My last update from PNG

Four.

Four days until I am back at home in Virginia, if everything goes as planned.

Three.

Three days until I leave Ukarumpa.

Two.

Two months gone, quite quickly in most ways.

One.

One day of work left.

Zero.

Zero more times of being able to worship with this body of Christians.

What an amazing time this has been of being in PNG. I have gained knowledge, experience, and friendships. I have learned to love the people here, as well as their simple way of life. I am going to miss it here, both the people and the culture.

This week was spent just doing small jobs at work Monday through Thursday morning. After that they didn't really have anything for the interns to do, so Craig, Daniel Holtz and I left work at 11 on Thursday and took a PMV to Kainantu. We ate lunch at one of the Kai Bars in Kainantu, then went to the Cultural Center, a couple of stores and the market, then rode back on another PMV. I'm still amazed at how cheap public transportation here can be - the PMVs to and from Kainantu are 1 Kina each way. That comes out to between 35 and 36 cents. We had a great time in Kainautu, and it was great to get to just hang out with the other two interns for an afternoon. Friday was Remembrance Day, so no work for us again on Friday. Friday night the other two Daniels and I had Craig up to the house and we each grilled a steak.

I spent large parts of Friday and Saturday getting packed up and ready to go. I'm going to go to work on Monday, then spend Tuesday hopefully doing a little more laundry, finishing packing, and turning in various paperwork. I am currently scheduled to fly out from here at 8:30 AM local time on Wednesday (6:30 PM on Tuesday Eastern time back in the U.S.) I'll spend Wednesday in Port Moresby, spend the night at the MAPANG missionary home again, and catch a 6:30 AM local time flight from Port Moresby to Brisbane on Thursday. From Brisbane to LA to Chicago to Raleigh Durham, and then my scheduled landing time (as of a couple of weeks ago) in Raleigh Durham is 9:30 PM Eastern time on Thursday - just over 10,000 miles to travel on Thursday.

Please be praying that my last couple of days here go well, that I remember to take care of everything that I need to, and that I have no problems with any of my flights.

As always, feel free to write to me, and to the people of Chestnut Level Baptist, I will see you next weekend!

As the end draws near

Wow.

As I'm writing this, I'm amazed that my time in Papua New Guinea, at least for now, is nearly at its end. I have just five work days left at aviation, as this Friday is a holiday. In ten days I will leave Ukarumpa, and first thing in the morning on the eleventh day from now, I will be leaving returning home. But, I've still got a little more time, so more reflections on the trip and everything will come later. Just a bit of a "wow" at how close I am to the end of my trip.

This week had one work day for me, and I took an hour off during it, to make for a 7 hour work week. Monday I finished working on one particular part of my project working on the rig used for the engine rinses for the King Air and Kodiak. All of us going to Madang took a two-hour lunch break to go to finance and get some cash for our trip, as well as take care of a few other errands. Then Tuesday began our trip.

We were waiting just outside the main entrance to the Centre by 7:05, and had to wait until about 7:45 before the first PMV showed up. We climbed in and headed to Kainantu. Once we got to Kainantu, we got out of the first PMV, and immediately found another one headed for Madang. About 8:45 or so there were enough people in the PMV that we headed to Madang, stopping several times to pick up and drop off various passengers. At one point there were at least 22 of us in the 16 passenger van. I'm told that the trip to Madang by road takes about 5 hours in good weather, but our driver did it in 4 hours and 15 minutes, in heavy rain. Once we got there we went to the SIL Guest House in Madang and checked into our flat, then went into town for lunch and groceries. I had heard about the Flying Foxes, but was amazed when I saw them. There were literally hundreds of these giant day bats flying over Madang. We returned to the guest house, and the other interns and I all headed out to go swimming. We learned that it would have been nice to have had a beach, instead of rock faces made of sharp coral, and it also would have been good to go at a time when the tide wasn't coming in, with strong waves trying to throw us onto the coral. It was fun, though.

Wednesday was spent in Madang, then at a resort near Madang, snorkeling. Craig and Daniel Holtz and I swam out to an island and just did a lot of marveling at God's underwater creation. The schools of tropical fish, the small ones being very unafraid of us, were absolutely beautiful. And the coral, in its different colors and shapes, was quite stunning as well. I learned another important lesson that day, though: be very careful to make sure that you don't step on a sea urchin. I was watching a group of these spiny little critters, and stepped onto a large piece of coral near them. I was very quickly made aware of the presence of another sea urchin in a hole in the coral, as he decided to stick a spine into my toe. Thankfully, it didn't sting me too badly, so it just hurt for awhile. Again, very worth it.

