Kementian News, 10-28-07 Edition

 

10-28-07

Howdy Y'all,

Things are still going on here. We are coming along pretty well with the new clinic, despite the rain every day. The roof is nearly complete so now the rain will stop and the work on the interior begins.

There'll be two in-patient rooms, a pharmacy, a lab, and a examination room inside. Still have to put a porch on the back, doors, windows and floors in the attic in before its usable.

I've got plenty of pictures of the progress thus far, but I haven't been able to upload them. I'll be sure and let y'all know when I do get them done.

Pastor and Dwayne are seriously looking at a 25 acre tract of land down near Brooke's Point. The intention is to build an airstrip and a base of operations. Right now they are having trouble finding people with the right knowledge to get the transfer worked out legally.

The house that is our current base of operations is barely sufficient and the neighbors are less then wonderful so getting our own property would be an answer to prayer.

The real question now is if this property is what we are supposed to acquire or if God has something else in mind.

Please pray that this situation will work out.

The weather here has been a pain for the work on the clinic. Sun comes up in a clear sky and creates a nice hot morning. Then anywhere between 1000 and 1300 it starts raining. It could rain for 20min or for 5hrs. The rain and the high humidity (the lowest we've seen is 75%) makes drying clothes quite the challenge. This week it only took 1.5 days to dry the clothes and we were thrilled! We expect the rain to quite just about the time we get the roof finished.

Two weeks ago I opted to hike out to Bingbilang and Malis to assist with Sabbath School (assist as much as much very limited Palawan allows) We finally made it back in around 2000, about 2hrs after dark. That trail is challenging in the daylight, its even more so in the dark and rain!

After that I was planning on going to a close village like Tamlang last week so i could actually get some rest on Sabbath.

Pastor had been out for about 10days and finally made it in last Friday, so when he met me at church last Sabbath, he asked if I could go out to drive the Hilux. Knowing he really dreaded going out and getting stuck there, I agreed.

Lunch and cleanup took longer then expected and we finally hit the trail out about 1330. We made it to Bingbilang at just about 1500. Knowing that Sabbath School at the each location takes at least an hour plus drive time, I was expecting another dark hike.

Turns out there was a person who needed some medical attention there in Bingbilang so that took another 30min.

En route to Malis, Leonda called us on the radio to tell us we had a patient to pickup near Malis and take to the hospital.

By the time we got to Malis it was already past 1630. Leaving there about 1715 we headed off to pickup the patient. Driving down back roads and trying to avoid falling into the irrigation ditches that line the road and following directions in Palawan we finally got there, got him loaded into the truck and headed back to Bingbilang to drop of the truck full of kids. We accomplished that around 1900.

On this trip we found out about another person that needed taken to the hospital but didn't have much info. Acquiring that info took another 45min. Then we were off to find this person.

The road ran out before we got to their village so Sublitu and Naptheli headed off to find her. They made it back to the truck around 2100.

I drove back to Bingbilang to drop Sublitu and Naptheli off so they could hike into the mountains while I took the patients to the hospital and stayed the night in Brooke's.

Arriving at the hospital around 2215, we all marched into the hospital and got them checked in. While the nurses were getting them settled in, i was sent up the street to the pharmacy to collect some IVs an a few other items that i couldn't tell you what they were. And to answer the question, no, the hospital does not have its own pharmacy. It expects family members or those helping with the sick to collect the meds etc.

I finally got back to the house about 2330. Only to discover that I didn't remember the combination to the lock to get inside. Being too late to want to disturb the George's for the combination, I just crashed in the truck. I was tired enough it didn't matter much were I slept.

Woke up about 0600 and started the day off with a call to Kementian to get the code for the door. Got in, got some food and cleaned up the truck.

Ran a few errands and checked on the patients in the hospital, picked up meds for them. Took a family member back to his village to find people to donate 1500cc of blood for one patient and began my hike into Kementian about 1245.

Prior to this, I've only hiked in twice. Once in the day and once at night. Both times following someone. This time I was alone, praying I could remember the way.

Turns out I did remember it and made it to Kementian in 1hr and 25min.

Sometime along in that mess I managed to find a stick sticking off the side of the road that quite neatly took off the passenger mirror and scratched the front fender and door. I checked, but the mirror is not repairable. It'll have to be replaced.

I was kinda worried about being on the trail alone as I wasn't entirely sure of the way nor did i want to do the hike alone. Its always more 'fun' with friends along. Not to mention should i fall on one of the numerous slippery sections of the trail and hurt myself.

In the end, I had a very enjoyable and quite relaxing hike. I took my time, took pictures and had a nearly 90min prayer time going. By the time I got to Kementian, I was in a much better mood and my mind was quite clear.

Sometimes the 'worst' turns out quite good.

