Monday, September 25, 2006

Back Home



















Last week Jason was able to take home a lady that had been out of the tribe for a medical procedure. The missionaries in the tribe told us that her husband would come by their houses every day asking when his wife was going to come home. It was a happy day when Jason was able to fly her back in.

The first picture, you can see Jason in the plane. The lady is being welcomed back by our very tall Aussie team mate! The second picture is her and her happy husband.

Friday, September 22, 2006

Exhausting!

It has been a busy time for us. Jason and Garry had to work on an annual inspection before Jason could move our coworkers into the tribe last Wednesday. Monday didn't go so smooth. After working on the plane all morning, the guys found out in the afternoon that the insturment used to check the compression was broken and that is what was causing all of the confusion!

They managed to get the plane fixed up and put back together Tuesday afternoon. Wedensday morning, Jason took off early and ended up not being able to fly into the tribe right away because of bad weather so he spent about 3 hours weathered in at our old flight base. Once he was over that hump it was full speed ahead. In 2 days he did 8 flights and hauled over 5500 pounds. Literally hauled, since he had to load all of those pounds in and out of the plane. It's a good thing he is so tough and had a little help :-)

This week we have a check pilot here from McNeal. The guys will be flying W,TH,F, M and I think maybe Tues of next week. Of course there is a storm system and has been cloudy and rainy the last few days :-) I can't understand why everyone wants to do lots of flying in the middle of rainy season!!!

Our support team in town is scrambling to get orders together before all of the flights happen. I'm even going to try my hand at a bit of supply buying. I've done it once before and I am VERY glad that it is not my job!

On the home front, Kellan is starting to walk a bit more and my back is rejoicing! Our big guy turns 1 in two weeks. I can't believe how fast this last year has gone. I guess we've done a good job at packing a lot in to the last 12 months.

Mirielle continues to be a 'corker' as my family would call it. I've included some new pictures of her in our photo gallery. I tried to take a couple of pictures of her the other day and she was acting CRAZY in front of the camera. She came up with all of the dramatic poses and faces on her own. As I was looking through them, I was reminded of seeing pictures and home movies of my mom when she was little. Looks like the crazy gene may have skipped a generation and landed right on my daughter!

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Thanks to all of you who have been praying for my headaches! They are pretty much gone, except for when I have spent an all too long day with the kids!

We had a quiet week and a half. Jason didn't have any scheduled flights so he kept busy working and the hangar and taking care of things around the house and town.

During our down time we were able to take a nice trip to the beach. It was a great time having fun together as a family and we enjoyed our first 'just for fun' trip since moving back here to the Philippines! We have new pictures of our weekend on our photo gallery.

2

Its back in the saddle again. This week is a busy flight week and includes an overnight trip for Jason along with getting checked out on one of the last airstrips on the island. I'm planning on having a movie/scrapbooking night so I wont miss him too much. :-)

I had an interesting conversation with my house girls the other day. First, we were talking about having bad dreams while you sleep. They were telling me how people die when they have nightmares and cant wake up. From what I could make of the conversation, it is actually the nightmare and not being able to wake up from it that causes you to die. We had acutally heard this belief from one of our language teachers last year so it was interesting that it came up again.

The girls made sure that they pointed out that the death had happened to a well established believer of the church. Maybe to give the story some credibility - to point out that it wasn't just some superstitious beief. They said the problem was that he was exercising hard, sweating, then came home and ate too much and took a bath.

We know for sure that here they believe that if you sweat hard, you shouldn't go home and take a bath. Some of the workers that Jason knows from when the hangar was under construction would go home at the end of the day and not take showers. This was after working all day when it was 85+ degrees and 85+ percent humidity. They have a thing with sweating and bathing. Something about your pores opening and making you more susceptible to illness.

Then Susan, one of the girls, was telling me how they took her daughter into the hospital last year becuase her daughter was hemorrhaging. While they were at the hospital they tested her daughter's blood and found that she had high blood sugar and warned Susan that her daughter was borderline diabetic. I can't imagine what the doctor could have told her, but what she walked away with is that her daughter should eat cabbage, papaya and fish. She shouldn't have any other meat, avoid lots of other vegetables and fruit but they continue to eat white rice three times a day. I just about fell off of my chair! I don't know much about diabetes and nutrition, but that doesn't sound very healthy to me.