Back to normal, a little differently

Before leaving Tulsa, one of my prayer requests for the few weeks following our move was that I would be able to establish a new routine - a new normal - for our home life before the baby arrives and turns everything on its head again! :)  I am thankful to sit down at the end of the day and now be able to see routine as I reflect back on the last 14 or 15 hours.  (Actually, I'm thankful to just *sit down* at the end of the day, never mind reflecting on routines..!)


I think the biggest event enabling our home routine to become established was actually Mark starting at the hospital.  He and I have talked about our (or my) tendency since residency to treat his time at home as a rare treat not to be interrupted by things like chores and housework that could happen while he was gone - which, during residency, was pretty appropriate.  It has been difficult to shake that mentality even though he's home so much more now, and this can result in me slacking on taking care of the house purely because Mark is home.  They say that the mood of the house depends on Mama, which I definitely agree with, but I think at least in our home the presence or absence of structure depends a lot on how structured Mark's hours are. And now that he has a regular work pattern established, our home routines are also falling into place, which makes our home a much better place to be :)

So, here is a little glimpse into what that routine looks like...

My day starts a little after 7 when Mark's alarm goes off.  We get up and have coffee together, and I get some time with these two before the kids get up around 7:30/ 7:45 -

I don't know anything about John Baillie, but his little book of morning and evening prayers is fantastic.  The simplicity and foundational truth that characterises his prayers is a beautiful way to ground my day before it truly gets started.

Between whenever the kids wake up and about 9am, we have breakfast, Mark leaves a bit before 8, I start the laundry so it has time to wash and line dry before the afternoon rain, fill up the water filter so we have drinking water for the day, get the breakfast dishes washed, kitchen wiped down and floor swept so we don't collect any ants, get everyone dressed, check my meal plan and start thawing meat for dinner, and cast a quick eye over Anna's lesson plan for the morning.

I try to start school by 9am. Try :)  We're having fun with our science class right now - we're looking at the human body, and I found this little guy at a consignment sale -

- all of his squishy organs come out, you can take apart his skeleton and muscles ... we like him!  We've been looking at digestion the last week or so, and made little ziploc bag stomachs into which we crumbled chips (our morning snack), mixed with water (saliva) and some vinegar (stomach acid). Then we smooshed the bags in our hands while we ate our own snack (to mimic the muscles in the stomach wall doing the same thing to our real snacks), and got to see what our food looks like once the stomach is done with it :)

School is done by 10 or 10:30. Snack time!  Then the kids go outside to play so I can get some housework done.  Usually our neighbour Reegan is ready to play too, and I can count on finding them anywhere from up in the lemon tree to under our house in the dirt to building our (apparently) adopted stray cat a nest behind the workshop by our house.

If life gives you lemons, just ... eat them?

While they are outside, I hang the laundry out to dry, get some housework done and do any dinner prep that I need to.  At some point it's likely that Wapi, our door-to-door asparagus salesman will come knocking.  He is a very sweet older man who started out selling asparagus to missionaries on the station, but has since added cherry tomatoes and cabbages to his bag of goodies.  I get to practice talking Pigin to him, and he can pretty much count on my business since buying veg on my back porch is MUCH easier than a trip into town if I'm running out! And on Thursdays, our garden mari (= lady who works in the garden) Beti comes over for a few hours to take care of our little plot behind the house. Right now it's in such an overgrown jungle state that she's just hacking back weeds, but soon Mark will be able to plant and harvest to his heart's content.

Our plot is that knee-high stretch of weeds between the tree stump and the cleared patch of ground in the background, to the right of the tall Taro plant.  Yes, Beti has her work cut out for her..! :/

Mark gets home for his around 12:15, which is AWESOME, and is home for almost an hour.  It is so fun to hear the kids playing outside and suddenly yell "Dadaaaa!!" as he comes walking down the path from the hospital :)
He leaves around 1pm, I clean up lunch, and put the kids down around 2.  Once they're down it's usually time to bring in my loads of laundry, and then I sit down and catch my breath!  This is my time to read, catch up on facebook and emails, write the next few weeks' lesson plans for Anna...

When the kids get up they take their snacks out onto the porch and then often disappear for an hour or two, especially if the 'neighbourhood' kids are out playing after school gets out :)  (Anna has taken to keeping an eye on our windows any time she's inside, just in case "the girls" are out playing together and she's missing out. There are about half a dozen other MK girls all under about 12, and she has been quickly absorbed into the group!)