Starting to look at putting up the HF rig and discovered that the antenna had an unfortunate meeting with a lawn mower. I haven't strung it out yet to see whether it is salvageable or not. I should have acquired that HF antenna that I was toying with getting before I came over.

The HF rigs and antenna tuner are supposed to work, but haven't been tried in years. Gotta get them out and plug them in to see whats what.

Pastor said that he does not have a Philippine license as they didn't seem to care all that much when he brought the equipment in.

I'm tempted to check into getting a Philippine radio license so I can play with making some contacts with an RPI call sign. We shall see how many hoops need jumping through to get that to happen.

I thank you all for your continued thoughts and prayers for this project, everyone here, and myself. They are much appreciated.

I pray God blesses each one of you and all of your families.

Nathan

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

Kementian News, 10-1-07 Edition

 

Kementian News, 10-01-07 Edition

Howdy,

Its sunday and I've been here for just over two weeks. Well, I say I've been here, I spent the last week down in Brooke's Point so count it how you want.

The last week went by in a blur. Attempting to figure out how life works down in Brooke's, and then trying to understand the language down there. I hadn't even got Palawan down and then trying to throw Tagalog on top only made things worse. I did survive for those of you that were wondering...

Most of my time in Brooke's was occupied running around in the truck chasing stuff down for medical patients, picking up folks from Kementian to take to patients, running errands for Pastor (Kent George) working around the house, cleaning the Hilux, maintenance on the Hilux, etc.

Tuesday David Aguilar had gone out to work on a patient that had fallen and cut his had very badly. David took my radio and it had locked up on him so no one was able to talk to him, nor was he able to hear any of us. He was out of touch for nearly 5hrs. Long story short, the patient needed to get to the hospital as the sutures that David had weren't enough to hold the wound closed. Since he was lacking radio contact with us, he was going to have to hike out, the patient was very week due to blood loss, and catch a tricycle for the 20km trip to the hospital.

I'd taken off on the motorcycle to see if I could find him. After dinking around for 1.5hrs, I was able to find David and the patient on the trail. I was able to use the radio that I'd brought with me to reach Brooke's and have a truck come pick them up. Just about this time the sky started to darken up and look like rain. Now rain on a motorcycle doesn't normally bother me. The thing is the bike I was riding was 125cc little thing with no fairing and no windshield, I didn't have a helmet, I was wearing shorts, t-shirt and flip flops. Not exactly the sort of thing you want to wear when the skys about to let you have it.

Pretty soon I'm doing less then 30km/h trying to see ahead of me to dodge the pot holes. Then the bike decided I needed to switch to reserve on the fuel tank and died. So I flipped the valve and kicked it to restart. Nothing. 10min later, still nothing. I'd checked and re-checked everything to be it was right. It was. So after several prayers and a couple more kicks, she finally lit off. I made it back to the intersection of the National Highway, and two other roads that I don't know the name of, and the bike died again. This time it wasn't fuel but water getting between the spark plug and the wire. So I just pushed it the remaining 1km to the house. By the time I got there, I was wet enough that I would have been dryer had I jumped in a pool.

Talking with David, he said that he'd just about given up on everybody and lost faith that he was going to reach us, and he was honestly worried about the welfare of the patient, just when I showed up on the trail. He said had I showed up an 1.5hr earlier it wouldn't have had the impact that it did.

That 1.5hrs that I spent dinking around trying to find the right spot to look for him was by God's plan. Then the bike dying on me helped forced me to get beyond my mechanical abilities and to trust simply in the Lord and Him getting me home. God also blessed me with a smile when I was most frustrated about the bike. I couldn't help but laugh. Here I am sitting on a dead bike that won't start even though I know its mechanically fine, in the pouring rain, and all I can do is laugh.

They got the patient to the hospital, got his hand sutured up, got a blood smear for david, confiremed he had malaria, and got him home to bed for some rest.

Everything worked out like it was supposed to. Not according to our plan, but according to God's.

God is still working in each of our lives in a very real manner

I pray that each and everyone of you may experience this as well.

Sunday evening, after the wind had been howling all day, the wind ever so kindly took the ridge cap off of our thatch roof. This allowed a hole about 16ft long and 5in wide to run the width of our hut. With more rain in the wind, we hunted down a tarp and managed to convince it to stay on the roof covering that hole.

I'm told that someone is supposed to be coming up sometime to replace our entier roof. The kicker is, nobody knows when exactly they are coming. So for now we will make do with a tarp and hope the rest of the roof stays put!

God bless

Nathan

Kementian News, 9/21/07 Edition

Howdy all,

 

A little longer on the trip

2hr flight from DFW to Minneapolis where I sat for 6hrs

Then a 12hr flight to Tokyo where we sat for 1hr

Then a 8hr flight down to Manilla. We landed there about 11pm Tuesday local

After making it through immigration, claiming our stuff, and clearing customs, we met and headed to the hotel for the night. We finally hit the sack around 1AM. Only to find that the time difference was to much to really get much sleep.

