Kemantian News. 10-14-07 Edition

 

Kemantian News. 10-14-07 Edition

Life continues here in Kemantian. I've been here just over one month. In some aspects its rally flown, and in another regard, its crawled by. Its all good.

In some aspects its just as busy as home, in some other aspects its much slower, and in a few aspects its much busier then home. Its kinda hard to explain.

Let me see if I can describe a typical day here.

Sun comes up around 0545-0600 right now, we are up and about by 0600.

Between 0600 and 0800 we have our personal devotions, shower, fix and eat breakfast, and any other chores that need done. After home where I did all that in half the time, I don't know how I did it.

0800 starts the day officially (unless it was preempted for some urgent reason) Thats when we head out for a couple hours of language learning. Ideally that is, its happened often enough that I've got called off to work on something else that its not an all the time event.

1000 we set off to our various tasks.

This continues till about 1200 when we head back to get something to eat.

By the time you cook something up, eat it, clean up and get headed back out, its typically about an hour or so.

1300-1700 is more taking care of what needs done which seems to be never ending. At present, most of our time has been taken working on the new clinic.

About 1700 we head back and start supper. Again, this takes at least an hour. We usually get somewhat more elaborate with supper so it does take longer.

By 1900 its dark and we are typically free for the evening. Team meeting and a few other things change that but I'm not sure what the official schedule for those are yet.

We usually turn in by about 2100. not much to do beyond that and the roosters like to make sure they now how to crow about 0300... Anybody know how to fry a chicken?

Saturday's are much the same as far as time goes, just what fills the hours differs.

Church starts at 0800 and continues through its various parts till about 1200.

Potluck follows with rarely enough to fill even the kids. So we typically go back and eat something in addition to the potluck.

After church/potluck, everyone splits up and covers a bunch of different villages to hold branch Sabbath Schools. Ranging in distance between 10min and 2hrs hike away from Kemantian.

Yesterday, Brandon and I elected to go to Bingbilang and Malis for Sabbath School. Bingbilang is the village in the lowlands very near the start of the trail. So we the entire way out. Took us about 1hr 45min. We figured we were doing pretty good.

After all the activites down there, we hit the trail back in about 1700. Seeing as its at least a 2hr hike and the sun goes down about 1800 we didn't have much time to hike in the light. With dark coming and the trail being slippery from an earlier rain, we didn't make it back in till nearly 2000. Brandon's sandals were being rather contrary and not holding his feet in a manner to make them useful. Quite a few raw spots and sores later, he was quite fed up with them.

Last time I sent out an email, it contained a story about a particular Tuesday a couple weeks ago. David Aguilar told us his side of the story last week and we were all in awe of what had transpired. I won't spoil it by telling it again here, but keep a lookout for a two-part story in an upcoming AFM Magazine. If you don't receive Frontiers, you can contact AFM and they'll get you setup. http://www.afmonline.org

Dwayne Harris is here from Gospel Ministries International with a Hughes 269-A helicopter to assist the project. He's been a wonderful help, not just with the whirly-bird, but also with the other projects we have around here. We are going to try and get the HF rig setup here in the near future so he can be in touch with several other missions here on the island in case they need help. I know the folks we bumped into in Puerto Princessa from New Tribes would be thrilled to have an emergency out should they need it. Their projects are located just on the other side of the ridge from us. About 4 days hike, but less then a 10 minute flight.

The helicopter has turned whats normally a 2hr hike into a 10min flight at most. We can't use it too much with the cost and lack of availability of AvGas, but its darn handy when it is used.

Dwayne was held up at Manila International Airport because they were out of AvGas, otherwise he would have been here about a month ago.

We discovered that Wendy had a oven that she wasn't using so we hauled it over and tried it out. Its not mom's convection oven, but it works better then nothing! I tried my hand at bread on Wednesday, and it turned out decent. A little dry, and not quite enough time in the oven. Can't complain really as this is the first time I've tried my hand at making bread. I still miss mom's bread immensely, but this will tide me over till I get home.

The weather is such up here that bread doesn't keep for more then about 3-4 days if you are lucky. So prior to this we had bread for the first week we brought from Puerto, after that we were trying to find something to fill the cracks with. Now we can actually have bread as a food and not just a treat.

Rice is the main staple up here. So far I'm not tired of it. We shall see what happens in the next 8 months.

We have been able to keep a nice stock of bananas around. Right now we are waiting on a large batch to ripen so we can eat them. I do love my bananas.

Last Friday, my radio decided to give up its ghost. Its had a habit of locking up and requiring the removal of the battery to get it functional again, but this time when i did that, it didn't come back up. It acts like it fried, but I don't see any evidence of that inside the case. I'm hoping it will resolve itself, but I somehow doubt that its going too. Seems I have a rather expensive paper weight now. Oh well, its served me well for the last 3-4 years, I just would have liked another 10mo out of it. :-)

I do believe thats enough from me.

Thank you all for your continued thoughts and prayers for this project, everyone here, and myself. Its very much appreciated.

May God bless each and everyone of you as well as your entire families.

Nathan