Is It Safe?

Since I coordinate volunteers and students at Nazarene Hospital, I am often asked questions about safety in PNG.  Well, to be honest there are some security concerns, but we do our best to be careful and prudent.  In any country, including the US there are certain places you shouldn't go at certain times or in certain company.  It's no different here.  We try to follow some practices that we think will help avoid unnecessary risk.

But ultimately, our security isn't in policies, or procedures, or avoiding danger.  Our security is in God.  Here is a link to a blog by John McHoul, with HeartLine Ministries in Haiti.  It says it far better than I can.

Haiti Can Be A Dangerous Place

Samuel's Wheelchair

Monday was busy in Outpatient.  Killer busy.  One of those days when the stack of charts of patients waiting to be seen seems to be growing taller as the day goes on, rather than smaller.  Each of the doctors here has ways of trying to cope with that kind of day, ways to make themselves go faster.  You think harder about whether you really need xrays, or tests.  You ask yourself if the results will really change anything about how you care for the patient.  Sometimes you postpone things until the next time the patients comes in.  It's all necessary.  The time you save increases the total number of people you can help.  I find that on those days I talk less with the patients, spend less time finding out who they really are, what they are about.

But when little Samuel came in, it really slowed me down.  His mom's immediate concern was his cough, but it was obvious that there was a lot more going on.  He obviously had less than normal muscle tone.  His arms were a little stiff.  He didn't make eye contact.  He didn't show the normal apprehension that a child his age (about 4) would usually show toward a big, ugly, white doctor.  He didn't speak.  As I asked questions and thumbed back through his record book, the story gradually emerged.

About a year and a half ago, Samuel had developed a fever and seizures.  Although the family lives near Nazarene Hospital, for reasons I don't understand, they took him to the government hospital in Mount Hagen.  He was admitted there for almost 4 months.  Although his mom concluded that he must not have been treated properly, I know that this isn't necessarily the case.  They had done a lumbar puncture and had documented that he had meningitis.  They had treated him with intravenous antibiotics.  I can tell you from frustrating experience that sometimes you do everything right, but meningitis takes a terrible toll on a child.  Whenever I make this diagnosis, I now routinely tell parents that sometimes children recover well, sometimes the die, and sometimes they are left with brain damage.

I asked Samuel's mom if she knew about the rehabilitation program at a nearby Catholic mission.  Although this program is not active at the moment because of lack of staff, it has provided valuable help to many people over the years.  "Yes," she replied.  "They taught me how to exercise his limbs, and how to take care of him!"  As I examined him, I noticed that he had pretty good flexibility, and that his skin was in good condition.  Apparently they had taught her how to secure him safely in a chair so that he could sit up and watch the world around him.

Just then we were interrupted by a knock on the exam room door.  I'm a believer in "divine appointments".  Sometimes God plans events that seem random to us, but accomplish His purposes.  This was one of those events!  It was Judy at the door.  I have completely forgotten what she came for--some relatively-trivial question, or to give me something.  But as soon as she saw Samuel, the original purpose of her visit was forgotten.  Judy loves kids, and has extensive experience working with cerebral palsy kids as a speech therapist.  She immediately focused on him.  She was delighted to know his name (you understand that Samuel is one of our favorite names).  After visiting for a few minutes, she said that she had a "CP chair" that she thought would be about the right size for Samuel.  We planned for Samuel and his mom to come back on Thursday, both to follow up on his cough, and to try the chair.

Later in the afternoon, she brought the chair to my exam room.  I put it in the corner for the time being, and a couple of days later had a chance to look at it more closely.  It looks to me that this wheel chair was a custom chair for a particular child, with attachments needed by him or her.  (Edit:  Judy just reminded me that the name "Ethan" is embroidered on the backrest!)  I'm guessing that he or she was a little bigger than Samuel.  It was obviously used, but well cared for, and in very good condition.  I noted the tools that I would need to adjust it.

