May-July 1996

Dear Brethren and Friends;

Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

After my newsletter last month many things have happened. Hang on to something heavy as I bring you up to date. Because of increasing breakins we decided to put up a fence in front of the clinic. While putting it up I had the stinger wire whip around and bury itself in my right arm (about 1" in). It was so quick it didn't really hurt much so I just pulled it out, let the wound bleed a bit (OK a lot) and finished the fence. It took a couple of weeks for that dude to heal up. Kathy came down with malaria after her Waria trip and just had another bout last week. The local power company was not my friend the past few months. They would cut power just after I had put a lot of information in the computer. I finally bought a small back up system which allows me to save any material if the power goes off. We have had our share of earthquake tremors. We still have a very active volcano on an outer island (long way away).

Jason graduated from Harding University. He was on the Dean's list most of his Junior and Senior year and we are very proud of him. His sister made it to his graduation. Jason and his wife Mel are moving to Wisconsin to help the church.

June saw Velma Forman going back for leave. She is the Canadian nurse who runs the medical clinic here in Lae. Kevin and Tammie Dye and their children were here for two weeks while Kevin taught in Melanesian Bible College. It was good to have them here. While they were here the container with the medical supplies finally arrived. We hoped to open it while they were here but that is another story. I was down with dehydration for a couple of days and I broke a crown off one of my teeth. After two unsuccessful tries at super gluing it I had to have it pulled.

We finally received the container on Monday afternoon. (June 17) It arrived in country on May 31st. After multiple calls to the Prime Minister's office we finally got customs exemption for the supplies for the school as well as for the medical work.

CONTAINER OPENED
It was an overcast, dark, rain threatening morning on the 18th of June when we approached the container which had been offloaded in the Area Medical stores yard overnight. As we cut the seal and slowly opened the door, “swissh, swissh, swissh - run, run, look out, look out, something is coming out.” After what (we thought) was a loud swissh of many bat wings had ceased (went on for over a minute, even though is seemed like hours) we calmed ourselves and gingerly walked forward to find the ground littered with thousands of sticks with bats chewing on them. After closer examination we were happy to see that the bats were painted on pencils. Thousands and thousands of pencils, Whew!!!!!!!! Don’t do that to a 47 years old without warning. Go ahead laugh. But I could have voided myself and embarrassed us all. Great way to pack. The pencils had shifted in shipment and broken loose out of the boxes.

Jab Mesa, Sombo Dowara and I went through the supplies and pulled out what we will be keeping for ourselves and the clinic. The rain quit threatening and we did the work amidst heavy rain. We had a press conference with a local newspaper and the Hospital for an official handing over of the remainder of the supplies. The Area Medical stores officer was really surprised as to the generosity of the supplies.

Thank you so much to those who provided for the supplies as well as the shipping costs.

YOUTH CAMP & 25th YEAR REUNION
In June MBC was the host for a nationwide Youth Camp. I spoke at the kickoff meeting on Friday night. There were over 600 in attendance.

As we started July we welcomed Joe & Rosebelle Cannon back to PNG. They were on their yearly travels and were in Lae for a week and then on to Mt Hagen for a week. 1996 is the 25th year of the church here in Papua New Guinea. The Cannon's had come in 1971 with their family. We had a feast of celebration on Saturday . (See pictures.) We had 754 people in worship on Sunday. It was a real time of fellowship.

In Christian service, your co-workers for the cause of Christ in the South Pacific,

Tobey & Kathy Huff