Rising around 6AM we headed back to the airport to catch a plane to Puerto Princess on Palawan. That was a 50min flight.

 

Wednesday we did a bunch of shopping and hit the hay.

Thursday we got up, picked up a few last items and made the 180km drive down to Brooke's Point. That took about 5hrs. To say the least the roads aren't very nice here.

 

Friday morning we made the hike into KMTN in about 2hrs. Not bad for a couple of newbies. Course we weren't carrying the 50kg loads that some of the locals were either.

 

Things are going quite well. Brandon and I are getting used to the food and the culture. We are beginning to learn the langguage, but we still have a long ways to go in that regard.

The people here, both local and expat, are just great folks.

 

Well, I'm out of time, Y'all take care!

Thank you for your continuted thoughts and prayers

God Bless!

Nathan

I am here

I've made it safely all the way into the village of Kamantien (sp?)

 

I'll try and do a full update later, but no time now.

 

Thanks for your continued thoughts and prayers!

Nathan

Well, I'm outta here

Not quite yet, though I do have an official itinerary that has me leaving DFW airport a 0604 AM on Monday morning.
I go from DFW to Minneapolis, MN where I meet Brandon for the flight to Tokyo, Japan. Where we will refuel and make the last leg to Manilla. 2.5hrs to Minneapolis, then its 18.5hrs to Manilla. Good thing I have some books!

My visa/passport arrived in my hands today.
The boxes are acquired so now I can begin figuring out how to stick everything in them
Still got a few more items to acquire, but none of them would be detrimental to the trip, would just be nice to have them.


So this thing is finally about to kick off.

Thank you all for your prayers and donations to support me. Please continue to keep myself and the entire project in your prayers.

God bless!
Nathan
seeryn@gmail.com


PS: if anyone would not like to receive these emails, please let me know and I'll remove you from the list.
Conversely, if you know someone that would like to be added to the list, please drop me their email address and I will add them.

Where I've been

States visited by motorcycle


create your own personalized map of the USA

The Long Way Home. Summary

Since meeting in Louisville, KY, we put just shy of 3,000 miles on the bikes. In that time I learned a few things.

Don't plan so much.
Don't expect as many miles per day
Take more pictures
Repeat as often as possible!

The Long Way Home. Tuesday

Miles: 503
States: MS, LA, TX

Getting up and partaking of the “superstart” breakfast (Krispie Kreams and cereal, what else do you need?) we topped of the tanks and headed West towards home.

Stopping only for food, fuel, and butt-breaks, we made it home around 5PM.
After being gone for 6weeks, I was more then ready to be home!

The Long Way Home. Monday

Miles: 393
States: GA, AL, MS

Leaving this morning around 945 AM EST, we made our way to Birmingham, AL for a visit to the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum. For anyone interested in motorcycles and cars, this is a must see.
Just a few of the vehicles they have can be seen in the pics I took located here.

Continuing on down the road, we stopped in Jackson for the night. We’ll get up and finish the trip home tomorrow.

The Long Way Home. The Weekend

Miles: 4-5
States: GA

After arriving Friday evening we spent the weekend just hanging out, enjoying friends, playing Wii, watching Rush Hour 3, playing Wii, defending ourselves from the vicious cats, playing Wii, and just having a good time.

The Long Way Home. Friday

Mileage: 391
States: NC, SC, GA

Knowing that the earliest the cycle shops opened was 9AM, we slept in a bit (7:30) showered, loaded the bikes and got ready to go by 9 when I called and found a Michilen Pilot Road in the proper size at Boone Honda. The didn’t have the Dunlop D220 and the earliest they could have it was Tuesday. So the ST got a PR on the rear.
They wer very helpful and got right on it as soon as we pulled in. An hour later, the ST had a new shoe on the rear, air pressure checked on the front, and the rear member oil topped off.
One of the gentleman there had to wander around my VFR and decided it was “good looking” the kid behind the counter was amazed that I was from Texas. Surprised the service guy when I gave him my address too.

With the wallet $220 lighter, we set off in search of food around 11AM.
After pestering the waitress at Huddle House, we headed for the Blue Ridge Parkway.
BRP is a beautiful road. Sadly the 45mph speed limit hampers the amount of fun that can be had there. I constantly had to watch myself for accelerating out of corners well over the limit.

