Travel Update #10: Four Thousand Words from the fat Americans

 Thomas managed to upload 4 pictures and send them through Catherine McQuaid's cellphone, since sending a photo by satellite email probably literally costs as much as sending a thousand words. Here they are!

(Click for bigger photos. Note the stickers on the side of the bulldozer. There's one big square one under Jon's elbow, and a long one along the top of the nose of the tractor. :)   You can also see the cool-dude headphones the guys got for the trip: noise cancelling so they can listen to 

Pastor Minnick's Romans series sermons.

 Now tell me - two very close brothers go to the other side of the world to a beautiful tropical land, leaving the nagging ("take a shower!") women behind, where they can play in the dirt all day with a big tractor and wear cool-dude headphones to listen to sermons

 - now tell me they're not having the time of their lives.)

I also received an email update about their Sunday. I think there's an update missing: Thomas told me via phone call that the Saturday update should bring a few laughs, but I haven't seen it yet. I'll see if he can send it again. Meanwhile, here's Sunday:

Well today was a nice slow day. We arose and enjoyed a breakfast with the Smith family of baked oatmeal. Then we headed down to church which is about a 20-30 minute walk. Church was a great experience! I enjoyed singing in the Pigeon tongue. What really threw Jon and I for a loop was that Randy preached this morning in Pigeon, a language I barely understand, and he had a translator giving his sermon in"talk place" which is the local tribal language...boy were we confused!

We had our lunch at church and waited for the afternoon service. After the service Jon and I and 5 of the young men from Kiari (Suo, Rocky, Phillip, Bandi, Thomas) decided to attempt to climb to the top of a mountain behind the Smith's house. One problem...ok maybe more than one...the elevation change from church to the Smith's house is probably about 500 feet (not to mention the additional hike to the top of the mountain), and takes about 20-30 minutes to traverse. Well our wonderful national guide deicided it would be better if we ran! Ha! Do you know what it feels like to be out of shape, in high elevation and running after a national who doesn't have shoes on? Yikes...it was painful! I made it to the Smith's house in record time, breathing very heavily! Our 5 friends weren't even sweating or panting!

 Well, I bailed at the house, but Jon decided to continue the rest of the way with the guys. About 5 minutes later I heard Jonathan shouting from the school yard. He wanted me to climb the last 75 feet and join him. So I gathered my remaining strength and water and climbed up the hill. I found Jon sitting at the top absolutely wiped. He couldn't go any further either! So we sat there and enjoyed the nice view from the school yard overlooking Kiari. Like a couple of sad, out-of-shape Americans, we never made it to the higher ridge! We plan on trying again on Monday...we'll see.

After all of that craziness we came back the house and enjoyed a relaxing snack time with the Smiths and Jeff. We had popcorn, banana cake, pb&j and Coke! We also enjoyed a bunch of photos showing the work on the airstrip up to this point. We were completely amazed! Our work here is just a drop in the bucket compared to all of the countless thousands of hours that have been poured into this airstrip. We are truly blessed to be a part of something so big. We plan on attacking more of the project tomorrow.

Jon and Thomas

(note from Katie: Hey, Crystal, now that we know they can run the distance between the Smith's house and the church, we should be getting phone calls more often, hey?) ;)