We receive valuable equipment and supplies from many sources, but two organizations help us a lot.  Nazarene Hospital Foundation, in Medford, Oregon, under the leadership of Dr. Todd Winter has supported us for many years, shipping 2 to 4 containers per year.  I have blogged about the arrival of their containers several times.  You can see stories here, here, and here.  We also occasionally receive containers from Project S.A.V.E., out of Chick, California.  Both of these groups send us high-quality, useful equipment.  Judy isn't sure which group sent this chair.  It had been in the storeroom for some time.  A special item like this sometimes has to wait for a while to find just the right person to go to.

Yesterday, Samuel and his mom were back.  When she saw the chair, her eyes lit up!  I busied myself with my tools, moving the various fittings to accommodate Samuel.  There were a couple of items that I didn't think he needed that I removed.  I adjusted the straps and foot rests and headrest.  The chair is still a little bit too big for him, but close enough.  The addition of a thin cushion at his back made it fit pretty well.  I showed his mom how to use the different features, including adjusting it from fully upright to fully reclined.

Then it was time for another divine appointment.  Missionary Mike Chapman came to the door of my exam room.  Again, I can't remember why he came, but as he usually does, Mike had his Cannon D7 camera hanging around his neck  He took the pictures that help you all to enjoy the story.

Imagine the difference that this chair will make in the lives of Samuel and his mom.  Instead of tying him to a chair to allow him to sit up, she can just squeeze a lever, and move the chair to the upright position.  When he needs to rest, but it isn't time for bed, she can just tip him back into a recline.  When she wants to give him a different view, she can just wheel the chair.  And as he grows and gets heavier, she won't have to carry him, along with whatever else she needs to transport.

Please pray for Samuel and his mom as he grows and his needs change.  Pray that the whole family and village will be supportive and helpful.  Pray for Nazarene Hospital Foundation, and for Project S.A.V.E., and all the other groups that are blessing others in the name of Jesus.  Pray for us as we serve those around us day by day.

For more photos, see our Facebook page here.

AB

Telling The Story

These days there are lost of ways that missionaries can share with people both in their own home countries, the country where they serve, and around the world.  This blog is one obvious example.  To see how far-reaching this medium is, just scroll down and look at the left-hand column.  You'll see a map of the world, with red dots representing places from which people have seen this blog.  Pretty amazing!

Then look at the upper left-hand corner of the page.  Do you see that box with the Facebook logo and a picture of Judy and me?  That's something new in just the last couple of days.  It's a link to our page on Facebook.  Please notice that a page is different than a personal profile.  Ever since Judy and I joined Facebook, we've used our profiles to tell about our mission work.  Lots and lots of people have become our friends on Facebook primarily to find out about our work.  We don't really know them in person.  They may or may not be interested in stories about our nephews and nieces, or pictures of our grandson (unlikely as that seems!)  Now we're trying to make the profiles truly personal, and to use the page to share about missions.


The page is almost purely about our work and the country and people of Papua New Guinea.  It would have caused less confusion if we had given the page a catchy name like "Andy and Judy the Missionaries" or "Our PNG Adventure" or something.  But alas, we gave it the name "Andy and Judy Bennett", and many people have trouble distinguishing it from "Andy Bennett" and "Judy Bennett", our personal profiles.  Sorry.  I'm planning on looking into changing the name, if that wouldn't cause even more confusion.

Facebook and blogs are very different.  I've worked to make the blog nice in appearance, and have added "extras" in the side bar, like links to other missionaries' blogs, church and mission web pages, a search bar, and of course now a link to our Facebook page.  I try to keep stories on the blog short, but I consistently fail.  Facebook is much more suitable to the quick info bite.

Here's my plan.  I'm going to do both, as long as it isn't too time consuming and difficult.  The longer, more detailed stories will be here, along with a few pictures to keep it a little more interesting.  Facebook will have the shorter, quicker stories, and albums of photos, links to interesting sites, etc.  I'd urge you all to look at both from time to time.

If you are not a fan of our Facebook page, please just click on that Facebook box in the upper left-hand corner of this blog.  After that, you will get little items in your news feed about posts on the page.  Of course, you can also just visit the page from time to time.

