Thursday, March 2, 2017

Helicopter Day CANCELED

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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