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The day before Brian and Gemma flew to America and all the last minute rush was upon us, I heard a loud alarm ringing in the living room. I’d never heard such a noise before and upon investigating found out it was my computer. We got it last year while we were home and I was not expecting this any time soon. I should’ve been, since, you know, it’s a computer. However, I was absolutely gutted to find out it was a total hard drive failure. The IT guys here tried to help, but to no avail. The good news is that the crash didn’t happen the morning Brian left!! It happened the morning before he left. So he swapped out his computer for mine and took it back to our international office to be looked at and replaced by the team there. I think I lost everything that was on it (gutted about that), but at least we’re able to get it fixed.

Part of the headache of that involves me posting updates on the website! Brian’s computer isn’t used to the pictures from my phone and I had to sort out a roundabout way to get it all aligned. Plus, I’ve been pretty tired in the evenings and end up zoning out most nights. My goal of posting once a week is a pipe dream during this time. All that said, us three in PNG are having good days together! Gemma is sleeping well at nights with her grandparents and thoroughly enjoying all her family in Virginia and Delaware. She’s loving life! Brian is on his second week of meetings and, though worried about some hiccups we have here, is enjoying being back in the Dallas circle and engaging with old and new friends about the work here.

We appreciate your continued prayers. We haven’t heard anything from the USCIS, and so we don’t think an interview for Gemma’s citizenship will happen. We’re disappointed, but know God is in control of that timing and that perhaps it could come through in a miracle. Pray over Brian as he presents about the work in PNG in Dallas this week. Pray for us here at the house. We’ve got some heavy stuff going on that I don’t want to go into depth about in this medium, but pray I would have wisdom in dealing with this situation and that despite it, the girls and I would have wonderful memories of this sweet time together.

Note: If you look closely in the second picture, you can see the plane Brian and Gemma were on to go to Port Moresby. It’s fun to see the flights go straight from our back porch. It’s a tiny little thing in-between two palms.