Papa Geoff

Papa Geoff,
OK, not the most spiritual blog update but this is kind of funny. We’ve got a dog and a cat. Tony, “the animal lover” Vanaria’s idea of course. The dog is a mix of German Shepherd and Blue Heeler. His name is Geoff. “Geoff with a G”. He’s large, pleasant, affectionate and could definitely write one of the “dog diary” entries where he records every activity of the day followed by the words, “My favorite thing!”. He’s cheerful and enthusiastic.
Sally is a small tabby who just had her first litter. She first played with Geoff when he was a small puppy, about 20 kilos ago and they still play together constantly. She’s not gained any weight and he’s about five times larger than he was before. They still play the same way they did the day we brought Geoff home. He chases her around, sleeps with a paw over her back, and eats from the same bowl as Sally. It is not uncommon for her to have hair sticking up like a stylist had applied gel to it in order to create a punk look. The cause: Geoff has been licking Sally again. They would be the picture perfect family is they were the same species.
Given their relationship, it was not a surprise that Geoff felt like a proud papa when Sally had her litter. He would go in the bedroom and lie down staring at the kittens for long periods of time. Within a couple of days he began licking the kittens and Sally just sat there while he did this. Then he began to play a new game: hide and seek.
When the kittens were about five days old we came home and couldn’t find them. We found an empty cardboard box, a sleeping Sally and a happy Geoff. We reasoned the kittens couldn’t have gotten far on their own but we hadn’t figured out what the cause was. Eventually we found all the kittens, who were rather large eyed and traumatized. They had been stashed in various places around the room. It appears that Geoff created a new version of hide and seek. He had been picking up the kittens in his mouth, depositing them in various hiding spots around the room and waiting to see if they would come and find him. The kittens seemed unaware of their role and were wet with slobber and rather limp to the touch. I think it was shock. All this was going on while their mother sat and watched, licking her paws and occasionally grooming one of the untouched kittens. Eventually, we had to lock Geoff out of the bedroom because we couldn’t trust him to leave the kittens where they were supposed to be.
While it’s not knock-down hilarious, it was pretty funny. There’s a lot of little joys like this in the course of a day and as these two extra members of our household provide a lot of humor we thought we’d share it with you all. Till next time!

Sunny Days are Here Again

It’s end of June and at Bobiufa that means we have sun, sun, sun. In fact, it has rained but twice in the last six weeks. You are probably thinking that is a wonderful relief to us, but as we rely on collected rain water in our home for cooking, washing and all manners of plumbing, a lack of regular rainfall means we must either “stretch or fetch”. So when I awoke this morning and the sky was dark, I was feeling rather optimistic. Alas, it cleared and it was not long before the sun was out in full force and I was ducking for shade.
This week we are doing all the non-translation activities that we need to finish before our Mesem friends move back in with us for another month or more. We’re working on another evangelism course at the University of Goroka, and we’ve got forms for one thing or another coming out our ears, along with the usual repairs of things that just were repaired but the repair didn’t hold (Sound familiar?). We need to get some quotations on the printing of Sunday School materials as well as some courses for the correspondence Bible program in which friends have recently enrolled.
Today has had some lighter moments . I planted tomatoes and this time had the wisdom to mark it “off limits”. I learned the need for that when friends “helped” me by weeding our garden unasked. I lost my second basil plant and my third parsley to non-basil and non-parsley eaters. When I came back in, Tony announced we had a minor crisis as the dog was playing with the kittens. The dog and cat are quite close and he licks her new born kittens. Today, however, he decided to play hide and seek. He picked up the kittens in his mouth, deposited them in various corners around the house and we had to find them all again. We got the first three pretty quickly, and of course another was still in his mouth. The last one took the better part of a half hour to locate and it had found refuge beside the dresser. The dog and cat seemed unphased but at least one of the kittens was a bit rattled and rather wet from the dog’s drooling on it.
Best get back to work now but wanted to share our hide and seek adventure. It’s a great day to be alive and enjoying the life the Lord has given us.

