kids and are impressed with 7 children!! (all to one wife.  Here it is common to have more than one wife and have that many kids)

Serenity was getting a little nervous about the crowd of people we were walking through.  I started thinking of her size and walking through a crowd of people would be a little overwhelming.  She is under 3 feet tall!  She hasn’t been around of crowd of people like that since she has been walking everywhere.  I picked her up for a little bit, but she is a hefty 3 year old so I couldn’t hold her too long.

After we ate our lunch we went shopping in this place we were in.  Actually we didn’t buy much. 

My one son wanted a bush knife from his money he had saved.  He found and bought one of those.  He wants to cut grass like his friends do with a knife.  It is the PNG bush way to cut grass.

We talked to an Australian man who ran the sports department of this store.  My dad and mom and I had met him in Dec. when they came to visit us.  I introduced him to our family.  He offered us his vehicle to use with a driver!  That was great!  We were able to go to PNG’s first mall-Vision City.  It has 3 stories and many shops.  Although compared to your big city malls in the US it is small, for us “bush people”  it is big!

The first thing we did was to sing a song together in the entryway of the mall.  We wanted to give thanks to God in song for all His goodness to us.

We went to DONUT KING!  This would be a PNG equivalent of Dunkin Donuts.  Everyone got a donut.  Not being used to so much sugar we couldn’t all finish ours.

My favorite in this mall is the coffee shop.  It is a real coffee shop not like the one where we ate lunch.  Mark said I could get a coffee so I did.  We saw some of our missionary friends there who are also in town from the bush.  We talked with them awhile and enjoyed the coffee.

When we got to the city we had enough money to get here and get home.  After arriving we got an email from a church telling of their decision to give us $4,250 towards our needs on this trip!  We had been praying for God to work everything out.  God is good!

Down to business now…We were able to get all of the passport photos done so today (Tuesday) we can get them to Embassy and fill out the paper work needed.  Since that is another day to write about I will save it for later!

Tuesday- Embassy day!  We had a ride with SIL to go to the Embassy.  When we got there were told that Tuesday was visa day.  That meant that it was the wrong day to do passports.  Mon., Wed., and Fri. were the days to do passports.  The consular, Lee Caulkins was very kind and gracious to allow us to come back at noon that day and get them done. 

The fee expense was covered by a love offering generously given by some friends in NY.  We were very thankful that it worked out almost the penny to be the right amount.

We were able to get dropped off at a newly built structure , a shopping center, to fill out our paperwork and wait for the noon appointment time.  We walked back to the Embassy.  It was about a 30 minute walk.  As we were walking on a sidewalk close to 4 lanes of traffic it was a bit nerve wracking with 7 kids.  All went well and we arrived safely.

We went ahead and renewed all 7 children in spite of the fact that Serenity’s passport wasn’t in need for another year and a half.  It means that now they are all on the same renewal time.

As has become a Helzerman tradition we sang a song before leaving the embassy.  Counsular Lee was really touched by this.  He said it was the first time it had been done at the embassy.

After leaving the Embassy most of our work for the day was done.  Mark was able to use the truck of the man we met on Monday, Wayne Satchell.  His driver, John, drove him around to fill up gas tanks and checked on the price of a lawn mower for cutting grass on the airstrip.  This concluded the business part of this day.

On Wed.  we went with John and did our shopping at the one grocery store in the mall.  We were able to get pizza for lunch!  They had a pizza shop in the mall. 

All this may sound ordinary to the readers of this blog.  To explain let me say that we live in a remote area.  We only have to eat what we bring in buy from the local markets.  There are no restaurants.  There are no roads.  We enjoy where we live but we also enjoy getting a little taste of “civilization” from time to time.

In the afternoon Mark was able to pick up a lawnmower.  We can speed up the process of cutting our grass airstrip.  Bush knives work to do the job they just take a lot longer.

Thursday,  Mark left Tabitha, Hadassah and I and took the 5 other children to vet, the bank and the hardware store. He had the driver, John again.  We girls walked with a dear friend, Helen Nunisa to a discount supermarket.  We enjoyed a little girl time J.

In the afternoon Mark and I walked over to the Boroko where the driver was.  Then he took us to our other big grocery shopping place.  It is the newest shopping area, “Waterfront Foodland”.  We enjoyed the time with just the two of us.  The kids were well behaved here at the guesthouse. 

Friday-  A very exciting day as we welcomed our dear friends the Parfitts into PNG.  The day started out by walking  over to  Boroko and went to Tango.   It is a Chinese shop that has a variety of things.  We were able to get a few shirts for Sam who was in desperate need of them.  Then our friend Helen stayed with the children so Mark and I could go to the airport and pick up the Parfitts!  After seeing them walk off the plane and then waiting an hour and 20 min. for them to got through customs we were able to welcome them to PNG!

We brought them back to the guesthouse with the SIL van.  It was with great delight the kids greeted each other.

During this afternoon we were notified by the plane company we were flying home with that we weren’t going to be allowed all the cargo weight we thought we had.  This was very upsetting as we had no other way to get the things to Kaintiba.  We prayed about it and they changed their mind and allowed us the original amount!  Another answer to prayer on this trip!  Praise the Lord!

Mark and I walked with Jamie  and Trevor to the bank to withdraw and deposit  money into our account to pay for the tickets to and from Kaintiba for the Parfitts.

Friday night we all went to vision city (the mall) in a church bus.  We as following Helzerman tradition sang a song.  It was beautiful with such a group of people.  Then we had a few things to pick up and everyone was hungry as the Parfitts had not had much to eat during their flights. 

Now it is Sat.  I am trying to get this finished.  The Parfitts will be staying with Mark in the city until Monday.  We (the children and I) are flying back to Kaintiba today.

I am so thankful the God is faithful in spite of my weak faith at times!  God is enough for all our needs!  He has proven himself once again to our family!