Trip to Palangkaraya

A couple of weeks ago in between unit 4 and unit 5 at IMLAC, our language school, we had a week long break.  We decided to take this opportunity to visit one of our MAF bases and get a glimpse of what life will be like for our family after language school.  We also wanted to have some fun.  We visited the MAF float plane base in Palangkaraya, on the island of Borneo.  We will not be serving at this MAF base, however this base is in the same Kalimantan program we will be serving with.

Since we like to save money (maybe we are a bit cheap) we decided to fly on Lion Air.  I'm going to let my airport geek flag fly here fly for a bit.  Check this out:  Lion Air doesn't provide beltloaders for their rampers, and they have to load a 737-900!  The seat pitch is also the craziest seat pitch I have ever seen!  They also charge for water.  Other than that it is a great airline.  Really.  I guess not every body can be as good as Horizon Air.  We will fly on Loin Air again of coarse, being cheap and all.

We flew through Jakarta, the last time our family was in Jakarta was when we first moved here.  I remember all the Indonesians in the airport sounding like the adults do on Charlie Brown cartoons to me, you know, "Wha, whah, wa, whah."  It was a lot easier flying through Jakarta this time because we could actually understand what people were saying to us!  Proof that language school is working.  

On Sunday when everybody at the MAF hanger had the day off, we came down with the MAF family that was hosting us and played on the dock.

Here are the two oldest MAF planes (I believe) in the fleet.  There is a brand new Kodiak on floats bound for Palangkaraya waiting for certification (Mike actually worked on the Kodiak that will be based here when we stayed in Idaho waiting for our Visas).  

Don't judge, we jumped into the brown water.  In our defense, it is stinkin' hot in Indonesia, and it was super fun.  Parts per million is what we were told to think about while we swam.

Here is my turn on the rope.  Mike captured this moment on the GoPro, along with all of the crying before I got up my courage to actually jump (I'm not the best with heights).  To answer the question you must be thinking, "Did any water get in her mouth?"  The answer is, "yes".  I did have my mouth closed, but the impact of hitting the water made it shoot up my nose, and I ended up with a mouthful of river water.  I'm still alive, so it can't be that bad.  Parts per million!

Colton's turn!

Macie didn't play on the rope swing, but she had fun jumping off the side of the dock and floating on the tube, which was tied to the dock so that she wouldn't float away.

On Monday our whole family was able to go on a quick flight around town.  I have always wanted to go for a flight on a float plane, so I was quite excited.  Compared to the island of Java, the island we currently live on, this part of Borneo is completely different.  Java is covered in volcanoes, and hills, and it is very densely populated. Palangkaraya is very flat and the houses are more spread out.  The people who live here actually have space in between each other.

Our trip to Palangkaraya is exactly what we needed.  It gave us some extra motivation to keep pressing on and trying our best in language school, our trip also gave us a lot of opportunities to practice our language skills.  It was also good to get out of Salatiga for a bit, we love Salatiga, but it is on the small side.  This trip was the first time our family rode in a car for 2 months!

I hope you enjoyed our pictures, for now our family is back into the school routine.  It is a bit hectic because all four of us are in school right now.

Our New Normal

It is hard to believe that Mike and I are already in Unit 4 of language study!  Starting Unit 4 brought to us a big change in routine.  Instead of going to class 4 hours in the morning 8-12, we now go to class for 2 hours a day in the afternoon 1-3.  

In Unit 4 we are given a set of questions, usually about Indonesian culture, and we go out and interview an Indonesian friend (in Bahasa Indonesian of course).  When we have enough information we write a one page essay on that topic, we then take turns in class presenting our findings.  First, we stand up in the front of class and read our essay, we then answer questions from the teacher and our fellow students.  After our presentation our teacher fills the white board up with all of our mistakes!  It is actually very helpful, our teachers are helping us dial in our grammar, the theme of Unit 4 is actually called "Tightening the Seams".  

I am also working with a tutor three mornings a week for more practice.  Mike is able to go out at night and play badminton and soccer with some Indonesian friends, which is fun and great for his language.

Going to school in the afternoon has been good for our family life, now that Mike and I have time to do our homework in the mornings while the kids are in school, we can devote our evenings to family time instead of working on our homework. 

