What a crazy crazy
week, you guys!
It was Tuesday.
The day before
Helicopter Day.
Tense, you know. A
lot of stuff still to get done, but ok.
We start loading up
one landcruiser at 8am.
Done. All my cargo
sheets are current.
Coke and donut
break.
And back to work.
The second
landcruiser won't start.
It had been moved 20
minutes earlier with no problem.
"Well, we live
in PNG. Did you expect for this to go smoothly?" my buyer shipper person
says.
"Well. I prayed
that it would. So yes. I did," said Logistics.
And then it was in
the air. Tense. Palatable between us. The implication.
But honestly, I felt
that implication long before.
See, when we booked
these dates, Logistics told me that if there was bad weather on these days,
there wouldn't be a trip until April. The helicopters were grounded for the
rest of the month.
And being that when
I moved the dates from Feb to March, the director told me that was fine but to
not push it again, it seemed like such an easy way for God to manipulate our
timetable without having me disobey the director.
So I knew. Somewhere
in my heart of hearts. There was a solid chance this trip wasn't going down.
And things were
tense before the landcruiser's battery suddenly gave up the ghost.
My village parents
were still in town.
The head translator
showed up in town the day before!
No one else knew we
were coming!
The Director got
struck with a stomach bug!
And then after
sitting an hour with the jumper cables on (to no avail), my village papa walks
up to say that the only translator left in our area is telling us: 1) we can't
stay in the house we stayed in before, meaning we have no place to stay
TOMORROW NIGHT and 2) we need to postpone the trip.
So after spending a
number of hours agonizing over the decision, my toddler decided for us.
He was acting crazy. And we were not responding with
gentleness and grace.
We were already at
the stress level that concluded our last bush trip!
We could not go out
this raw and have any hopes of succeeding at all.
So we called it.
At the beginning of
the day, I had a goal of getting everything done in time to take a nap when the
kids go down. The hour+ spent coaxing the landcruiser to life crushed that
dream. But suddenly, nothing on my to-do list was relevant anymore!
Family naptime.
I was woken mid-nap,
by Logistics letting me know the helicopters were canceled.
I felt a need to go
to the office. So I left.
Amidst excellent
social/de-brief/unwind time, the head translator walked in the office.
He was sorry about
the complications but had prayed we would postpone our trip. It wasn't right
that he not be there.
My village parents
said same.
Our next possible
date to go out is: March 24th (but that hasn't been booked yet)
The contractor
believes he can finish the house before then. Great progress has already been
made since he took over the project a few weeks ago.
So we'll be going
out and moving directly into that house (yay) and there will be a celebratory
feast which the director will be able to attend (yay).
And we have time to
get really really ready (with a much smaller last minute to-do list) and be
well rested at the same time.
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