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Showing posts from 2017

Backyard Coffee

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I promised to show you how we got from coffee "fruit" on the tree in our backyard to the aromatic, yumminess of the stuff I drink every morning. Finally...the coffee post you've been waiting for! Eli got in on the picking action Our friend, Enoch (you've seen a bit about him on Facebook), picked the red coffee fruits for me. He showed me how to squeeze the beans out of the red skin. It's a very sticky job.   After removing the skins, we placed the fruit in a bucket to "sleep" for a couple of days. I guess this loosens the flesh of the fruit from the bean so that it is easier to wash off. Then, Enoch washed and rinsed, washed and rinsed, washed and rinsed the coffee beans to remove the fruit from the seed. After the outer, red skin is squeezed off Wash, Rinse, Repeat We were left with green coffee beans that still have the seed coat on them. Enoch and I worked daily to lay them out on an old piece of window screen to dry

Vacation Bible School in Aiyura Valley, Papua New Guinea

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Many adult and teen volunteers from our mission center joined hearts & hands with two national churches to hold a Holiday Bible School January 2-6, 2017. Eli and I joined the team that headed out to the Lutheran Renewal Church in the village of Ba'e. Each day began with a short drive to the Ba'e River, where we would ford on foot and then take hike a short to the village church. As if often the case during rainy season, the river was too high and fast for crossing on three of the days. That circumstance required a bit of a longer drive around to cross and a bit of a longer hike. But, we really enjoyed getting to walk through some other villages that we haven't had the opportunity to visit yet. Our team crossing the river I tried to keep my skirt dry! There were lots of muddy feet                                                                             The theme of the VBS was "Stand Strong Like Daniel". The children were encouraged from sto

Life in the Land of the Unexpected: The Story of a Truck Rollover

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Joel went out as truck driver with a building team from the Construction and Maintenance Department (CAM) which will be building a home for the Boyd family, Bible translators in Enga Province. The trip that should have been about 12 hours’ drive on difficult roads, spread over two days, ended after just a few hours. The truck hit a pothole, causing the passenger-side tires to fall off the edge of the road and the top-heavy truck to turn over onto its passenger side in a grassy ditch. Thankfully, there were only two very minor injuries. The construction materials loaded in the back of the truck shifted, but were undamaged. The truck itself was only slightly damaged. EVERYTHING and EVERYONE came out essentially unscathed, except maybe Joel’s pride. If you were going to have a trucking accident, you would want it to happen like this one did. Our mission center dispatched personnel and security resources, and a private tow truck arrived several hours later to upright the vehicle. A