It is crazy to think how far we have come with our language skills (and how far we still need to go).  It is such a blessing to be able to communicate a little better with our Indonesian friends, don't get me wrong, we still have plenty of moments when we yearn to be able to speak with them on a deeper level.  

We are trying as hard as we can to immerse ourselves in the culture here and learn as much as we can.  It is funny, my inner-monologue right now is actually 1/2 Indonesian, 1/2 English.  I take this as a good sign.  :)

  

Three months

3 1/2 months!  It is hard to believe our family has been living in Indonesia for that long.  That being said, the 3 month mark is usually when culture shock sets in.  We have read about culture shock in books, we were warned about it in training, so why was I surprised when it decided to hit me (Angie)?  

It is hard to describe what culture shock feels like, for me it was/is just a feeling of "heaviness".  Some days I feel stared at and just want to stay inside and hide.  I find those days are the most important to get outside and interact with people.  Somedays I feel a little angry at silly things like the ants crawling on EVERYTHING, or the hot water heater breaking once (or twice) a week, or the lock on the front door breaking and locking our family outside of our house, or the neighbors burning their garbage in their yard (again) filling our house with smoke.  

It helps to know that these feelings are completely normal and when I can identify that I am having a culture shock "moment" to just take a deep breath and remember the completely awesome perks there are to living in Indonesia.  

Perk #1  The people of course!  Indonesians are so nice, everyday that I live here I fall more in love with them and their culture.


Perk #2  My fruit bowl.  I love the fruit here!  It is like Jamba Juice in our own kitchen the mornings we make smoothies.

  
Perk #3  My scooter.  Once you get over the fact that driving a scooter around on the roads here is somewhat terrifying, it is a lot of fun!

Perk #4  The pool.  We don't make it swimming very often (about twice a month), but it is the perfect way to decompress and get some in some exercise.

Perk #5  Rendang.  I would live here just for the Rendang. 

I could go on, but I'll stop for now.  In all serious though we cannot live here on our own strength (or positive thinking) alone.  We are learning to rely on God's strength for everything, we are quickly learning that we are not enough.  It is a hard and exhausting lesson, but a very valuable lesson.  We also can't do this without our wonderful friends back home sending us notes of encouragement and prayers.

How am I doing right now?  Good.  I feel "lighter" this week and more like myself.  I do love it here, but there are defiantly hard days along with the good days.

Our First "Adventure"

I am proud to say that Unit 2 is complete for both Mike and I.  It has been a tough month with a lot of ups and downs for both our family and our fellow MAF teammates here in Salatiga.  A fellow teammate and I both struggled staying healthy throughout the unit. I actually lost my voice for 3 days, it is hard to practice a new language when you can't speak!  We welcomed a new family to our MAF team and one week into living here he blew out his knee and had to move back to the US for surgery and recovery.  We were all sad to see them go, but look forward to their return when he is recovered.  Our MAF team in Salatiga currently consists of 3 families, a big change from the 6 we started out with when we first moved here.  

We had a few days off before Unit 3 starts and Mike and I really wanted to go explore Indonesia to check out the island of Karimun Jawa 50 miles off the coast of Java.  We decided to experience the island the way Indonesians do on vacation so we bought a packet through an Indonesian friend (actually one of our language teachers).  The schedule and instruction were entirely in Indonesian.  With 2 months of language under our belts our family headed off by ourselves on our great adventure.  We decided we were either being incredibly brave and adventurous or a little stupid.  (Don't worry it works out for us).

First we had to figure out how to get to the ferry that would carry us over to the island.  We hired a driver to take us to the city of Japara 3 hours (without traffic) from Salatiga.  We had to be on the ferry dock by 8am Saturday so we thought it would be best to drive to Japara Friday night.  Our driver, Pak Ashadi, set up a hotel for us to stay in that was close enough to the dock for us to walk to the ferry in the morning.  The hotel was also crazy close to a mosque!  At about 4:30 in the morning I was about blasted out of bed by the speaker system, luckily the kids slept through it.        

  

We passed a park on the way to the ferry dock, it was pretty run-down, I couldn't figure out if it was just shut down for the off season or broke down.  We let the kids play for a little bit before we walked to the dock, Macie kept taking off her shoes though and with all the trash on the ground my germ-meter was going off so we cut play time short.