Thursday we went out to Rempi, the village where Daniel Jezowski stayed during his Pacific Orientation Course. Most of the time we were there, Craig and Daniel Holtz and I were snorkeling again. We swam out to one of the islands where Robinson Crusoe was filmed, and just did a lot of snorkeling around there. The water was so clear, and again, I was amazed by God's creation. I am really hoping that our underwater pictures turn out okay. Both at the resort and at Rempi we found bright blue star fish, and at Rempi there were also several fairly large sea cucumbers. Yet again, I learned an important lesson, though: if you're going to be snorkeling about 6 degrees off the Equator, make sure to sunscreen your back. In our rush to leave to catch a PMV that morning, I forgot to sunscreen my back, and ended up with second degree burns over a large portion of it. Yet again a painful lesson, with an experience that was definitely worth it.

Friday we got up, cleaned up the flat, checked out, and went to the airport. We then flew back to Aiyura in P2-SIM, one of the 206's that all of us interns had gotten to work on. As good as the experience of the PMV ride down was, I really liked the 40 minute flight back. I came back to the house, dropped off my stuff, then walked down to the store for groceries. We ended up taking the day easy for the rest of Friday, and Saturday as well. Saturday night was a group movie night, and this morning I went to church at the English service. It was weird to sit there and realize that I only have one more service left here, at least any time in the near future.

Have a great week, and feel free to drop me a line and let me know what's going on in your life.

11 July

Hello!

Another week has come and gone already. Hard to believe that in about 2.5 weeks, I will be back home.

This week was good, with no "smoke" stories to tell, which makes the week less interesting, but better. I spent a lot of time this week doing various small jobs - it's getting to the point of our supervisor starting to pull out low-priority jobs in an attempt to find something to keep us interns busy. So I put ends on hoses and things like that for a large part of the week, just small jobs, but it was good experience. Then Thursday night one of the other interns told me "I hope you're not planning on going to market tomorrow, because we're getting picked up at 6:30 AM to go fly to Goroka in a helicopter." I was thankful I hadn't needed to go to market, although I would have skipped market even if I had needed something. So we got picked up at 6:30 for a 7:00 take-off, and took off a few minutes after 8:30, due to fog. It was an absolutely amazing flight, though. Craig, the third intern, ended up switching over and flying to Madang in the Kodiak, but Daniel Holtz and I both stuck with the plan of going to Goroka in the helicopter. He had never ridden in a helicopter before, so he got to ride up front first, but I got to ride up front coming back. Our pilot was Gavin Jones, a LeTourneau alum, so that was fun, too. Flying over the mountains here was stunning; we flew safely high, but low enough that sometimes we had to go up to clear ridges and fly over them by less than 500 ft. Seeing all of the mountains from above was breathtaking. Goroka is only about 25 minutes each way by helicopter, but I still took LOTS of pictures. This flight that we had on Friday may very well be the most fun thing I've done so far since I've gotten here.

This morning I got up and went to church on Centre again, so it was an English service. Our speaker was one of the Nationals, who has been serving as a Bible translator for many, many years. I had a hard time understanding him because of his accent, but his message was good.

Tomorrow will probably be my only day of work for this week, as our Madang trip will be Tuesday through Friday. On Tuesday we will take a Public Motor Vehicle there, will spend Wednesday and Thursday enjoying the city and the water, and will fly back in a Cessna 206 first thing Friday morning, if everything goes as planned.

Have a great week!

Happy American Independence Day!

Hello!

Well, it has been a great week, and I am amazed as I realize how quickly my trip is going. In some ways it feels like I've been out of the U.S. forever, but in some ways, wow - I just got here, and I only have three and a half weeks left.

