The Sunday School class at United in Christ Lutheran Church in Flint, Michigan was curious enough to send us a list of questions. Here they are:
1. What does your house look like?
2. Do you have electricity?
3. How do you wash your clothes?
4. Do you have running water?
5. How do you get your food?
6. What is a normal day like for you?
7. How do you use the computer, such as internet service?
8. How was having a baby there different from having a baby in the
States?
And here are our answers in video form:
But if you'd rather read:
1. Our house looks like a normal American ranch style house, but with a few minor differences, like a big water tank on the roof.
2. We have electric power lines connected to our house that sometimes have electricity in them. When they don't, we use a diesel-powered generator.
3. We let a machine wash our clothes. We let the sun dry them.
4. Rain water collects in a giant tank that gets pumped onto our roof (when we have electricity) that goes either into our house 'cold' or goes through the roof-mounted-solar-heat tank, and then into our house.
5. We get our food from the store, mostly, or from our garden when we can get stuff to grow, which my wife is getting better at doing. Growing food here is different enough that she has had to learn new skills to get things to come up edible, and hopefully just for us, not the bugs, of which there are many...and they're hungry.
6. I have not had a normal day since I got here. The kids, however, are forced to be normal. We make them read and do chores.
7. I could do an entire blog post about what we had to go through to get the internet working here. It might take two posts, or just one with charts, graphs, and pictures. But we have internet now, and we have ways to keep it going even when the power goes out. Confused? Relax, I'll write another post.
8. Having a baby in PNG is not really that different. But maybe I'm just saying that because Charles is our sixth child and somewhere around number four you get into a groove of parenting. It is still challenging, but you know what to expect, and even in a different country babies mostly just need loving parents who can function reasonably well with minimal sleep. Coffee helps, and PNG has plenty. The other kids help, too, but we try to keep the coffee away from them.
That's all for this list. If there is something else you want to ask, put your question in the comment section below, and if I remember to check it I'll try to respond if I have electricity and an internet connection. And thank you for your prayers and support.
~Michael