We didn't have any tickets in our hands yet or have any idea what time the actual boat left, all we knew was we were meeting somebody at the warung close to the dock.  We finally found our contact and the first thing he says to us is, "I need $200 now for your tickets."  (In Indonesian of course).  We had already paid so Mike sorted it out (in Indonesian) eventually and we were told to sit and wait.  We were never told when the boat was leaving.  I pointed at the boat and asked the lady working at the warung what time the boat left and she held up 5 fingers (not a good sign).  I noticed another orang asin (foreigner) trying to figure out when the boat left too.  

I decided to take a walk with the kids to look around the dock and snap a few pictures.

Macie started crying because she was getting nervous and I think she was experiencing a bit of culture shock.  Waiting for a ferry in Washington state is a whole different experience than waiting for a ferry in Indonesia!  No Starbucks to sip on.  I stopped and prayed with Macie that she would have courage and be brave.  When we walked back to the warung and sat down, she was still a bit weepy.  Some Indonesian girls asked what was wrong, I told them she was nervous.  I have mentioned this before and I will say it again, Indonesians LOVE kids.  The girls invited her to sit with them, took a bunch of "selfies" with her and gave her some snacks.  From that moment on Macie's disposition changed and she was totally at ease.  

The boat ended up leaving at 11:00.  It was cramped, hot, smelled like diesel and rocked back and forth like crazy.  They played the movie "Last Stand" dubbed in Russian with subtitles in Bahasa.  Poor Colton ended up getting seasick.  It was a LONG 1 hour 45 minute ride. 

When we arrived at the dock, we had no idea if we had a ride.  Luckily we were ushered into a taxi which drove us to our room.  The driver dropped us off in the driveway threw our bags in a pile, yelled, "Pak!" and drove away.  We waited for a person to come and greet us, but nobody came.  Mike peeked into what looked like the office and only saw a little girl watching tv.  We waited a little longer, still nobody came.  Eventually Mike asked the little girl for help and a guy came out to help us, pulling his shirt on as he walked out side (he was taking a nap).  He showed us our room and left.  

The rooms we stayed in were super cute, but rustic.  We only had electricity from 6 pm to 6 am and COLD showers, with no towels provided. 

At this point we still were not given a single instruction or a "heads up" on what to expect.  It was unnerving to say the least.  About a half hour later our taxi driver pulled into the driveway and told us we were going snorkling. We ran into the room and threw on our swimming suits and were out the door.  We still had not been fed lunch and had no idea if we were going to get lunch that day. 

Then things started to get fun!  We piled onto an old wooden boat with about 15 other Indonesians and set out to explore.  They served us lunch on the boat and we went snorkeling.    

Being on a boat surrounded by Indonesians was great for language practice, most of them were from Jakarta and a couple could speak a bit of English so we were able to communicate some-what.

I was a bit worried about Colton snorkeling but I shouldn't have been, he is literally better at it than I am.  He loved it!

Our pale-skinned kids are a bit of a commodity here in Indonesia and people are always asking for photos with them.  The cool part though was that they would also play with the kids too.  Macie loved the attention.  Colton gets a bit nervous surrounded by Indonesians, so this trip was really good for him.  He started to talk with them and every time he used an Indonesian word all the Indonesians would squeal with delight.   

Macie and the "paparazzi".

For lunch one day they BBQed fish for us on a tiny island.  No utensils, just hands to eat with.  It tasted great, but I wasn't able to eat dinner that night.  

Coconut water in it's true form.

Seriously, we got to spend time on an island you always see on a postcard, or a calender.  The only problem is that getting to a "postcard" island is really HARD.  :)  

We were not looking forward to the boat ride home.  Colton was worried that he was going to get sick again, so we prayed that he wouldn't, and he didn't!  Seriously though, riding the boat was awful!  I had to sit with Macie on my lap because they didn't sell her a seat and it was cramped.  I had to keep my eyes closed and take deep breaths to ward off seasickness and claustrophobia.  Inside my head I was screaming, "Get me off this boat!"  All of the Indonesians were smart, they just went to sleep and were fine. 

I forgot to mention the scary part of our trip.  The first night a robber snuck through the window and stole Mike's phone from the living room.  He also went into our bedroom while we were sleeping and took my wallet.  So scary!  Luckily he was a "nice" robber and only took my money and threw my wallet on the porch when he left with all of my ID cards inside of it.  So nice of him.

