#flying4life

Once in a while, when the area around Telefomin gets rather overgrown, the government office here will ask members of the local community to bring their bush knives and cut the grass.  Everyone who helps gets a little pay for their work.  It is very common to see small children, like this little girl pictured, carrying bush knives almost as large as they are!  I (Shiv) saw her imitating her Mum and trying to help cut the grass outside the market, but I think it will be a few more years before she is paid for her work!

In this photo, we are enjoying a Sunday afternoon walk around Telefomin airstrip, which you can see behind us.

Ryan taking off from Telefomin, just another “day in the office” where he did another Medevac of a lady who’d just given birth but had a retained placenta. Ryan picked her up from Feranmin, less than a 10 minute flight away (but a full day’s walk) and brought her to Telefomin where there are no Doctors or Nurses, but the Health Workers deal with birthing complications on a regular basis. The frame of the picture is courtesy of the App “Bible Lens”.

Anniversary holiday and sick leave... It’s amazing how time flies, it’s been more than 1 whole year since we got married, wow! 1 year since the most wonderful day of our lives! We celebrated our 1st Anniversary on the north-east coast of PNG (that’s where the picture was taken), snorkelling and relaxing on the beach. It was wonderful! We’ve been very busy since we returned to PNG and moved to Telefomin, so we both really needed a rest and a break. Unfortunately the rest didn’t quite come soon enough, Ryan had been battling a cold for over 3 weeks and as we started our journey home he started to feel worse. He spent a couple of days in bed and has 3 days off sick. In that time Shiv managed to pick up a stomach bug, then just as she was getting over that she got Ryan’s cold and missed another week of work. Thankfully we are both now feeling much better, not quite up to full strength but getting there. We would really appreciate prayers for our health as we are both “sick of being sick” and really needing our energy levels back up to normal! Thank you.

View on a morning walk... One day last week all 3 of us went for a short morning’s walk around the top of the airstrip. It’s been extremely wet recently (even for Telefomin) and the dew was hanging heavy on all the spiders’ webs, like someone had laid a lace table cloth amongst the grass. The dew glistened with the morning sun and it was absolutely beautiful! Here is one picture of the beauty of God’s creation!

Standby Day... What does a busy, hard-working pilot do when he has no aeroplane to fly? Mow the front lawn of course! (He did the lawn in the back garden last week in between rain storms) Ryan’s GA8 Airvan flew to Mt Hagen this morning for scheduled maintenance with our neighbour, Markus. Ryan was scheduled to fly the DHC6 Twin Otter with his Capt, but sadly Richie has the flu (Please pray for a speedy recovery!) so Ryan couldn’t go flying today, and possibly not tomorrow either. But he made the most of the good weather this afternoon!

Oil Change on a GA8. Ryan’s been doing some Advanced Airstrip Training with Rick (pictured), a pilot who was based in PNG for many years with his wife and kids, but who has now retired back to his home in New Zealand. As with many ex-MAF folks, retirement for Rick is pretty busy, this is his 2nd trip up to PNG this year to do training on the GA8 Airvan. Last week he was down in Rumginae training our fellow Alberta pilot, Tim. On Friday he heads home to NZ, but we hope to see him again later this year!

Alberta Pilots Together! Whilst I was waiting in Kiunga one day last week, my “wantok” (fellow Canadian) Tim landed for a quick turnaround to get fuel and passengers before heading out again to fly through the “fun” weather in the area. So here we are, two Alberta boys posing in front of our two GA8 Airvans!