Mark typically gets home around 5pm, depending on whether any labouring women or emergency cases arrived at the hospital towards the end of the day. By this time I've usually started making dinner, since (mostly) everything needs to be made from scratch. There are some 'cheater' meals that I can buy premade sauces for, like spaghetti, and yes I have introduced a weekly spaghetti night to our menu ;) (Although I haven't found garlic bread anywhere so that still gets made from scratch, doh.)

 My little sous-chefs :)  And the quiche they helped me make, which surprisingly was a hit even though they don't love eggs (except Mimi's devilled eggs!) and definitely saw at least half a dozen go into the filling!

There is often a power outage later on in the day, which can be just ten or fifteen minutes long, or last from mid afternoon till bedtime.  (Or sometimes things get shaken up a little and it's out in the morning. Or both, or not at all!) When the power goes out we also lose water, since the pump is electric, and I've been caught out a few times by being lazy with the dinner dishes/ bathtime routine/ laundry etc, and then losing my chance to do them at all!

Kids go down around 8/8:30, and by about 10pm we're ready too..! And there you have our typical day.  (Or at least, the household half of the day.  For what Mark is doing during all this time, you can read his awesome blog here) :)

Since there are limited, um, social opportunities in the middle of the mountains, getting together with other missionaries for dinner is a popular event.  We also happen to live right next to the bonfire area for this end of the missions station, and cookouts happen at least weekly.  Mark and I have also discovered the 'lending library', which is a wall of books and DVDs in the mail room here that are available for borrowing.  So we've started a weekly movie date night to work our way through the collection - can't remember when that was last (or ever!) a part of our relationship..!

So, although our routine is quite different now, it has begun to settle into place.  It is simpler in some ways than when we lived in the States, funner in some ways and more difficult in others.  But it is here, and for that we are thankful!  Thanks for taking the time to read through this post that turned out to be much lengthier than I intended, and for sharing in a little of our day to day life.

Apenun, nem bilong me Esta na me stap gut.

[hi, my name is Esther and I am doing well]  :)

The last two weeks seem to hold two completely separate and dissimilar lives for me.  The last bits of packing, the 'last things' in Tulsa, last hour at the airport with the people we love and were saying goodbye to ... and then the deep breath, the walk through security ... and the new beginning.  Even as I look through photos, choosing a few to include in this post, some seem so far away that it's difficult to imagine being near enough to them to take the picture.  (Difficult.  Not impossible, as evidenced by the lump in my throat as I remember being there!)

Our send-off the Sunday before we left, and the prayers that we still feel holding us

Enjoying one last snack together at the airport playplace, courtesy (of course) of Aunt Tiffy :)

The drive home to Kudjip from the airport in Mount Hagen - on their knees in the Land Cruiser with arms dangling out of the window!

We were lovingly welcomed to our new house when we arrived - a day later than expected because of a missed connection, and without 5 of our 12 pieces of luggage, but home all the same

The view two days later from our village house.  We spent a week in Ambang for language and cultural immersion, living next door to a missionary family with New Tribes who are currently translating the Bible into Tok Ples (the local dialect; all dialects are referred to as Tok Ples by those who speak them - "the talk that is used in this place").  

Wagon rides with new buddies :)

Some of the teenaged girls from the village helping me with my Pidgin vocab and sentence structure :)  (Having a group this large was actually far from helpful - previous days when I got to sit with just Nomi and Susan, the two girls on each end of the row, were definitely when I learned the most!)

And now, we are well and truly HOME.  I can't begin to describe the sigh of relief that accompanies that statement!!  Or at least, the sigh of relief that can really happen when we are completely finished unpacking  :)

Our week in the village really was helpful, since the other American couple was able to give us a lot of cultural insight and our language learning will be harder here at Kudjip where English is spoken by almost everyone.  Things were slowed down a couple days in, though, when Anna started running probably the highest fever she has ever had.  Think waking up in a delirium, hallucinations, talking gibberish ... thankfully we had Tylenol to give her (although our thermometer didn't make it out of the trunks before we left Kudjip), but she was pretty out of it for almost three days.  That wasn't this mama's favourite...! She is back to her playful self now, though, and we are so thankful the fever just ran its course without any complications. 

And now that we are back at Kudjip, our orientation to life on the mission station has begun.  We have a trip into town on Monday to stock up on food for the next several weeks (no weekly grocery trips here!), a separate trip to take care of business (open bank accounts and get driving licenses etc), meetings with the finance people to make sure we can access and appropriately manage our funds here, an orientation at the nearby Bible college ... Oh, and Mark's hospital orientation too :)  So between getting the house unpacked, keeping everybody fed and clothed, gestating baby #3 (who is determined to kick, roll or claw its way out through my skin, ha), getting to know our new friends and neighbours, and just figuring out life here, I should have my work cut out for me for the next week or two!