So there you have it, our first Indonesian "vacation" experience.  We are here to learn the culture and language, right?  What better way than to set out and travel and fumble our way around with 2 months of language "skills".

A Day in the Life of Language School

What does a typical day look like for our family right now, you may ask?  I'll walk you through our day.

4:30 AM- Call to prayer from the nearby mosque(s) starts broadcasting and wakes me up if I fell asleep without my earplugs.

 6 AM- Alarm goes off.  I get out of bed and make my morning cup of coffee.  (Lighting the burner on the gas stove with a lighter doesn't scare me anymore, so I am making progress).  I read my Bible, and of coarse my Face Book, and look over my pengalaman (more on that later).  I wipe the ants that have migrated onto our kitchen counter off so I can make breakfast.  Scrambled eggs, pancakes, leftover papaya, or toast is the usual fare.  Sometimes the kids are awake to eat with us, if they are still asleep I cover their plate of food with plastic (so the ants don't carry it away).

7:45 AM-  Ibu Yani our pembantu (house helper or more accurately lifesaver) arrives to watch the children and help with laundry and cleaning, she also cooks us lunch.  We say goodbye to the kids (if they are awake) and walk to IMLAC, our school.  IMLAC is about a mile walk from our house.

8 AM- School starts.  On Mondays we have chapel together, but every other day we go to class right away.  There are six people in our Unit 1 class.  We all take turns at the beginning of the class sharing our "pengalaman"  which means "our experience".  We write eight sentences in Indonesian about our past day and stand in front of everybody to read it.  Starting next week the teacher would like us not to read off of the paper.  Yikes!  After we are finished the teacher (or pilatih) will write down our mistakes on the board and we all practice the correct way together.  Intimidating, yes.

9 AM- We split up into two groups and practice short drills.  We are given about 3 phrases to learn for the day, we then repeat the phrases with the pilatih.  Later in another class we learn words we can substitute in the phrases.  We also have a 20 minute class where all we do is repeat words the pilatih says.  By the end of this class my mouth is sore, there are a few sounds our mouths just don't make in the English language that are hard to get used to.  

11:45- At the end of the day we dialog with the pilatih (in front of the class) the text we have been working on all day.  This whole process is quite draining, by the end of the day the first week I honestly was holding back tears I was so tired by the last class.  I would get crushing headaches and forget simple phrases.  Anybody who is close to me knows that I am NOT a crier.  :)  It is getting easier, class is still crazy hard, but we are getting used to the schedule.  

IMLAC Campus

I forgot to mention that about 1/2 of the pilatihs don't speak much English and the entire class is taught in Indonesian.  If we have a question, it is asked/answered in a mixture of Indonesian, drawing on the white board, and charades. 

12 PM- Class is out.  Mike and I walk home, which is perfect because it gives us time to decompress from the day.  We arrive home to an amazing meal that Ibu Yani and Ibu Janarti have made for us, from scratch.  The meal of coarse always involves rice in some form.

2 PM- The pembantus go home for the day and Mike and I try to get out of the house so we can practice our Indonesian.  Our neighborhood isn't good for practice so we usually take a walk, with the kids, and try to strike up a conversation with people, or we hop onto the angkota and walk around downtown.  It is super intimidating to try and strike up a conversation with a complete stranger and this is the most stretching part of our day in many ways.  We are trying to find ways to be immersed in Bahasa Indonesian more, which is difficult because all the locals speak Javanese to each other so we can't just listen to their conversations to "get an ear" for Bahasa Indonesian.

5 PM-  We rotate between eating out for dinner and eating leftovers at home.  By this point of the day we are exhausted and cooking is too much to think about at this point of our overseas journey.  Of coarse heating up leftovers is a lot of work here too because we don't have a microwave.  Funny thing is if you asked me a month ago if I could live with out a microwave I would have screamed, "NO!"  Now I don't even really miss having one, leftovers taste about 10 times better reheated on the stove anyway.  There are not a lot of convenience food items that require a microwave here either, so you don't really need one.  They are available here, but many people joke if they plugged a microwave into the wall of their house and tried to use it, it will overload the breaker and their power would go out!

6:30 PM- I help the kids take showers, we only have showers in this house no baths.  Yes, we do have hot water!!!  The water is heated by an LPG tank outside, the system has broken on us three times so far in one month, but who's counting?  I am thankful for a husband who can splice wires.  

