Happy Chinese New Year

Today was the first day of the Chinese new year. Since a lot of our neighbors and friends are of Chinese descent, we spent a good part of the day visiting them. We went from house to house and ate lots of little biscuits and candies.

Because we went to church this morning we ended up missing the parade. A parade went by our house and the focal point of it was a lion. The lion is a symbol of strength in China.

The Chinese here take this celebration just as seriously as we do Christmas in America. It's a time for family and friends to be together.

This was a great time for us to build stronger relationships with our friends and neighbors so that we can better show them the love of Christ.

History!!!

Here are two pictures of Long Padi. The first one is a view of the village from the top of the airstrip, and the second one is the village from the bottom of the airstrip.

Maybe the Earth didn’t shake. Not more than a couple hundred people probably even care, but I made history for the village of Long Padi on Thursday. In 1995 Long Padi built an airstrip so that we could fly in and help them out on occasion. The told me stories of having to take people through dangerous rapids in an incredibly swift river to the nearest village with an airstrip if they had someone that needed to get to a hospital. Many times the journey to the airstrip was just too hard and sometimes it wasn’t even worth it. So they built their own airstrip in a fairly flat area, but still on the side of a hill.

Now MAF can go in there and help them out, but it’s only been sporadic service at best. We mostly have gone in there for medical flights or occasionally bringing them building supplies to help them build a school. The villagers have been begging for a regular, consistent service. So, this last Thursday, I made the first flight into the village to begin a commitment for a once a week flight to the village and from the village at a subsidized flight rate.

Once a week probably doesn’t seem like much to us Westerners. After all, the airplane only has five empty seats to be shared by an entire village. However, in the eyes of these people the worth is unimaginable. This means fresh food, medicines, bug repellant (bug repellant is priceless to them), new clothes, bringing kids to and from the high school aged Christian boarding school, and even supplies to finish building their elementary school.

This village also has thirty high school aged kids at a Christian boarding school. This school is great because it can feed the kids spiritually and mentally, but the school is not in a position to feed the kids physically. So, even though the parents are back at the village they still have to find a way to provide food for their kids.

Leaving the village with the first scheduled flight, the villagers explained to me that even though there were lots of people that wanted to take this flight, they decided that it was more important to send food to their kids in this boarding school. So they loaded up the airplane with rice that they grew, and they sent one high school age boy to make sure that the rice got to the village kids.

This is why I am here. This is a clear example where I can see the difference, the history, that I am making in the lives of these people.

Dr. Steve?

Yup, I'm just as good as any doctor now. Paul broke his hand a few weeks ago. He went to the local hospital here, where they put a plaster cast on it, but the plaster never got hard. So he went back right away, and put a new cast on his hand. The kicker was he had to pay for it all over again even though it was their fault. The second cast was better, but it still didn't stay hard long.

So, I did what any good friend would do. I used fiberglass and made a very hard shell over the plaster for a very hard cast. People say it's pretty ugly, but it's doing the job.

Everybody needs a waterbuffalo, yours is fast and mine is slow.

I took this picture next the the grass airstrip in the village of Pau'pan.