Mark's first hospital shift is the 27th, so I'm very thankful to have him around the house for a bit longer as we get settled in.  We have pretty reliable internet access, although we're noticing that it gets used up pretty quickly, so we should be able to at least get online and check messages daily.  We are loving hearing from you, so please keep it coming!

The unknown

The last time I posted, we were watching hopeful departure dates slide by without visas and tickets. Shortly after I wrote that post our visas arrived! We are now able to stay in PNG until October 16th, 2016:

Although we are not at this point planning on being there through 2016, it's nice to know we can :)

We had been communicating with a travel agent even before our visas were granted, but had to change travel agencies due to some problems we ran into with the first.  Our second contact proved much more helpful, and by Christmas Eve we were able to purchase our tickets!  We leave Tulsa on January 7th in the late afternoon.

Four days from now.

We have four more days.

Four days - to make any last-minute purchases, finish packing (which is actually very close to being done and should be finished by tomorrow, I think - woop!), say goodbye to our loved ones here in T-town, and close out this chapter of our lives.

One last Sunday at our church.  One last meal at Sushi Train and Chick Fil A with the kids.  One last drive in our car.  One last playdate.  One last trip to the aquarium and our favourite park.  One last morning to watch light gradually appear in the reflection of the sky on the pond, when the baby wakes me up obscenely early and I can't go back to sleep.  One last breakfast with Mimi and Papa. 

And then ..... what??

Well, we do have a little idea of what is ahead.  Having been to Kudjip once before is definitely making this an easier adjustment in my mind.  I know what the trip is like (with a much smaller pregnant belly and only one kid in tow, at least..!), I remember the hospital grounds, we have seen pictures of our house and it is beautiful:

I have been to the market in Mount Hagen, Mark has taken nights of call at the hospital (both peaceful and awful!), and we have celebrated Anna's birthday at Kudjip surrounded by people who felt, amazingly after only two weeks with them, an awful lot like family to us.

But spending a month there is pretty different from buying a one-way plane ticket!

There is something that brings me peace, though, among all of the uncertainties and opportunities for panic, stress or fear.  And it's actually a conversation I had with my brother while we were in England in October. 
[As an aside, Matt would probably be the first to assert that he is not the philosopher of the family.  He is a man of action who works and plays hard, writes incredible music and drives a bright blue, souped up little rude-boy car.  But twice now as Mark and I have been preparing to move, he has dropped these incredible thought processes on us that have really shaped how we've approached this next chapter!]
I remember sitting in our living room in Thame after Matt came over for dinner one evening, and he asked how I was feeling about our upcoming move.  We talked about the mixture of excitement and anxiety I felt; the certainty that we were doing the right thing, combined with all of the uncertainties that it held.  And he thought for a minute and then said, "Yeah, but just because something is unknown doesn't mean it has to be uncomfortable."  I have been thinking about that a lot recently!  Yes, there are a lot of unknowns ahead and we will have a period of transition and readjustment and culture shock.  But that doesn't have to be something I try to struggle against or avoid.  (In fact, I know it will make things easier if I don't!) 
Experiencing something unfamiliar means being out of control, not being in charge of the outcome or what happens to me or my family.  And really, that does make me feel uncomfortable!  But through the entire history of my life, with all of the transitions and unfamiliarity of a missionary kid lifestyle who also moved across the ocean to get married, there has been one very constant, reassuring aspect to my life.  My soul has an anchor.  An Anchor who doesn't change, is 100% faithful even when I'm not, who loves me dearly, and who has promised I will never walk through anything alone.  So really, although everything around our little family is about to change, we have underneath all the uncertainties a foundation that has not changed, even a little bit, since before the beginning of time.  And that is why what Matt said really nailed it for me.  The unknowns of what will happen four days from now do not have to signify discomfort and fear, because Jesus who loves us has gone before us, walked our future and knows it, and is with us now as we walk it.   

Now, with all of that said, I am just as certain that there will be moments when I fail! Days of feeling overwhelmed, underprepared, lonely, homesick or afraid.  But even then, my Anchor will not change, His mercies are new every morning, and there is grace. 

So ... off we go!  I don't know whether I'll be posting again before we leave, but if you've made it this far through this one, please pray for us during the next week as we leave and arrive!  Pray for the logistics of our trip - luggage and people all arriving safely and together and sane, the safety of this almost-30-week pregnancy as we have a physically and emotionally demanding trip ahead of us (and also that Mark wouldn't be hurt in any way as he manhandles all of our luggage by himself!), and that the period of readjusting would be a smooth one.  And look for an update in a couple of weeks once we get situated! :)