8 PM- We try to have the kids in bed by this time.  After this Mike and I start on our homework.  We try to study our vocab words, translate the next day's lesson, and then we write our Pengalaman and try to read it a few times before we have to recite it in class.

3 AM- During Ramadan, which just ended 2 days ago, we would be awoken to a drum parade and cries of, "Barung!" that would last about 30 minutes.  This went on for an entire month.  I'm glad I can delete this from our current routine.  

For now, that is a day in the life.  August 12 it will change a bit because the kids will be starting school. 

Random Pictures of Town

Today our internet is being cooperative with me so I am going to post a few photos from around town here in Salatiga.  The internet repairman has already been out here twice to fix it, the speed seems to come and go.  We can never get enough speed to watch Netflix :( which is probably good, because we have a new language to study and learn this year. :)  For those of you who would like to keep in touch, we have found Face Time works much better for us than Skype.  Call us!  We would love to chat, or as they say here bercakap-cakap.

Here are a few pictures of our new town (life).

We don't own a vehicle yet, so we get around town mainly by walking.  Language school for Mike and I is about a one mile walk from our house, it is a nice way to decompress after school by walking home (more on that in a later post).  If our family wants to get downtown we hitch a ride on the Angkotak (a little blue buss) which costs 2,500 rp. (about 25 cents).

If we need to travel to a larger city to do some shopping or enjoy some American-ish food, we can hire a driver to take us there in a car.  It is still a bit different to travel without car seats, but half the time there isn't even a seat belt in the car to hook it to anyway!  We won't be able to travel to the larger cities that often, because we are so busy with school; trips like this will probably happen once a month.

The best way to get around town in Salatiga is by scooter.  I was shocked by how narrow the roads are here, they are about the size of a bike path in the U.S.  We are planning on purchasing a scooter in the future, but we are going to observe how the traffic flows here for awhile before we hit the road.  When we need to get somewhere in town quickly, or after dark when the Angkotak stops running, we hitch a ride on the back of a fellow teammate's scooter.  Macie LOVES riding on the scooter and is the biggest advocate in our family for buying one right away.  We purchased some really nice helmets in town here for only $90 dollars (total).  Of course in Indonesia you can ride a bike barefoot with no helmet if you want to (I have seen this on many occasions).

Here is the road in front of our house, it looks quiet in this picture but it is quite possible to get hit by a scooter if you aren't paying attention while walking on it.  We have a good view of the volcano from our house, but it is quite rare for the clouds and haze to clear away for it to make an appearance. 

Indonesians take their badminton seriously, there is a store downtown that sells some pretty nice rackets.  If you want any "street cred" when you show up for a game, you need a descent racket.  Mike and Colton went into town and picked up a racket and net, so we can practice and play in our yard.  We don't have enough yard for a full-sized court because our banana tree gets in the way, but it works. 

There are some pretty incredible restaurants in town, that is of course if you are brave with your stomach.  We have had good luck so far (just don't eat the uncooked veggies).  The phrase, "Lord please let this food be a blessing to my body" takes on a whole new meaning while eating out here!  This picture was taken at a restaurant we went to after church this past Sunday.  It is beautiful if you don't look too closely at all of the trash floating in the water alongside the rice patties.

I know this post was random, but with the culture shock and diving into learning a new language my head is feeling a bit random at the moment.  We are loving our new home and are settling in well, the people in Salatiga are super friendly and they make us feel welcome.

Greetings from Salatiga, Indonesia!  Our family, along with ALL of our luggage made it all the way here.  We are currently unpacking and setting up our house that, by the way, we get to live in for an ENTIRE year.  As soon as we get our house set up and the internet cooperates with us I'll post a video tour so you can see what our home looks like.

How did flying 1/2 way across the world with 2 kids and most of your possessions go, you may ask?  It went surprisingly well.  

Our trip began at 3 am in Idaho and ended at 1:30 am the next day in Jakarta.  I think Mike and I got a total of 2 1/2 hours of sleep the night before we began.  With us, we had a total of 9 checked bags, all of which came in between 49 and 50 pounds.  Success!  For carry ons we had 4 roller bags, 2 computer bags, 1 camera bag/backpack, and 1 tiny child sized roller backpack.  

