Summer Work and Summer Fun

Amy and I recently went on a hike to a new place we had never hiked to before called Mt. Audugla. On top was a large boulder we could climb onto to get a nice view of the valley. It turned out to be quite an exciting trip as Amy got her first experience of semi-repelling down a waterfall. I always enjoy a chance to get outside and explore more of this beautiful world. Unfortunately this particular expedition was also the muddiest one I have been on!

View from the top of the mountain. Behind those clouds to the left is Mt. Gilewe, the 2nd tallest mountain in PNG.

Our group, Sean from MAF, and our 13 little guides.

Most of the hike was pretty dense jungle but it made for a fun time.

Since school has been out, I have been keeping busy in a number of ways. A few weeks ago, I was recruited to make trips into town (Mt. Hagen - 1 hour away) and during that week I went to town every day for 5 days in a row for various reasons. Normally we only go once every month to town.

I have big plans for next school year and am excited to have so much time to prepare considering last year I only had 2 weeks to prepare before school started. Any free time during the day I try to spend preparing lesson plans or other things to get ready for school. Unfortunately I haven't had much free time the past month.

For the past 4 weeks, I have been assisting with the supervision of our hydro project. As I have mentioned before, we heavily rely on government power which turns off frequently and worse, has huge power spikes that destroys hospital equipment. In the past, our hospital station has had a functional hydro-electric plant but it has been non-functional for years.

From generous donations and a grant from OzAid, we have the money we need to reconstruct our hydro plant and make it better so it lasts for 50+ years. We have an engineer who is coming to live here with his family but until he arrives, I have agreed to supervise this project.

We are now in our 4th week of work and so far we have been kept busy clearing out our old hydro canal which we just finished today. Next, we will need to dig out lots of dirt to get it to the proper slope before we line the entire thing with cement. We start digging tomorrow!

Pray for these workers as most of them are not Christians and pray that I and other leaders can make a positive impact on them. Also, there is always potential for unrest in the community any time we work on a project that is on the border of our station so pray for peace! The project is going well but it has barely begun and we probably have at least 2 years more work!

My current crew of 42 men.

Most of the canal was completely overgrown after years of not being used. Believe it or not, there is a canal under there!

We took areas like the above picture and made it look like this picture. The canal is approximately 1 km (5/8 miles) long and took us 3.5 weeks to clean the whole thing.

Thank you for praying for our Bible quizzing team. Last week they competed in the world quiz at Olivet Nazarene University in Kankakee, IL. They competed in 2 divisions, District Experienced and Regional (the highest division). In the District division, they were 1 of 44 teams at the quiz and did remarkably well for their first time to ever quiz against another team! After 4 days of quizzing, the team came out of the tournament in 6th place! Individual trophy winners included Lydia Radcliffe, 16th, and Josiah Radcliffe, 20th, out of 217 quizzers in their division.

The Regional division presented a bit more of a challenge to the team as every other team in the division was literally composed of the best of the best quizzers from each educational region in the United States. In addition, most of the quizzers in this division are very experienced quizzers and very good. All of our quizzers were rookies and had never quizzed before they arrived at Olivet. In the end, they placed 9th out of the 9 teams in the division but with a record of 2-6, they show that they were not completely out of place in that division. Hopefully it was a great learning experience for all of them!

Lydia Radcliffe, who is 13 and just finished 7th grade, placed 5th place overall in the Regional division. That is an incredible accomplishment and even earned her a $600 college scholarship. We are all so proud of how hard she worked all year round!

Our Quiz Team Left to Right: Susan Myers (Chaperon), Lydia Radcliffe, Ethan Myers, Josiah Radcliffe, Allison Dooley, Jessica Myers, Bill McCoy (Coach), Marsha McCoy.

Even though they were so far away, we were able to join them on this journey through the miracle of Internet! Some of the rooms at the quiz were being streamed on the Internet so any time our team was in that room, we were able to see them. Also, we were able to use Skype through the McCoy's laptop to see additional quizzes that were not in those rooms.

Due to the time difference, all of their quizzes occurred between 11:00PM and 8:30AM. Because of that, we were not able to watch the quizzes together live. Instead, I volunteered to record the quizzes for us on my computer so we could watch together. For 3 nights in a row, I stayed up most of the night to record quizzes at different times during the night. Then each evening, we had a quizzing party and projected the quizzes up onto a wall for everyone to enjoy.

Thanks again for your prayers and continued support! I know some of you have asked about Naomi from our last post but I will let Amy update you on hospital stuff since that is her area of expertise!

God bless you in your ministry where ever you are at.