Attending a Funeral

Recently, I attended a funeral with a few others from the hangar. The daughter of a long time friend of MAF, Pak Coa, was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident the day before. We left the hangar mid-morning and met at the family's home.

Dealing with death here is certainly different than back home. The body is usually kept in the home before the ceremony and burial.

Below, the procession to the grave side starts as they cary the body from the home to a waiting vehicle. According to their beliefs & customs, the body is only wrapped; no box or coffin is used. The body also has to buried within 24 hours of the time of death.

Below, the family helps with the burial.

After the burial, a ceremony is performed. Pak Coa is the older man (below) in the centre foreground. For 30 plus years he has worked on and off for MAF on a contract basis - fixing homes, building projects at MAF hangars, acting as a night guard, etc. He has personally worked for Amy & I helping fix up our home here and is greatly appreciated by all of us here! Last year, another daughter of his passed away from cancer, leaving a husband and children. Now, he has lost two daughters in a seven month period. I ask that you pray for both Pak Coa and the two family's that have experienced this loss.

Going Solo

Last week our newest pilot Pete Neal flew solo for the first time here in Indonesia. It has been a long standing tradition to give a pilot a nice bath right after his/her first solo flight. Anyone can participate, especially the little ones who know no mercy, nor when enough is enough...because when to comes to soaking someone, it can never be enough.

 Oh, the anticipation!

 A few shots of random MAF kiddos...looking cute & preparing for battle.

 Above is Pete & Joy's son coolin' off in the tight-ee white-ees while waiting patiently for Dad to get home.

 It's go time! Pete did come prepared with his own water gun and water balloons, but in the end it only further encouraged the children to refill their weaponry multiple times.

Craig giving Pete a dry set of pilot bars. Good job Pete! It takes several years specifically dedicated to preparation to get to this point. It is a pretty cool testament of God's faithfulness to us over the years each time one of us reach a big milestone like this.

More Mid-term Pic's

All the snow in Revelstoke made for a pretty good play ground for our Luke, Si, Helena, & Charlotte. They had their cousins to show them how it is done!

Luke is working on a snow fort. It is funny how I now agree with the "no-tunnels-because-it's-too-dangerous" policy. As a child I did nothing all winter but build giant mazes of tunnels throughout our front yard, and could not imagine a heaven without winters that last 100 years and snow piles 200ft high. Oh the hypocrisy of fatherhood.

Charlotte experiencing her first winter experiences!

Helena just loves playing in the snow, whether it is with others or just solo.

Poppy, Helena, & Charlotte testing Grandma's cookies!

No snakes to worry about here! Just frost bite.

Home sweet Home. It's hard to see any houses from the street at this time of year.

An "action" shot of Gabe & Simon jumping off a snow pile.

It was so cool to see our kids play with their cousins like they've always lived next door to each other. Gabe & Si are two peas in a pod. Unfortunately I don't have any pic's of Luke with Levi out in the snow.

Mid-Term Pic's

Back in Indonesia!

I was a little sporadic with my camera during our 1.5 months in winter wonderland, but here are a few pic's nonetheless. I do wish I had made sure I had pictures of everyone, but I didn't...sorry!

 Amy and her Mom.

 Charlotte running to catch up to Grandma and her siblings on the wharf in Sechelt, BC.

 Grandma White and Charlotte.

 We all got to attend one of big cousin Eli's hockey games, Amy's older brother Matt coaches his games. Eli #17 on the bench with Dad!

 This is the same ice rink Amy once watched her brothers play their hockey growing up. Of course, she remembers what snacks they had available at the canteen better than any actual hockey...

 Luke & family cheering Eli's team on!

Helena and older cousin Isabella following the generational footsteps and looking for ice rink snacks.

Back to Home!

We're back in Indonesia!

Our family arrived safe and sound back here in Tarakan just this morning. We're feeling kind of tired as our last flight from Jakarta started with a 2am taxi ride to the airport with 12 check bags and four tired kids. Actually, it took 2 taxi's. This was to Charlotte's delight as her favourite thing about Jakarta is counting taxi's, blue being her favourite. One time she threw a fit on the ground in front of our ride because it did not have the light-up Taxi sign on top..."It's not a Taxeet!!!! It's not a Taxeet!!!"

A couple surprises back home in Canada:

• Somehow I forgot that prices go up overtime. The rise of cost reminded us that what we thought was overpriced in Indonesia, is not as overpriced as we thought. The one exception: Costco hotdogs went down in price!! According to my calculations, a decrease of roughly 25%, not that I'm keeping track. Oh yah. I ate a few for the road. We don't have Costco hotdogs here, which is probably a good thing. But I'd certainly take a Costco, if they are looking to expand overseas.
• Winter driving is still crazy. In fact, we were a bit surprised that winter generally still exists and is going strong. Revelstoke gave us all the snow I could imagine or ask for, to the dismay of most Revelstokians. The road from Revelstoke to Vancouver was nasty in spots both ways. This was one of the main reasons (besides fatigue) that caused us to cancel our trip up to Prince George & Houston. But I must say, we were totally blessed by some friends of ours in Gibsons loaning a great vehicle to us while we were home. It ran awesome and was a real answer to prayer. Thank you Brian and Julie!!
• When spotting a Seagull at the Horseshoe Bay Ferry Terminal, Luke exclaimed to his cousins: "Wow!! Check out this massive Pigeon!! It's huge!!" Apparently he did not remember ever seeing a seagull. 
• Helena was thoroughly confused what baby carrots were...She's eaten plenty of regular sized carrots, but baby carrots looked strange!
• On Simon's first day back he thoughtfully told me that he thought "Canada sure was a rich city".
• Charlotte...She just took everything in stride, including relatives she never knew she had and lots of snow to play in. Of course, her eating habits were a bit fussy, that is, until Amy made some Indonesian rice / chicken soup and she ate 3 helpings! As she was 6 months old when we left, it was so neat to have our family meet her, and her to meet them.

Thankful For Safe Travel
We are very thankful to God for watching over us during this trip, both on the snowy roads of British Columbia, and all of our flights to and from Indonesia. 1st Thessalonians 5:17 tells us to "pray without ceasing" and to "give thanks in all circumstances", and every flight we took and every highway we drove, either alone or with the whole family (10 different flights & a couple days on snowy roads) I had it upon my heart to pray for safety. I remember coming home on our flight from Hong Kong to Jakarta, thinking about how we were somewhere off the coast of Vietnam, and how 40 something years ago this was the very same air space that was full of B-52's & F-4's and who knows what else - all with the mission to bomb North Vietnam, Cambodia  and Laos. Less than 2 hours after our flight landed in Jakarta, an Air Malaysia flight took off from Kuala Lumpur and went missing in this same area. As of now it is still missing and is all over CNN, BBC, etc. Very, very sad.

One Last Thing:
Last year my brother Jordan and my Dad were able to visit us here in Tarakan. Jordan was able to shoot a lot of footage of his visit, and edited down a some of it into a video. Of course I am biased, but I think it is awesome work by my brother. If you have not seen the links we already have on Facebook, please check this link out:

https://vimeo.com/88076506