Our routing was Boise-Denver on a 737 (4 hour layover), Denver-Narita on a 787 (3 hour layover), Narita-Jakarta on a 767.

The first 2 legs of our trip went great.  Our kids have quite a few air miles under their belts and probably know how to navigate TSA security lines better than most adults.  They also were able and willing to each carry one bag for us.

Starting our new adventure

We were super excited to get the opportunity to fly on the new Boeing 787!  The plane was so new, it still had the "new airplane" smell.  The inflight entertainment system was cutting edge and we never heard a single complaint from either child the entire 11 1/2 hour flight.  Macie watched a couple of movies and fell asleep for the rest of the flight, Colton on the other hand was having so much fun he didn't fall asleep until 1 hour prior to landing.

The trip got "interesting" once we landed in Narita.  We had to shake Colton awake; he was now delirious and unable to carry his bag for us.  In Narita once you disembark the plane you have to go through security again.  Poor Colton was so tired he was sobbing, and we had to keep encouraging him to stand up and move.  We made it through and once we arrived at the gate, he crashed again.  When it was time to board the plane to Jakarta we had to shake him awake again.  In Narita it is tricky to board the plane because they don't have jetways at every gate.  To board our plane we were loaded onto a bus that drove us to the plane on the tarmac, where we then walked up a stairway.  To a 767!  Those are some big steep stairs for little ones (whom you cannot help because your arms are full of bags).  We survived the whole process with no injuries to the little ones and boarded the plane.  The second Colton sat in the seat, he was sleeping again.  Crisis averted. 

Once we landed in Jakarta, we were all fully awake again and the kids were able to carry their bags for us.  Nice.  I was a bit worried to go through customs, but I shouldn't have been.  I've heard Indonesians are nice, but I had no idea how nice!  The customs agent was the friendliest customs agent I have ever dealt with, he was nicer to us than our fellow American custom agents are.  

After we cleared customs and picked up our luggage, our fellow MAF team member was there to pick us up outside of baggage claim. We were then driven out to a guest house in Jakarta to rest for a couple of days before we continued on to Salatiga.

I would have posted more photos, but our internet is slower than molasses in the winter.

Celebration Park

Lately I've (Angie) been tired, not just physically tired, but emotionally tired as well.  The roller coaster that has been the "normal" for our lives this past year has taken a toll.  When I get tired like this I don't need to veg out in front of the tv or read a book, I need to get outside and enjoy God's creation.  Luckily Mike understands this about me and after he came home from work last night suggested driving out to Celebration Park for a hike.

Celebration Park sits right on the Snake River.  When we told the kids the name of the river, Macie's eyes got very big.  We explained to her that the river wasn't called the "Snake River" because it's full of snakes.

Boise is only about an hour drive this side of the time zone line, so the sun stays up super late this time of year.  We were still hiking past nine o' clock and it was still bright (yes we are a family of night owls).

There was most definitely a hatch going on and the fish were rising to the surface of the water like crazy.  I could tell Mike wanted his fly rod so bad!  Of course it in storage back home in Washington.

Here are a bunch of pictures.  It is so pretty out here!

Macie is really into bouldering (climbing rocks) right now. 

This is a converted railway bridge which is a walking path now.

When you are a mom you get the chance to suck up your pride and carry around princess lunch boxes your little girl "promised" she would carry on the hike.

Colton is pretending to sleep in this picture.

So tired.

We are Batting One Thousand

Thursday morning Mike and I carried out our daily morning ritual by checking our email inbox to see if we had any news from the travel department at MAF, and we finally read the words we have been waiting for since we turned in our paperwork last June.  All four of our visas are here!  We were thrilled to get such good news. 

Then our day took a turn for the worse.  

Ever have one of those days where you feel you just need to go to bed so that you can put an end to it so bad things stop happening?  It started out with small problems.  Colton started to feel crummy and ended up with a fever by the end of the day.  On the way to our celebratory dinner at Chick-fil-A his flip-flop blew out (minor  I know, but still unfortunate).  On the way home the clutch went out on our car.  To top it off when Mike turned on our iMac to research how to fix the clutch he got the "beach ball of death".  Our hard drive crashed.  Apples are not supposed to die!  This is the point of the day where I wanted to throw in the towel and just go to bed. 

