Settling in at the Townsville base

We arrived in Townsville on Tuesday (remember the US is a 17 hour difference, so generally we are a day ahead of those of you in the US). We were shown to a brand new apartment that had just been finished, we are the first guests to stay there and it’s just lovely!! We have a nice living room area and a fully stocked kitchen, as well as a small bedroom and nice bath! We are beyond blessed!!

We just dropped our luggage in the room and were immediately shown to a meeting room where the base leadership was in a meeting. We were added to the circle, introduced and met everyone around the room. Ken and Robyn (the base leaders) spent a bit of time explaining about who we were and how excited they were to have us and then we were released to go settle in.

We’ll spend about 10 days here altogether, learning about how this ministry runs and meeting the key leaders here. That evening we were invited to the Mulligan’s flat, which is located right on the property

 and spent a couple of relaxing hours just listening again to all the Lord is doing here. It’s a most fantastic thing, hard to comprehend, but it’s certainly the favor of the Lord in action. I’ve seen the favor of the Lord before in my own life and at ywam Denver, but not at this scale.

The following morning, first thing, we were invited back to Ken’s office to meet with him and some of his key leaders. Mostly Ken just talked about his hopes for the ship ministries and for the meetings he’d been having with high government officials about ministry in PNG. But he did give us a key insight to why it was so important that we were here. Ken is convinced that senior leaders of ministries need to come and invest personal time in the ministry to accomplish what he felt God was saying. He said he felt like our coming was the tip of the spear for other senior leaders to come. I hope so, I’m not sure if we’ll come back for a couple of years or not yet, but I hope that other leaders will come and join the work here!!

After the meeting with Ken, we spent the balance of the morning getting a introduction to the ministry by some of their leaders, who also helped set us up to teach in the DTS and to staff at different times that week, as well as to sit in on other classes. We were keen to be involved, and in fact, our high involvement and engaging the community led to pretty much no jet lag at all!! I would fall into bed each night around 9pm and sleep until around 5am!! It’s a miracle and I’ll take it.

Over the next couple of days we taught several sessions to the DTS. We also engaged in meals, community night and other activities. I have a gift for learning names and for some reason, I seemed to have a supernatural ability in these few days for remembering names and faces! I worked to learn as many staff names as I could and then the students. I don’t have every name down, but enough for us to feel more part of the community.

Everyone has asked the same question of us, “Why are you here?” We arrived with the red carpet rolled out and were given special privileges. It was a little overwhelming actually! But people kept asking, “why?” In some ways we can answer that, we know a little more from listening to Ken talk about it, but we ourselves can only respond, we’ve come based on a Word of the Lord and very little more! Our base was gracious to release us, but we are still watching, learning, waiting and hoping the Lord gives us more clarity!! In the mean time, we are having a blast!!

Mark

February 20-21, 2016

Go time!! In a few hours we’ll head for the airport for our first flight! I’m excited and nervous, I’ve also been fighting a cold so I feel subdued, but ready or not, it’s time! Although I’m sad to leave this community again, one that has been home-base for us for almost 25 years, even when we worked in Evergreen for another ministry in the early 1990’s, we had a special connection to ywam Denver. But it’s time to take another adventure and do what our hearts long to do.

I’m so glad we set up our first flight for late afternoon, there was so much to do to finish packing and cleaning the house and picking up a few more things, we just got out at our 1:30 leaving time! We are allowed 50lbs in a bag for domestic flights and 70lbs for international travel! When we checked in our bags were 48 and 49lbs!! So, now it’s the travel game for a while! We forgot to check in for our Southwest flight, and because on this airline seat selection is based on when you check in, we are virtually the last people on the plane!! This means we’ll both have middle seats and passengers will be praying we don’t sit with them!! It’s the only thing I don’t like about flying on SW!! I once went to sit in a middle seat and a lady, sitting on the aisle told me I couldn’t sit there!! I was so taken back, I kept moving, but I won’t let that happen again!

When we got to the airport, I was able to upgrade us for a reasonable price, so we got to sit together with a little more legroom. We got to LAX in good time and checked in for our flight. If you know me, I am someone who has a hard time concentrating when I am a standby for a flight, so since we had about 5 hours to wait before our flight I used 2 of our passes to United’s lounge, the Red Carpet Club. That got us into a nice place with free food, drink, comfortable chairs and free wifi. I settled in while Donna went out to meet a friend for a little while. The friend, Christy, had been in our youth group in the 1980’s, and is now in her 40’s and married!! Donna said she looked exactly the same as she did when she was teenager!