While He Is Sleeping

I lack the words to adequately desribe the last couple of weeks. Our friends, Thomas and Chrisitiane Weber, who were soon to leave PNG, after finishing the Bimin New Testament, had a house fire. Their home was destroyed. Thomas had significant burns and had to be flown to Australia where he is now in the burn unit at Royal Brisbane Hospital. I came to Australia within a day to join Christiane for the same practical reasons she did that for me three years ago.
On the bright side, after a week of praying and seeking the Lord for his healing while Thomas “was sleeping” through surgeries, he woke up and his first word, ever so slight and said with great effort was “Coffee”. If you don’t know him you might think he was in bad shape but everyone who knows him knew it was a good sign.
A bit of history:
In 2006, when Neil nearly lost his life as the passenger in a truck accident I felt like I was living in a movie. It had been a very hard year. Neil had broken his collar bone in an accident. Tony had broken his arm. I was diagnosed with a cancerous condition and had surgery (praise God it was later changed to a “misdiagnosis”). Then close friend had a terrible stroke. A road collapsed under Neil when he was teaching a friend to drive. The next month someone else close to us was diagnosed with HIV. Four weeks later another dear friend died. While waiting for her burial, we got word my cousin Rosaria had cancer and I went to Germany. I was back less than a week when Christiane came over to pray with me and I said, “I feel like a sponge held under water too long. I can’t take one more thing”. When she knocked at the door that night with Thomas alongside I remarked, “So, one more thing?
Had Webers not been there in Australia I am not sure what I would have done. Had friends in the US and Europe not rallied with the necessary practical needs I don’t know how I would have made it. But you did rally and God, I pray, has blessed you back a dozen times over. Now I see Webers and I feel it was somehow easier to be the victim than it was to be along side. I would never want burns but I hate to see those I love suffer. We feel like we can’t do anything. We know we need God.
I read a good quote recently. It said that the early church prayed ten days, then Peter preached ten minutes and three thousand got saved. Nowadays we pray ten minutes, preach ten days and three people get saved. We want to pray Thomas and his family through to an amazing recovery. We have given and loved but we must pray. We feel so dependent when we pray. What did WE do when we prayed? Nothing but God is working. As our brother sleeps and heals, let’s pray.

Powerless no more!

Is it wrong to love a generator? If so, we’re guilty but oh, so thankful!

Power outages have been a frequent concern here at Bobiufa and while we were in Brisbane our house was without power for more than two weeks. Needless to say everything in the refrigerator went bad and as the house used power for the water supply that was also not available. Obviously, we need a generator for the computers and printers, not to mention water and refrigeration. Getting the generator proved to be more a challenge than we thought. Due to the outages, the ATM machines have been down and the banks have been closed for days at a time. When they have been open cash withdrawls have been limited. Credit cards are not being accepted, so cash is the only way to pay for anything from a new computer to a new generator. Neil had to stand in lines for up to three hours a day for three days in a row to get enough cash to buy the lovely little Yamaha seen here.

Of course generators do not run on love alone but they like to drink gas and oil. However, the power loss has been accompanied by bad weather which has caused flooding and roads and bridges have also been closed making the supply of fuel in the highlands very tight. It took another day of waiting in line to get the oil and the gas to get the generator running but this past weekend Neil fired it up and we had charging computers, water running in the sinks, and even the milk stopped curdling! It was a thing of beauty! In fact, we’ve only had about six hours of power in the last three days so the generator is a real blessing. Thanks to all of you for all you do to provide the tools we need to keep doing the work to which the Lord has called us. The great thing is that no one person can do it all, so it is only collectively, as His body that His will is accomplished; that way only Jesus gets the glory. That’s how it should be.

So as the lights flicker and the power fades we go downstairs again to hook up the cords once again…….