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!