It is sometimes easy to focus on the negative and feel let down after a day like we had, but if you examine it closer you can see the hand of God at work in the midst of it.  I didn't mention it earlier, but our car broke down 1/2 a block away from home.  Isn't that a miracle?  I thought of all the places I had driven the car earlier in the day, and counted the amount of times I shifted gears.  The fact that the clutch broke so close to home is a miracle.  

Mike was able to tow the car with a tow dolly and truck MAF owns to a hanger full of tools and aircraft mechanics.  What a perfect place to fix a car.  Now we can sell the car with a nice new clutch in it.  The clutch was starting to take a bit of "finesse" to down shift, not the best selling point.

Is it a bummer our computer hard drive crashed?  Yes it is, but we had it properly backed up and there is an Apple store in the Boise Mall.  We took it in to the Apple "geeks" (or are they called "geniuses") and they are installing a new hard drive for us, no big deal after all.  Imagine if the computer crashed one month from now in Indonesia?!  What a headache that would have been.  

As for Colton he woke up the next day feeling better, nothing a day of laying on the couch watching cartoons couldn't fix.  He is also rocking a brand new pair of red flip-flops, his favorite color (his old flip-flops were blue).    
  

      

Three Out of Four Ain't Bad

Three out of four...the amount of visas in our possession at the moment.  Mike and the kids have their visas, yay!  My visa has a minor typo and will be issued soon we are told.  This is great news for us!  Visas are moving in Indonesia, our friends, another MAF couple also awaiting their visas received their's this week.

Our family has most definitely missed the May language class in Salatiga. We don't have exact dates or plane tickets yet; the next language class start date is July 5th which means a departure date of June 18th (ish).  We will let you know when we find out our exact departure date.

Are we disappointed that we missed the May class?  

Not really...and this is why:

Mike and I have been praying for God's timing awaiting our visas and moving to Indonesia in June will actually work out quite well for our housing situation.  All of the MAF housing is currently full in Salatiga at the moment and if we were to move to Salatiga this May we would have to stay in an apartment until the end of the month.  Which basically would mean one more move, and one more transition for our family.  God knows what is best for our family and I am grateful he is relieving us from an extra move!

In the meantime we will continue to live in Idaho, while Mike works at MAF headquarters.  

A Tour of "For Now" Home

I love handing Colton, our six year old, the camera and asking hime to document events for me because it is always interesting and entertaining to get his perspective.  I asked him to take a couple pictures of our drive out to Idaho from Camas, he took roughly 150 pictures.  I just posted 3, don't worry.

That's me driving down I-84.  Mike's Uncle Mark drove his car out to Idaho for us full of our stuff, and Mike hitched a ride with him.  We had a mini caravan driving down the road.  In our car it was just me, Colton, Macie, and our trusty Dashboard Ninjas.

Colton decided to take a picture of his eyeball...

I love this picture of Macie's little foot, she's just kicked back looking out the window trying to spot windmills in the Columbia River Gorge.  (Yes those stickers are little brains.  She decorated her window all by herself.)

We are currently living in a house that a local family bought solely for the purpose of letting MAF missionaries stay in it when needed.  It is such a blessing to be able to live in this cute little house.  The house is located about a 10 1/2 mile bike ride away from MAF headquarters.  Now that we are a one car family Mike rotates between commuting to work on his bike, and the kids and I driving him to work in the morning.

This house has 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, it feels like a mansion to us right now.  After living in a 1 bedroom apartment for 4 months, and living with friends for the last 3, it feels a bit weird to have this much space to ourselves.

The house even came with a giant book full of pictures of fighter airplanes!  Colton is often found flipping through the pages of this treasure.

The kid's room has bunk beds, which is very exciting.

Colton was very fascinated by the concept of rabbit ears on our tv set.

For all of the "Napoleon Dynamite" fans out there.  "I want that boat."

This is the first time our car has gotten the chance to live in a garage, it's great.  Colton loves to push the button on the remote and is the "official" opener of the garage door.  We do need to be careful when we pull in and remember to take Mike's bike off the top of the car!

Of course, home wouldn't be complete without our Indonesia pile of stuff waiting for us.

The house comes with a nice sized, fenced backyard that is big enough to kick a soccer ball around.  However, we have found that it is easy to loose an airplane over the fence.  The kids have decided that lunch taste better outside in the sun, I agree.

 Thanks for stopping by for our quick tour.