**We shared prayer and fellowship in the middle of all the hard work!**

Living in a remote bush community, where the only access is either walking 2 days from the nearest town, or flying in, can have both challenges & blessings.

The view out of our living room window is of virtually unspoilt mountains, surrounding us on all sides. Ryan flies over these mountains every day as he seeks to serve the people of PNG. As I take the dog for a walk on a morning, I get to watch the sunrise and listen to the sound of running water and insects.

Our MAF-provided home in Telefomin, is the first home Ryan & I shared after we were married. We moved in early in 2018. Despite my struggling with loneliness and the change from working full-time in an office to working from home during the first 6 months, by the end of that year, we were settled and happy and grateful to God for bringing us to such a peaceful place.

Now, 5 years later, we still feel happy and settled in our Home in Telefomin. We hope and pray that God will allow us to continue serving him here for years to come. However, we are preparing to say goodbye to our third pilot family neighbours, knowing there is no other pilot family yet in country who is able to replace them, which is hard. Saying goodbye is a near constant part of our lives with MAF, but some goodbyes are harder than others.

Over the past 3 months we have faced a new challenge. We’ve had 2 break-and-enters in 2 of the MAF houses here in Telefomin and we’ve had a mentally disturbed young man also threaten MAF property. We are very grateful that our own house has not been broken into, but we had personal items stolen both times. The mentally disturbed young man also entered our home whilst we were away and our cleaner was working, but thankfully he only damaged an orange! The first break-in was clearly kids trying to get at some bikes our previous neighbours had stored, they failed to break the lock but ran off with some of Ryan’s hand tools. The second event was last weekend which appeared to be more organised. They broke into the house of our PNG pilot, Capt. Joseph in the early hours, stole the contents of his fridge-freezer & pantry and almost 50kg of meat from his chest freezer, which I had put there only 2 days earlier. The meat was for our combined Christmas & farewell party for our neighbours (catering for around 35 people) and meat to see us through the next 3 months, including feeding our parents who will be visiting. We were so angry, Ryan had to spend his Sunday afternoon fixing the window they’d broken in through and we had to write reports for MAF and the local police.

Despite the challenges, Telefomin is still our home and we are happy to be a part of this community. Just this past weekend, we were blessed by my friends, the ladies who attend my Saturday Church Fellowship group, coming to our house to cut grass for MAF. Our house and the MAF house next door sit in a plot of land a little bigger than a football field. As it’s such a large area, we don’t keep all of the grass cut short as that uses a lot of petrol, which has to be flown in by the drum. Instead, every 3-4 months, we ask people to cut the grass with bush knives. This provides work for some people in the local community and MAF pays them for this effort. The Fellowship ladies came to cut the grass, about 12 of them for 3 hours, until the rain got too heavy. They didn’t want to stop though, they wanted to finish a particularly overgrown corner of the garden, but I begged them to stop to avoid them all catching cold from getting soaked through. They gave their time for free because they wanted to bless MAF and bless us, their neighbours and friends.

Soon we will be the only none-PNG family living in this community, but this does not worry or intimidate us. Despite the challenges we have faced recently, we know that Telefomin is a relatively safe place to live and we are blessed to be apart of this welcoming and supportive community. We hope we get to remain as a part of this community for years to come, but this is up to God and our Management team.

Please pray with us that the people who broke into the MAF houses, and the mentally disturbed young man would be saved and healed.
Please pray for protection for all the MAF buildings in Telefomin and across PNG.
Please pray for peace for us.
Please pray for wisdom for our Management Team as they review the safety situation in Telefomin.