Jumping off the BRP in Ashville, got directions from some locals and made a bee-line for Atlanta. The chosen route took us down to Spartanburg, SC and then over to Atlanta. Unfortunately it was all interstate, but time was of the essence.
Traffic didn’t seem to have a problem rolling 80-90mph so we made excellent time. And somewhat surprisingly, the bikes loved it too. 46mpg on the VFR, 50mpg on the ST1300 :eek:
Just 9 miles from our exit, the rain started. Couldn’t have been earlier when both bikes temp gauges were reading over 100*F, nope, had to be just before we arrived so we are trapseing all kinds of nasty wet gear into the house. :giveup:
We managed to avoid the maniacs that wanted to run us over, and there are lots of them on I85 and in Atlanta! and made it to our destination about 8PM.

The long way home. Pictures

Pictures can be found here: Link

The long way home. Thursday

Miles: 320
States: VA, NC

Getting up about 7AM we started loading the bikes. And watching the clouds roll in.
Broke out the VX-7R and listened to the NWS forcast to see what was happening. They said it would be afternoon before anything fell out of the sky. Well, they were wrong. Just after getting the tent broke down, it started raining. Not hard, just enough to get everything wet.
Waiting a bit for it to wash off the roads, it stopped raining. So we loaded up and headed down the last half of Skyline Drive.

Arriving at the bottom, we looked at how far we had to go and how much time we had and decided we needed to make up some time. So we jumped on the interstate and headed south at a brisk pace. But only after getting some food at Shoney’s.
I was pleased to see that they had sweet tea on the menu. Nice to be heading back towards the south again!

After about 3hrs on the Intersate, we were sick of it. And our iPods had died. So we jumped off onto US221. Once into NC, the road got wonderfully twisty. The 2nd county in NC, Ashe, was horrible! The road was still twisty, but the pavement was like a roller coaster! Up and down, left and right, all for no apparent reason, just terrible paving work.

Once through that we found a CiCi’s pizza and had some food.

Deciding we’d had enough for the day, we looked up the local KOA and rented a couple movies.
Unknown to us, there was a BMW motorcycle gathering at the same KOA, so the place is full of Bavarian hardware.

I’d been watching the rear tire on the ST1300 and was hoping it would survive till Atlanta where I had a tire waiting at Cyclegear. Sadly its not going to make it, so we are going to hit the local tire shops in the morning and get a replacement. Hopefully

The long way home. Wednesday

Mileage: 405
States: MD, WV, VA, PA

Today we were wanting to go to the Gettysburg Battlefield and the HD assembly plant in York, PA.
Leaving MD, we finished out US50 and made it to Parkersburg, VA for breakfast (~10:30AM)
Continuing down the wrong road, we finally made it to Gettysburg around 12:30PM. Seeing as it was on the warm side and we were already hot from the ride up, we opted to wonder around the museum.

Leaving Gettysburg about 1PM we headed towards York, 30mi away, with the plan of arriving about 1:30PM to get a spot for the 2PM tour at HD. Well traffic conspired against us and we didn’t make it to York till 2:10PM. On top of that, I wasn’t sure where HD was.

Giving up on HD, we decided to grab a bite to eat and fill the tanks. This was a challenged because we were in York. York is annoying. There’s tons of streets and lots of buildings, but there’s nothing there! We drove around for ~20min before finally finding a Taco Bell. To that point we still hadn’t seen a fuel station! On top of the town being weird, the drivers are idiots, and I swear we caught every red light in town!

After pulling the map out in Taco Bell and plotting an escape route, we topped off the Camelbaks and proceeded down the road in search of a filling station.
Once out on the road we were making pretty good time. Traffic was moving, sun was shining, nobody’d tried to kill us in the last 15min, it was good.
Then it happened. Traffic came to a screeching halt and the sirens came wailing up behind us. Cresting the hill we discovered that three vehicles decided to get into a physical discussion and had shut down the highway.
While sitting there trying not to melt, a gentleman on a Triumph Thruxton rolled up and chatted with us. It was a beautiful yellow ’06 with a little black fairing around the headlight. Beautiful machine!

About the time all the traffic in front of us had been re-directed onto an alternate route, the cleared the road and we were able to continue down our originally planned route.

We made it to Front Royal, VA about 6:15PM, topped off the tanks and set off for Skyline Drive.
After a wrong turn down a wonderfully twisty road, we made it to the entrance about 7PM. Only to discover that its $10 per motorcycle, $15 for “normal” vehicles, to ride the road. We paid and began slowly working our way down the Drive. (Its 35mph the whole way) Fortunately the road is fairly twisty, but 35 is a bit too slow. Taking advantage of the error in the speedo, we increased speed a bit (45 ) and began enjoying the road more. The scenery is beautiful on the Skyline Drive!

About 2hrs later and 50mi in, we stopped for the night at a campground. Its $20/night to camp, there’s no power at the camp sites and they charge you $1/5min to take a shower. So much for camping being cheaper then a hotel!

Its really pretty here and the skunks are friendly so I think its worth it.