Flying Along

Last month I was privileged to fly along with my husband one day.  It ended up being a very tiring day with 6 stops in the interior of our island.  But it was a great experience for me to see him in action  and be reminded of what God led our family here to do.  Here are the photos from our trip.

Beautiful day to go fly!

The plane we were going to fly being loaded,
with our mountain in the background.

Pre-flight inspection

Pre-flight inspection

Going over details with the loaders

The skilled pilot!

We were headed west.
Horizon in this picture is the ocean.

Lots of low lying clouds.  Sometimes he has to circle around,
 either waiting for cloud to burn off or to find a hole and fly beneath the clouds to the airstrip.

Fly-over of our first stop.  They always fly over once before landing,
to visually inspect runway for obstacles (pigs, dogs, people, etc)
and to give a heads up to the people that they will be landing soon!

Our first passenger getting unloaded.
She has worked in this village, translating God's Word, for the past 34 years!

Everyone wants to help unload and carry things,
as they might get a little money or some candy.

It's amazing how dense the trees are!  People compare it to broccoli,
looking down from the plane you rarely see any clearings, except for rivers and air strips.

Quick peek of the 3 new homes built in Turumo, as we fly-over before landing!

Coming in to land at Turumo, crossing over river on final.

Our friends new village house!  K flew over 30 plane loads of supplies
 into this village to help with the building of this home and the 2 other homes.

Flying over airstrip #3

This village has a government sponsored health clinic.
We were picking up a national doctor who was flying home for Christmas.

Writing passenger receipts

Making good use of the wing-pods, specially designed for this airplane by our organization,
 in order to carry more cargo.

Next stop was delivering a box of medicine to this co-worker,
who will distribute the meds among villagers when they come to him.

Everyone admires the pilot

Next airstrip in view

This stop was to get some fuel, as we would need it to return home.

Fuel is stored in drums and hand pumped into the plane.

Working the hand pump

The Dr. we had on board noticed one of the kids had a wound on her foot,
so she was asking what happened and giving advice for caring for it properly.
 It was cool to see her compassion for these villagers, whom she had never met before,
 and who have absolutely no access to healthcare at all.

The wing provides much-sought-after shade! Temps were over 100 F

Incredible river

Broccoli. Everywhere.

Last stop was to pick up some passengers.
 Only problem was there were 11 of them and only room for 5 in our plane.
The guy looking at a paper is responsible for making a list of passengers.
 He was trying to figure out how to pick which 5 would go on our flight.

Lots of decisions to be made

The guys who wanted to get on the flight...

The lucky 5 who were chosen

Lots of clouds building on our way back into town

Beautiful terrain (note the lack of roads)!

Lake that borders our town and the airport

The terminal you will enter when you come to visit us!

Flying a Kite

For a couple months, B has been asking me if we can fly a kite.  There are only a few places nearby that would work as good kite-flying locations (lots of trees here!), and although we had a kite, I hesitated because I didn't want to go without K coming along to help.  A couple weeks ago, it was a beautiful, WINDY day, so we decided to finally fulfill this request.  B was delighted!

Prepping the kite

Trying it out with Papa

J's turn with Papa

B was SO proud to do it all by himself!

This place is beautiful!

Enjoying our special visitors
(double-tasking....flying a kite and posing for a pic)

The Kite-Flyer

Sad little boy when it was time to leave,
he would have kept flying that kite all night!

Visit to Java

Kars and I had the privilege of taking a trip to the island of Java last week.  Although it is in the same country we live in, it is farther than the distance between Miami and Seattle!  We are so blessed to have grandparents in our town to take care of the boys, so we could go without kids for the first time!  We spent one day in our "old" town, where we lived during language school. It'd been one year since we were there, so it was good to reconnect with friends.  We stayed with some close college friends, who had arrived in town for language school after we had left.  So fun to reconnect with them and see them in familiar surroundings (they are attending the same language school we did)!  Then, we traveled onto the capital city.  It was my first time to be in the city (outside of the airport) and it was like going to a different country!  It is a massive city, known for terrible traffic, but also has many stores and restaurants from the West, which we certainly don't have on our island.  I had fun taking pictures of the crazy things I spotted (even though Kars rolled his eyes at me).  Seriously, I kept thinking, where are we?!

Lunch out at one of our favorite restaurants with college friends

Lighting is terrible...but shows the 4 in the family we stayed with

Fun to meet little "E", who we hadn't seen in real life yet!

This "little" guy wasn't even 2-years-old last time we saw him!

Visiting with one of our beloved neighbors

Precious neighbor friend!

Not a great picture, but one of the most beautiful spots on the drive to the airport
(shows one of the mountains in the background)

Lots of rice fields in Java!

These guys were leaving the airport in style!

Closer picture of the Becak

Coming into the capital

Those in the US probably have no idea why I took this picture...

Or this one...

Newest addition to our country...but only one, which is in the capital!

The IKEA showroom made us feel like we were
walking in a different world (quite overwhelming!)
This kitchen reminded us of Burt and Henny's kitchen in the Netherlands
 (not sure they knew we were there to visit, we didn't get any coffee!)

We weren't the only ones shopping at IKEA :)

Tempted to buy these...but the $7 and & $10 price tags changed my mind...

Last time I saw this much dairy in one place
(with more than 2 options for cheese) was over a year ago!

Pretty city at night

What a find!

But wait....should we really stay if they don't have this?!?

Ok, the burgers were a draw too.  These were big enough to be sufficient for a whole year
 (likely won't be eating another one until the USA!)

Not from our trip...but we are waiting for these yummy pineapples to ripen in our yard!