Packing Up

In just another 1 1/2 weeks we will be leaving Palangka Raya to return to the States for a six month furlough. Wow, the last 3 1/2 years flew by quickly. Before we leave we have the gigantic job of packing up everything we own into boxes. You see, while we are in the states, our rental contact on this house is up and the landlord doesn't want to rent it out again. So that means that all of our friends here will be moving our stuff while we are in America. We want to make sure that everything is already packed and ready so that they we have as easy of a time as possible moving our stuff.

On another note, I didn't fly at all this week. I have been up to my shoulders inspecting one of our aircraft. It's a major inspection, and I'm basically doing it all alone, so it's quite time consuming. During this inspection, I've changed out most of the aircrafts control cables that move the control surfaces of the airplane.

We didn't celebrate Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving day. Indonesians don't celebrate Thanksgiving, so I ended up working that day. However, Laura has a turkey defrosting right now, and we plan to have a big dinner with all the other American families plus one Canadian family tomorrow night. Should be yummy!

My niece Hannah is doing pretty good this week. They hope to start more chemo this Monday. Like always we beg for your prayers for her.

Boat Ride Straight Through the Heart of Borneo

Today, we, along with another missionary family, took a ride on a boat down one of the rivers near where we live. It was an eight hour journey slowly chugging along in a beautiful wooden boat. This boat was designed and made specifically for promoting eco-tourism and showing the world some of the more beautiful natural parts of Borneo. I believe the boat is co-owned by an English woman and an Austrailian woman. One of them came along with us, and was our tour guide for the day.

Here is our family before boarding the boat. Julia was very impressed with the whole affair.

Captain Julia, boldly leading where no Persenaire has gone before.

Yes, these are orangutans in the wild. These particular ones were most likely re-released into the jungle after being rescued from being illegally kept as pets.

I'm not sure who was more interested in watching whom.

There are two orangutans in the above photo. Can you find them both?



Couldn't resist taking the above picture. It was so beautiful there with the water being so glassy.


One of the neatest parts of the trip was eating lunch while underway. It was a regular first class experience.

Hannah, our 17 year old niece, has finished her radiation treatments and all of the tumors were shrunk by the radiation. The doctor said that there was a big difference in the before and after MRI's. Praise the Lord for this! Thank you so much for your prayers for her.

Now, she is waiting for her immunity level and blood counts to raise back to an acceptable level before she can begin the chemo treatments. She spent last week in the hospital because she got bronchitis and her immunity and blood counts were low. Then, she had a couple of days at home and is now back in the hospital with an extremely low immunity level. She has remained in good spirits through all of this, but I'm sure it does get old.

• Please pray that her body (bone marrow) will quickly begin working more normally to heal itself and bring up her immunity and blood counts so that she can begin chemo while the tumors are still 'feeling' the effects of the radiation.
• Pray also for continued strength and peace for Hannah, her parents, sister, and the rest of us in her family.

Thank you so much for your prayers for Hannah. God is good, all the time!

Engine Change

This week my energy was focused on changing an engine on one of our airplanes. Every 1700 flight hours MAF installs a new engine on all their piston airplanes. So Chris and I together spent hours removing the old engine and installing a new one. The good news is that we flew it for the first time with the new engine on Thursday afternoon. Praise the Lord, it ran great. It has Gamijectors which makes it an incredibly smooth running machine.

Despite all the time working on the airplane, and despite the fact that I brought my camera everyday. I never got around to taking a picture. So, unfortunately you can't see the fruits of this weeks labor.

On another note. Here are Laura, Julia and I wearing our authentic Dayak hats. These are hats that I typically saw people wear when I flew in the Apau Kayan area of East Kalimantan. There are people here in Southern Kalimantan that wear them too, but here it seems to only be for special occasions. In East Kalimantan people wore them on a regular basis.



This is a house boat in the truest sense of the word. It's an actual floating house that I encountered one day last week. It was just being pulled right down the middle of the river by a couple of little boats.

Every week here is such an adventure.

This week, we had a short visit by the president of MAF international, Ron Pritz, and his wife. When he left, I flew him halfway to Tarakan where there is a river by an airstrip. At the same time, an airplane from Tarakan landed on the airstrip to pick up our president. This is a picture of my airplane at Data Dawai where I docked with Ron and his wife.

From where I landed, we hiked up to the airstrip where we arrived just in time to watch Dave Forney land his plane. I was especially blessed to find out that Dave was carrying two pastors that I flew several times back when I was based in Tarakan. Actually, Pastor Angit, who is the second from the left, was in a blog of mine back in July 2008. He was with me when my alternator failed enroute to his village, and I had to divert back to our base in Tarakan. In the picture is also Pastor Amos, along with MAF international president, Ron, and his wife, Mikel Ann Pritz.

Today, I flew some reporters from Europe who were doing a story on how the palm oil plantations were taking over the rain forest. I flew them over a section of land where all you could see in any direction was palm oil plantations. They were actually shocked by how much of it they saw. When we arrived in Pankulanbun, their destination for the day, they decided to report on location. So, they spent a good deal of time filming interviews of each other in front of the airplane as you can see in the picture. The kids watching were so excited to know they were a part of something that would be on TV.

Last week Laura, ordered a turkey for our group Thanksgiving celebration. It was shipped to us from Jakarta in dry ice. The total for the turkey and the shipping was about $70, but it's worth it for Thanksgiving right? Well today, I went to a friends house who was in a motorcycle accident last night. I discovered that his neighbor raises turkeys, and lets them roam free through the neighborhood. Had I known before today that you could get turkey in town, we could have had cheap fresh turkey. Maybe next year.

By the way, I also learned today that Indonesians, or at least the Indonesians here, won't eat turkey. It is commonly believed that if you eat turkey you will grow flesh from your face and neck like a turkey has.

This week was especially exciting as the river rose to float our new hangar. We were able to push it out into the river into it's new permanent location. Praise the Lord.

I took this picture today as I was returning from my flight with the reporters. As you can see this hangar will be such a blessing. It so hard to describe the advantages of working on an airplane over concrete instead of water. You almost have to experience our current struggles with our docks so you can really understand what this new hangar will do for us. Just this week, I dropped my cell phone in the river while doing maintenance. In the future, our team here will lose less tools and less phones.

On another note, my niece Hannah finished her radiation treatments this week. Early next week, she will have another MRI and then we will know if the cancer was destroyed or not, and we will figure out what future treatments are necessary. Keep praying for us.