From the Air

I love to fly, especially in little planes, like the Cessna 206 I flew on from Port Moresby, the capital of PNG, to Ukarumpa last Friday. You fly much lower than a jet, and as a result get great views and a better chance at photos too.

During take-off: the Port Moresby International Airport. The international terminal is on the left and the domestic on the right.

After taking off from Moresby, you get a nice view of PNG's parliment building. It's styled after a kind of traditional spirit house (haus tamburan) from the Sepik area. Our linguistics library in Ukarumpa is also modeled after a haus tamburan with the sloping, pointed roof although not on the same grand scale. :-)

Continuing away from the airport, you get a view back toward downtown Port Moresby. It's in the distance, on the side of the little peninsula, sticking out into the ocean.

The land we passed over flying north following the coast is a flat plain, filled with rivers and other soggy spots.

I love to look at rivers when I'm flying and I thought this spot (a close up from the previous picture) was particularly interesting. The two (differently colored) rivers almost meet, but not quite!

As we continued to fly northwest, the land changed from floodplains to rolling hills and then steep mountains and back to hills. This is a Highlands village we flew over, fairly close to Ukarumpa. A lot of the sleeping houses are round or at least have rounded corners, while most near the coast are rectangular.

And now, we're almost home. I just barely missed my house in this close up of Ukarumpa. See the house just above the road that goes out of the picture on the bottom right hand side? That's my neighbors' house.

Update

An official statement has been released about the prayer request I posted earlier this morning. Here it is:

This morning (Thursday 25 March) a fire broke out in the house of one of the members of SIL-PNG, likely caused by an electrical fault.  The fire gutted the house, destroying many personal belongings.  The limited Fire Services that SIL has did manage to put the fire out, with the structure still standing.  However, the husband received significant burn injuries and was medevaced to Cairns, Australia, accompanied by his wife.  One of the two sons has a minor burn and is being cared for by medical staff and friends at Ukarumpa.

Please pray for physical and emotional healing for the family and friends.  Please uphold the community in prayer.  A number of stressful things (other medevacs and security incidents) have been happening lately.   

Thanks for your prayers.

Not back yet... but a prayer request

My vacation is not over yet, but I would like to ask you to pray...

Please pray for a friend who is being evacuated from Ukarumpa to Australia for medical treatment for burns. I am not going to give more details at this time (and maybe won't be able to later either), but just ask you to pray for him, his wife and their children.

I'm flying back to Ukarumpa from Cairns tomorrow. You can pray that I will have good travel back and also that I won't be too scared living back up there.

Thanks,

Sara

Vacation

Hello from vacation :-)

Yesterday I traveled to Cairns, Australia for vacation. It's a breath of fresh air after being in PNG continuously for almost a year! I'm enjoying basic things like wearing pants, driving a car and feeling safe at night.

I'm not planning to post any more updates until my vacation is over and I'm back in PNG, after March 26.

A million pounds lighter

As Juliann and I listened to the song "Another one bites the dust" again this afternoon, I felt like a million pounds had been lifted off my chest. The reason? I'd just finished writing the last section of the last New Britain survey report! After almost four months of working on these eight survey reports for four languages, having them all written is great!!!

Juliann and I have been working extra hard on these reports for the last few months, trying to get them all done before she leaves for furlough (next Monday). And although they're not completely done yet - they need some tweaking and revising - they'll be done before she leaves! Yay!

Beauty of Creation: Part 2

As you probably have figured out, I like to watch birds. They amaze me by how tiny, yet intricate and beautiful, their bodies are, and by the way they flit and fly. Here are a few more bird pictures I took last December.

This tiny female Mountain myzomela isn't as colorful as her male counterpart, with his fire-engine red head. Even though she's not as bright, I like the pink/red mark on her face. To me, it looks like she's blushing. :-)

This is one of Ukarumpa's seasonal visitor, the White-breasted woodswallow. The woodswallows spend part of their year here and the other part in Australia. (Isn't migration amazing!?) I love to watch their antics as they swoop down off their perch and fly around like crazy before landing again.

Here's a common Ukarumpa resident: the Pacific swallow. They look and act a lot like Barn swallows that I know from Pennsylvania.

Along with being loud and boisterous, Willie wagtails (the smaller bird in the picture) are troublemakers too. They don't pick on birds their own size, but prefer to harass birds and animals bigger than them. I've seen them pester cats, dogs and kites (hawks).This picture shows a Willie wagtail chasing a kite. As they went, Willie was making lots of noise and swooping and diving at the kite, trying to get a piece of him!

Beauty of Creation: Part 1

Since I don't have a camera now, I haven't been taking or posting any pictures. To alleviate your boredom of just seeing words on my blog, I've decided to dig into the archives and post some pictures from last year.

There were taken last December (with a nice camera borrowed from a friend).

A view looking away from Ukarumpa
(Note: This isn't the security fence. It's a much bigger, sturdier fence.)

Two Long-tailed Shrikes -
These birds don't come into Ukarumpa too often, but can usually be seen perched on the fence. (This is the security fence.)

A Black Kite -
These birds are extremely common. You can see them soaring in the currents overhead and perched on the fences and other things at the horse paddock. I love to watch them soar on the wind...