The chaos that is our life has settled down enough at present for me to sit down and get an update out for the masses. 1 “Masses,” in this case, is referring to the 8 people who still occassionally check our neglected website for new information. Before I get started though, let me just say that this post is going to be relatively short, lame, and pathetic. And it’s not my fault.

Due to medical privacy concerns, mission communication policies, and the general international paranoia surrounding a certain chest cold, I find myself somewhat hamstrung in what I am able to say concerning some of the subject matter I will be touching on.

To start off the recent news, we are no longer in the bush. Our co-worker, Andre, needed to get medevacked out of our village a couple of weeks ago,2He did not die, and he is kind of getting better. Yay! and then the country announced that a new wave of COVID-19 lockdown protocols were about to be implemented.

Since the new travel restrictions would have severely complicated our established departure plans, we ended up catching a last-minute flight out to town. Sort of a “last heli out of Vietnam” kind of experience. We didn’t end up finding out that we would be able to get out of our village location until around 8:30 AM on the day of departure, and then the heli lifted off, with us on board, a little after 11:30 AM that same day!

Needless to say, good-byes in the village were a bit rushed. Some of our village friends were able to hold it together, others wept and wailed openly, and some were unable to talk to or look at us because of their emotions. Thankfully, we had been able to share a few meals and have more significant good-bye experiences with a few of our closer friends earlier in the week (though we didn’t know at the time how close our departure would be!).

Since arriving out here on center, we have been living the standard “self-isolation experience,” trying to ensure that we don’t contract anything even remotely similar to a covid virus. We will be flying down to Port Moresby, the capital city of PNG, next week and then getting on a series of international flights after that, so we are a bit on edge about maintaining our “negative” covid status. If any of us contract COVID-19 between now and those international flights, we can expect a world of unpleasant travel complications.

Please be praying for a smooth trip for our family! If all goes according to plan, then we should be arriving back in NY on April 16th! In the meantime, we will be packing up our gear and saying our goodbyes to our missionary friends on center.