Monday, August 21, 2006

Making it a little better

Oh what a relief. Things are going a little bit better this week. This last week, we have had Bel at our house doing the flight following. Bel started off at Garry and Cynthia's house about 6 months ago as their house girl. She had been picking up what was being said on the radio while Cynthia was flight following. This was great news to us, as we were wanting to train and hire a national to do the flight following so that I could spend time with the kids. We figured with the nature of flight following (sitting next to the radio for as long as Jason is in the air) we would either have to hire someone to watch the kids or hire someone to flight follow. The fact that Cynthia was able to train Bel to do the radio is a HUGE answer to prayer! It is really amazing that Bel can pick up all that is being said (all in English) on an old scratchy radio. She has been flight following from our house this week. It has been great being able to know where Jason is at but not have to do the radio myself. YEAH!!

On a side note, we just got our TV fixed, (Jason had to basically tell the fix it guy how to fix it). It broke about the 2nd day into our week long rain last week so has been down about 2 weeks. I really missed watching the news and being able to plop down at the end of the day and watch an episode of Globe Treker. And I was getting really sick of the kids movies we had that Mirielle has been watching for the last 2 weeks! Jason is flipping right now and we've been laughing our heads off watching a Filipino soap. Captain Barbell. HAHA. This one is a real LOL! It looks like something a junior higher would pull together for a school project. SO FUNNY!

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

A confession

I know that as a super missionary (haha!), I'm probably not supposed to admit this, especially in such a public way, but here is my confession. There are days when I absolutely hate this job. I've tried to analyze what it is that makes it so hard on me and I can't quite put my finger on it. Just hearing Jason coordinating his flight schedule and talking about flying makes me cringe inside.

Part of it is that the schedule is so completly unreliable. This week we waited and waited for the weather to clear knowing that the flying was just stacking up - with a team needing to get in to top it all off. Even though Jason didn't fly those days, he wasn't really off. It is constant waiting and watching and second guessing and planning for the next day. Morning chaos with phone calls and radio calls and weather checks. Running around packing lunches and gearing up only to decide that it was going to be a no fly day. Then off to the hangar to work.

Part of it is that I hate not knowing what is happening to Jason. I don't think I worry too much about his safety. I know he is a great pilot. It just drives me crazy not knowing when he's going to take off. Is he going to get there? Is he going to be able to do the shuttle? Is he going to get stuck somewhere? When will he be back? All day I wonder.... Then I wonder if I should just try and forget about him during the day and get on with mine.

Part of it is that the days that Jason fly end up being all too long and not long enough at the same time. On fly days he is up at 4:30 and out the door by 5:30. I've been trying to get up at 6:00 and have a few minutes before I have to face the kids on my own, but it seems like no matter how quiet I try to be one of the kids is up within 15 minutes of me. When it is Kellan that is the first one up, it means no shower for me until naptime. Having the kids up from so early on my own seems to make the day long, although I suppose that is just part of being a mom. The day seems too short though when we get Kellan and Mirielle to bed and my poor tired husband is ready to go to bed shortly after them. When a couple of fly days stack up, I get lonely for adult companionship and get to feeling pretty disconnected.

I know that a year from know I will probably look back and wonder what the big deal was and why this seemed so hard. The kids will be older, I'll be more used to the schedule. But for now, I struggle with the frustration. So keep praying for us, for me - as we continue to settle in to this ministry.

Thursday, August 10, 2006

It's Friday. This week has flown by. Between being sick and being busy I feel like I haven't gotten a thing done all week. Maybe all of the rain this week has made things feel different too. I've loved all of the rain. It started Monday afternoon and it hasn't stopped. I love it execpt for what it does to our schedule. With the team coming in on Monday it looks like if the weather clears up, Jason will be flying the weekend. It is hard for me to feel like I need to gear up for the weekend instead of wind down. I just hate not knowing!

Yesterday Jason and I went into town to get some business done. When we first arrived in the country, we opened up our bank account with a national bank at a Mindanao branch. After having my card stolen last year, we had my card cancelled. Trying to get a replacement was a nightmare.

We had to go back to the original branch to request a replacement. The first time we drove 4 hours back to the branch in the town we first lived in to pick it up we had waited too long in between when we had ordered it and when we came to pick it up so it had been shredded. The second time we went to pick it up after reordering it, there was a typhoon going through Manila and therfore the bank had shut down all of their branches nationwide so the bank wasn't even open. We've tried to get a replacement card here, but we were told that we could only have the card sent to our original bank branch, which doesn't help us much when it is on another island.

SO, yesterday we had to close our account, withdraw all of our cash and redeposit it into another account. That was the only way I could get a new ATM card. You would think sometimes that this country didn't have computer systems or something. It was, in a way, a nice 1 1/2 hour break from the kids. It was almost therapudic to sit and watch people getting work done. Made me kind of miss having a job where I use my brain, interact with adults and see that I have accomplished something at the end of the day. Oh well!