Station Repairs, Church & Medical Work - PNG Day 7 & 8

Day 7 of 21: Tuesday 7/14/09
No talks today – we cleaned out the house and washed dishes in the river. I then commenced trying to repair our hopeless kerosene camper-type stove. No luck! It would not be repaired. The only way we could “turn off” the bad burner was to remove the kerosene-soaked wick, pull the burning wick out with pliers - making it flare up – and then toss it out the door and put it out. We stopped using that burner.

Dave worked on changing the air filter box from the older mower to the newer one. Even the newest mower hasn’t run in years. The whole airstrip is cut with grass and bush knives by hand – 1900 feet long by 100 feet wide. Then I tried to pump the mower tires up but the pump didn’t work right (thought I had that fixed).

I got on the radio again at 4pm – no luck. No one could hear me. I hope that message got passed the other day for a new battery. We got some rain today, but not enough to test the epoxy patches on the village water tank; the water level only went up a bit above the spigot level, which itself was dripping badly and not repairable.

We ate with the man who looks after radio communications. He is hoping to train as a pastor to help Pastor Sefasui. We gave him food to cook for us and then shared it with him. We didn’t want to mess with kerosene primus.

Kilas, the young Gobasi Christian who wants to do pastor training. He helped us a lot while we were there.

Now it is end of day and time to finish message prep for tomorrow. I spent an hour or two in the chair overlooking the river in the morning jotting notes and thinking through what to share. The river scene was great to clear my mind and let the Lord speak.

Overlooking the Rentoul River at Yehebi Station

Day 8 of 21: Wednesday 7/15/09
Nice and early bell for the morning service. It wasn’t looking good - turn-out wise. There were just a handful after waiting a half hour or more. Finally I just said to go ahead and start, trying to not be too discouraged. The church actually filled up to a normal sized crowd – about half way through the service! I ended up more encouraged and if nothing else, they really seemed to be listening. The young man Kilas was saying that people are always coming late like that. There is a palpable apathy that needs the Spirit to move.

One of the church services

After church I decided to check a knife cut in the wire leading from the radio to the antenna. Kilas said that a disgruntled person cut it after Kilas didn’t pass a radio message for the guy! I wondered if it wasn’t spliced right – yep, it wasn’t. When we got it spliced right the radio transmitted much better but still only at “high noon” when the sun was putting the strongest charge into the solar panel. Noon is the medical sked time but that was better than nothing!

I repaired the tire pump a second time and finally got the lawn mower tires pumped up. Thankfully they seemed to hold air pretty good.

I worked on a message for the evening service. We were holding special services for our time at Yehebi. Dave cooked up some pancakes for lunch – he seems to enjoy cooking and doesn’t trust me so that works out good! We ate, then I worked on the message again.

Later Kilas climbed up a bamboo pole onto the roof of the old mission house to check out the solar panel. Since the house is up on posts it’s quite a ways up, and we no longer had a ladder. He wiped all the accumulated dirt off of the panel. I checked all the connections at the radio and wherever else I could. With all the repairs and cleaning I was able to talk to the doctor for the first time.

I am doing a lot of doctoring because the Community Health Worker decided to take vacation time while Dave and I were at Yehebi.