Baby bump
We’re eagerly anticipating the birth of our twins sometime in the next week or two. Wow, it’s getting close! Gerdine’s at 35 weeks and 6 days and the doctors are telling us that they’ll be looking to deliver the babies at 37 weeks, for which Gerdine is grateful! Baby 1 is at 6lbs and baby 2 at 6lbs and 9oz. It’s a lot to carry around and Gerdine is feeling stretched in more ways than one!
We’re waiting for the date from the hospital:; it’s looking like these babies want to go full term. After our scare at 21 weeks back in Kovol we’re so relieved and thankful for that.
Airline refunds, yay!
We were also pleasantly surprised to see all the refunds we were due because of cancelled flights are in our account. It did cross our minds that the airlines would simply keep the money because they’re struggling, but we’ve received almost a full refund for the flights that were cancelled on us. That leaves us with just the expense of our final set of tickets through Brisbane which we’re happy with. We’ll be making a claim with our travel insurance to see if we can get the £2000 extra that these tickets cost over our original tickets for the icing on the cake.
As we think ahead to the future and returning to PNG I notice I seem to have a mild PTSD when it comes to international travel during Covid. It’s nice to be able to simply set the thoughts aside for the time being and enjoy being in the UK for a while longer.
Meeting and greeting
Our first round of Zoom presentations at supporting churches has been an overwhelmingly positive experience. Zoom makes it easier in that there is no travelling and I’m more available to look after Gerdine and Oscar, but not seeing people face to face is a real loss. We’ve been so humbled and encouraged by the enthusiastic response we’ve been getting. Getting to meet the people who have been praying for us and sustaining us through the hard slog of tribal ministry has been so encouraging. It often feels like a small, lonely work in Kovol, pushing yourself out the door for another day of language study. There are thousands of people supporting and praying for the Kovol work though and to meet a few of them (over Zoom) is a real joy.
PNG news
We’re staying in touch with Philip and Natalie who are out in Kovol on their own continuing to learn language and culture. They’re plodding along but it’s sure to be a difficult time for them right now. First of all the Digicel tower is down so they are without internet. That means no calling family and having to rely on short texts over our InReach device. Not being able to talk to friends and family is tough but our memory of those times is how much more difficult it makes planning and supply buying. We need to coordinate with our team in Goroka to organize flights and supplies, which is immensely difficult in short little satellite texts.
The internet outage has come as PNG has announced a new Covid lockdown in response to a sharp rise in confirmed cases. Philip and Natalie were due a break but we don’t think they’ll get one for a little while. We’re praying for them as they try to make a plan while struggling to communicate with the outside world.
2 Comments
Nelv Herr · 24/03/2021 at 12:20 am
Praying for a safe delivery of those precious little ones.🙏🙏also for Phil and Natalies safety from Covol as they work with the people.
Colette Harding · 29/03/2021 at 7:37 pm
Listening to you on last night’s Reach Zoom meeting it finally twigged that we’d met, when you were at the flat in Milnrow. We came over for Reaching Rochdale … (my husband, David, had been pastor for the previous 24 years and we’d just moved to Wales) and I saw you both briefly but didn’t really get to talk. While we’d been praying for you in PNG, (through being sent your prayer points via Becky Noble at Lapilo.) I missed the first part of the meeting where you shared again. So the question I wanted to ask last night was have the twins arrived ? Also, we really appreciated your two reports at the REACH conference, and were glad that over 30s were allowed to ‘join in’ because of lockdowns.