Life with all its ups and downs

Less than a week left here before we plan to fly out to town to renew our visas. We'll see if this actually happens. There is news of impending lockdowns on our island that might cause flights to be cancelled last minute. As with everything here, we have to deal with each thing as they come. 

We are stuck with few options in the days and weeks ahead. As far as we know we still HAVE to go out for visa renewal. However, the other reason we were going out was our mission orgs weekend fellowship and that was recently cancelled. Now that vaccinations are being required for travel, there are many coworkers that are stuck either in their home countries or off island, unable to return here. Large gatherings are frowned upon and curfews are being put in place. It was the right decision to cancel the fellowship but sad for those of us looking forward to seeing friends we haven't seen in a while. 

Once we go out, there's a real possibility we won't be able to return right away. The float plane, our only option to return, will be undergoing a long inspection at the beginning of August. So most likely we would not be able to return until it is done, pending lockdowns and other factors. 

So we go out with certain hopes but we hold our plans very loosely. 

It's not really possible for us to just stay in here, or we would. We are also quite...quite low on food 😆 We are down to a few kg of rice, 1 bag of sugar, 1 bag of flour, 1 onion, 6 eggs, 2 cans of olives and some freezer items. Thankfully we still have quite a bit of our pork sausage. And we have popcorn. Always popcorn. Oh, and we're out of money to purchase anything at little kiosks nearby. I had to get creative with our menu this last week. I don't necessarily hate the challenge. It always humbling to see the excess we typically live with compared to the meager supplies of our village friends. Often they live on one meal a day. Or they simply eat when they have food and don't when they don't. I cannot complain. We will be fine. Worst comes to worse, we will tell the people we need to go get sago (their staple food they get from the jungle sago palm) and they'll at first laugh at us cause they always do when we ask them to take us into the jungle, then we'll say we're actually serious, and they'll laugh again until we can convince them that we are for reals out of food and we need fish and sago. Then they'll bring us fish and take us to get sago and we'll promise to pay them back with something from town. Ideally. But I don't think it will come to that as I was able to plan out a meal for each day this week and we should have what we need. Boy do we take for granted having 3 meals on our table a day, a Costco down the road, and a paycheck each month. How spoiled we are in the 1st world. I'm thankful for these little reminders to stay humble and thankful. 

I mentioned in my last blog that we were treating a little baby for pneumonia. Her struggle with breathing was too much and she passed away a few days ago. It was a tough day for many reasons. We didn't get to see her burial as they had to wait for her dad to return from getting sago that day and they didn't come let us know. But we went down right after she passed, and sat with her mom as she wailed the death of her precious baby. I don't want to become callous to death, as they seem to be. But when you witness so many, you begin to understand their worldview a little more. Once someone gets sick, why get attached or try to help them if they're probably going to die anyways? This only skims the surface of what they believe, I'm sure. But to get so invested is often so much harder. Pray that we can find that balance.

When we return from town the plan is to begin a routine that includes homeschooling and language study. We haven't done anything official this trip as I really wanted to ease back into life here. Thankfully it is going well as I feel relaxed about everything so far. I'm sure that will all change once I try to have daily schedules and plans and each day we have to deal with spontaneous village events or needs 😁 But we must try, right?!

Greyson is getting braver in the water and even learning how to paddle in our little homemade canoe.

Amelia is eager to help in the kitchen and I'm happy for her little muscles to help with mixing bread dough.

Rovan is constantly sweating but surprisingly he doesn't even seem to notice the heat and doesn't get why he needs to sleep with a shirt off and the fan on 😆

Sam shot a pig with his crossbow. A fun accomplishment!

Culture events.