We were hoping to avoid an extra international journey by leaving straight from Amsterdam for Papua New Guinea, but alas it isn’t to be.
We’re still missing the crucial entry permit and my time in the Netherlands is up because, since Brexit, I’m only allowed 90 days in Europe every 180 days.
This weekend we were invited to one of our supporting churches in the Netherlands to give a bit of an update and speak to the youth. The Church booked us a little holiday cottage for the weekend and it turned into a mini-break.
he clock is ticking on my 90-day visa here in the Netherlands and it’s starting to look more likely that we’ll have to return to the UK in the middle of Feb rather than fly on to PNG. We were hoping to avoid an extra international move, but with all the uncertainty the pandemic has brought to travel we’ve learned to hold plans extra loosely (as I think most people have!).
We know many people have been praying for Menum, the young Kovol boy who became seriously sick after a head injury. He was treated at the hospital in Goroka, but unfortunately, he didn’t make it.
Reconciliation
Affirmation
Farewell
Think ahead.
Movement from one place to another is very quick. It will take less than 12 hours to go from the UK to the Netherlands, but transition is the process of emotionally arriving – and that can take longer.
Whatever we’re gaining by moving, we’re also leaving something behind, and there’s grief in losing it. We want to try to work through that grief, and not just deny it or bury it for it to cause problems later.
Right now we’re in what I’ve come to think of as the purge, the getting rid of phase. We don’t have a definite luggage allowance for our intended flight to PNG yet, but from our early investigation of routes, it looks like it will be 3x 25kg suitcases and hand luggage.
All we can say is oops. We missed something.
Gerdine’s passport expires in December 2024. We didn’t think much of it, that’s a long time away after all – but as we’ve been getting the papers ready for returning to PNG we realise that since you always need 6 months left on a passport to use it for travel we’d only be in PNG for 1 1/2 years before needing to renew it.
You may have noticed not much blogging activity from us recently. That’s because we don’t want our ReachKovol blog to be filled with our adventures here in the UK. We know people are praying for us though so we want to start posting a little more frequently now we’re out of the hectic newborn phase.
When we arrived back in the UK in January we entered during a national lockdown and got a taste of what life has been like. Even the libraries were closed! In April our twins were born, queue exhaustion and sleep deprivation for the next 4 months.
We’re pulling out of that level of intensity (though twin babies at 6 months old are still tough!), and covid restrictions have mostly lifted so we’re able to start enjoying the UK.
What do you want to be when you grow up? a young child was asked. “A missionary on Home assignment” he replied 🙂 I can’t remember where and when I heard that little anecdote, but it springs to mind often as we’ve now been back in the UK for 7 months.
Learning language in Kovol is like trying to drink form a fire hose. There’s always so much and you feel completely overwhelmed with it all. It’s kind of nice to have time to sit and pick over language data in a way you never have time for in the bush. It’s not a productive way of learning language. The fire hose of immersion is a much better way to learn to speak, but it certainly satisfies my sense of completion to be able to spend weeks poring over the data I elicited previously without a stack more arriving in my inbox.