I learned a very important lesson about working on airplanes this week. I was going out to do a compressor rinse on the Kodiak early in the week (with my supervisor, of course) and we were hooking up the external power to the Kodiak, so my supervisor told me to go ahead and turn on the master switch in the Kodiak (basically the switch that gives power from the battery to everything else on the airplane.) So I turned on the master, we plugged in the ground power unit, and we finished getting it ready to do the rinse. I had just gotten the hose in position for me to spray into the engine, with my head right next to the engine, when I heard yells of "smoke!" coming from behind me, where a man was working on the new hangar. So I turned and looked, and saw smoke coming off of the pitot tubes (part of the system for measuring airspeed and such; the Kodiak has a pitot tube on each wing). I yelled at my supervisor to wait on doing the rinse, and ran over and yanked off the pitot tube cover; as my boss saw me doing that, he ran to the other side and yanked that one off, right after turning off the pitot heat switches. These tubes have electric heaters to keep them from icing up, but you don't usually have the heat on unless you're in icing conditions. Thankfully, the only real damage was the fact that both pitot tube covers were melted/burned through, so we had to make new covers - annoying, but relatively easy and cheap. The lesson I learned was this: never assume anything, especially about airplanes. Don't just assume that the pilot left all of the switches in the correct position. The pilot should have had the pitot heat switches in the "Off" position, but my supervisor and I should have seen that they weren't. So I can't point fingers at anyone for having let that happen, I'm just glad that no further damage was done, and that it was cheaply fixable in a day.

This week we also started working on the 100 hour inspection for P2-SIM, another one of the 206's, so this week we've only had one operational 206. This inspection has gone very well, and should be finished up on Monday without a problem, with a scheduled flight for Tuesday. I spent a good part of one day taking out all the seats, removing the floor coverings, and opening up 30 some inspection panels in the floor of the airplane, with 6 to 20-something screws on each panel. I then spent about a day and a half to two days working on re-padding the pilot and copilot seats, and replacing the seat pan on the pilot seat. I am really enjoying getting experience with new things, like the sheet metal in the redoing of that seat pan, and getting more experience doing the compressor rinses on the Kodiak and the King Air. I was a bit surprised this week when my supervisor, Craig (another intern), and I were doing the rinse on the King Air. Craig was spraying water from the hose into the engine, and I was sitting left seat, motoring the engine while Craig was doing that, with my supervisor sitting right seat, monitoring what I was doing. Then the supervisor went out of the aircraft to help Craig get set up on the other engine; I figured he'd come back in and we'd do it again on that engine. So I was a bit surprised when I heard my supervisor yell "'We're ready" and had me go ahead and motor that engine as the only one in the cockpit. It's not a big deal to do, there's rather little error that can be made, but it's still cool to see my responsibilities and the trust in me increasing a bit.

This morning there was no English service here on center, so a bunch of us were going out to Mt. Zion Church for the worship service there. I got picked up this morning in the truck, with several others, and we drove out there, to discover that they weren't having service there this morning, either. So Daniel Holtz and Craig decided to walk with that pastor to the church where they were meeting. I went with the rest of our group and went to church in Ukarumpa Village, which was still a service in Tok Pisin. I really enjoyed the service - a couple of the songs were in English, but it was also cool seeing "How Great Thou Art" and a few other very familiar old hymns in Tok Pisin. Dave Smith sat next to me and translated for me during the sermon, so I was able to get what the pastor was saying. It was a very different experience, but quite good. I got back on center after the morning Lotu (worship) and went to have lunch with Dan and Jen Snow, along with the other two Daniels, Craig, and a lady from here on center. That was quite good, and at about 2:00 we saw Daniel Holtz walking by on his way home, he'd just gotten back from church where he went. So we called him in for lunch (we finally went ahead and ate without him and Craig, since they were running so late) and called Craig down at his house, so they came up and joined us.

This evening there will be a Fourth of July celebration here, with a pot-luck, a worship service, and I'm not sure what all else going on. Then the single's group will be headed up to my house again for games or a movie or hanging out (basically, we'll figure out and do something when everybody's up here). There are advantages to living in a community of so many Americans, such as still celebrating Fourth of July. It still amuses me, though, that one of the guys that may very well join us later is British. There's just a beautiful irony in celebrating July 4 with an Englishman.

Have a blessed day, and enjoy celebrating the Fourth! But while you're at it, take a minute to remember all of the sacrifice that has gone into making America free, and keeping it that way. Also remember that it is God Who has ultimately given us our freedom.

As always, I would love to hear from you! If you've got time for a lengthy email, that's great! If not, even a line or two is always appreciated. d.miller@ukanet.net, for any of you who haven't seen the earlier posts where I mentioned it.