We went to our flight about an hour before it was to take off. These passes allow us to have a seat on a flight, if there are any left after all the paying customers have been seated. We were number 7 and 8 on a list of 15 and there were 12 seats left, so we were pretty sure we’d get on, but in a strange twist of fate, we were bumped (as was everyone else on the list) because apparently the plane had reached a weight limit!! So, we were stranded in LA for 24 hours.

It wasn’t all bad, because I’m still battling a cold, and another night’s rest in a bed was good for me! We found a hotel with a shuttle that ran at midnight and got a good night’s sleep and had a restful day. We thought about running around LA for the day, but decided against it. On tonight’s flight, there are 72 seats right now and 26 standbys, we are number 13 and 14, so I think we'll make it, there are even whole rows open in Economy Plus. The only sadness for us is that we had hoped to spend some time with Ken and Robyn Mulligan, the leaders of ywam in Townsville, before they left on another trip and now that might not be possible. But the adventure still waits and we have time to adjust to the time change for a few days before we start.

Ywam in Townsville has been very kind and accommodating in their communications with us and we are very excited to see what’s coming. We should be in Townsville for about 9 days before we fly to Port Moresby to join the ship (the PNG). Thank you to each one who has prayed for my health (I can feel it) and for our journey, we have been very blessed and relaxed as we patiently wait!! Next stop, Sydney!!

Starting a New Journey

Hello, I have kept an email journal for more than a decade, but for this adventure I have decided to open the gate a little wider, and while I will keep the Update Journal, I am going to add this for anyone who would like to stay informed about our trip. Good reading, friends! I wrote this first update a week ago, but it's such a good explanation of what is going on, I've repeated it here on a public forum. 

Today is the beginning of a new season for us. In 5 days we will be getting ready to hop on a flight to LA. From there we will attempt a flight to Sydney (though today there are but 24 seats left, we will need two seats by next Saturday. On the bright side all the remaining seats are in Economy Plus or better, so if we do make the flight, the chances of legroom for me are excellent). We have our passports, visas to Australia and Papua New Guinea, we made our first run at packing and I feel like a DTS student trying to figure out how to make everything I want to come fit.

I will attempt to bring some comforts from home to make the transition easier. Among the things I find comforting (you should think about what you would bring that would help you ease into a different culture!) that might not be considered necessary are (in order of importance):

-       French Press, personal mug and coffee I love. (includes some sweetener/powdered flavor)

-       A blanket to sleep under (the ship is equipped with air conditioning)

-       Some pictures of home and people I love.

-       Oatmeal for breakfast (most of the world eats Muesli and yogurt, not my favorites)

-       Powdered protein shake mix

-       And assorted other things that I could get there, but choose to take (mostly toiletries)

These are the things that will help me make a transition. Don’t get me wrong, the ship (confusingly named the PNG) is first class! At the same time, it IS a new culture, two new cultures, in fact, and will take some patience to get used to. In addition, when we went to Afghanistan 11 years ago, on our first adventure, I had a strong “culture shock” reaction and that was difficult, so I am attempting to prepare myself better, by being more aware. 

But the adventure feel is unmistakable, and I will be attempting once again to capture my sensory perceptions in this journal and allowing you to come along with us in a “virtual” experience around the world! Perhaps one of the hardest parts for me (and perhaps for the best) is the loss of connectivity to the world wide web!! Once we leave Townsville on March 3^rd, we will be in a place of vastly limited access to the outside world for about 6 weeks. Probably I will be able to hop online to upload these updates, but in all likelihood, that will be it. I am so used to surfing the web, streaming shows, skyping with friends around the world and mainly keeping in regular touch with people I love and like; that will be the hard part for me. But I know it will be good to be forced to live in the radical present, to experience the people and culture I will be serving and perhaps gain useful perspective!! Ready or not, it’s happening. So, to those friends that I text or write or skype daily, weekly or monthly, I’ll be back, pray for me! lol

The Thesis is turned in, the DTS graduated, the plans have been set, the money raised (we received a gift of over $5,000 recently towards the trip, praise God!) and the tickets we can buy, bought! We have a few loose ends to wrap up here, some communication to do, but mostly, I think we could walk out the door tomorrow and be on our way!! Last night I had the chance to spend an hour with a close friend and say goodbye (or see ya later, at least) and that’s the last and hardest part. Some friends will have left staff at ywam before we get back and though it is quite natural for people to move on from Denver, we have been here for 25 years. Who knows what the future holds, but I’m glad I know Who holds the future!