Sunday, January 31, 2010

New Bananas and New Friends

BANANAS!
A highlight this week was to cut down our first bunch of bananas from a banana plant in our backyard.

STAFF SUPPER & WILD ANDCRAZY PING-PONG!
Yesterday evening we enjoyed hosting the Telefomin MAF staff at our house for a farewell supper for Rose, a national lady who has worked with MAF here in Telefomin for the past 18 years. Rose will be missed but her skills and experience will be a huge help at the MAF base in the village of Kiunga where she is moving to.

With Rose leaving the MAF staff here in Telefomin is down to Steven as the only Papua New Guinean on staff now, besides three of us expat families. Steven and his wife, Maris, are our next-door neighbors and he works as the MAF agent here in Tele – reporting weather on the radio, serving as a traffic officer on some flights, preparing manifests, etc.

After a delicious potluck supper of chicken, rice, sausages, macaroni salad, tossed salad, potato bake and fresh pineapple slices we played ping-pong on the home-built table Dale set up in the storage room-turned classroom/ping-pong table room underneath our house. Steven and Rose (national staff) had never played ping-pong before so we had a blast teaching them the game! (At one point Steven and Rose were on the same team, playing doubles, and then passed the ball to each other – kind of like a “set” in volleyball! What a riot!)

Playing ping-pong in our school room (Steven and Rose on the left)

MYSTERIOUS WAYS
We had been in Telefomin just a few days when we realized that Steven was the same man who was our language helper when we went for one week of “bush orientation” when we were in PNG back in 1997! Little did we know back then that 12 years later our children would be playing with his grandchildren next door! God works in mysterious ways!

MAKING NEW FRIENDS
We love living in Telefomin. The climate and countryside is breathtaking and the people are lovely. Our kids have made fast friends with the other children in the community and we are all enjoying growing relationships with the friendly folks of Telefomin.