AB

The Rest of the Story

This week I had a reminder of an experience from the early weeks of our time in PNG. It seemed like a good story to make into a blog post. So I sat down to write it. The further I went in writing, the more I had the feeling that I had written it before, maybe shortly after it happened. In those days we used an email list to share information about our ministry. That was before blogs and Facebook, believe it or not!

Kamda and Yamul with Lori's little brother

So I stopped and looked back through some files that I haven't accessed for years, and there it was. Interestingly, I had included many of the same peripheral information then as I was including in the new version. There were a few facts that were told differently than I now remember them. The earlier version is more likely to be right. The "reminder" alluded to above was a conversation with Kamda and Yamul, the parents who adopted the baby in the story. My old version was closer to what they told me than were my later recollections.

As I read the old story, I realized that I probably couldn't tell it any better now than I did then. Let me just paste old version with just a little editing, and then I'll tell you the "rest of the story".

We called her Susie.  Her "real" name was Winda, but many PNG people have several names, and change them at different times and for different reasons.

On the maternity ward I don't often have a chance to get to know the patients well.  Even here with our high infant mortality rates, most women come in labor and leave a few days later with their healthy child, and do not require much attention from the doctor.  Not so with Susie.  She came to Nazarene Hospital initially from her home in the Jimi Valley because her abdomen was swollen to a much greater size than could be explained by her 7 months of pregnancy.  When I first saw her, I allowed myself a brief hope that maybe she was carrying twins or triplets.  But as soon as I examined her I knew it was something far worse.  Her huge abdomen was filled, not with a term-pregnant uterus, but with fluid.  There is a short list of possible reasons for this condition, and none of them are good. 

There is a medical superstition about things coming in threes, and this was following that tradition.  When she came in last November, she was the third similar case I'd seen within a few weeks.  The first had delivered successfully, had come back a few times after that, and then had been lost to follow-up, presumably because of death.  The second delivered, then was quickly taken home by her family to die.  In reality, she probably died shortly before or while being carried out by her relatives.  I don't know anything about either baby.

It was with a true heaviness of heart that I confirmed the diagnosis with ultrasound; normal-sized uterus with a vigorous-looking, thirty-week fetus, a huge sea of watery fluid and a small, shrunken liver.  Cirrhosis, probably caused by a hepatitis B infection.  What, I wondered, would be this child's future?  If we could delay delivery for a few weeks, she would have a fighting chance.  But then what?  Motherless children in PNG are usually cared for by relatives, or by their father's new wife.  Often they are loved and well cared for, but not always.  There are always problems with what to feed them.  Many have a relative who still has breast milk, and who is willing to nurse them, but not all.

So I admitted Susie to our maternity ward, and she was there long enough to get to know her well.  At first she was fearful of everything.  She was physically very small (as are many people from the Jimi), and came from a very remote place, the village of Kwipun.  She had had little or no contact with modern technology (even the paltry bit that we have) or with expatriates.  But it didn't take long for her to realize that she need only expect to be treated with kindness.  Then her natural sunny disposition became evident.  There are many Jimi people who work here at Kudjip station, and they quickly rallied around to make her feel welcome and safe.

At first she showed signs of premature labor, so we gave medicines to stop that, and medicines to try to prepare the infant should we fail in our efforts to delay delivery.  If we could just buy a few weeks' time, the baby would be mature enough to make it in the "outside" world.  After nearly a month in the hospital, Susie went into labor, and delivered a beautiful baby girl.

We didn't know whether to measure Susie's expected life-span in weeks or months or years, but we optimistically performed a tubal ligation on her, in case she recovered and lived long enough to get pregnant again.  We needn't have worried.  We discharged her at first to stay with relatives who live nearby, but after her follow-up visit, she went home to the Jimi.  I know the doctors who work at the small health center near her home, and I sent a note to them along with her, and instructed her to follow up with them as needed.  Then she was gone from my life.  I thought of her from time to time, and wondered what might have become of her and her baby.  I thought that maybe some day I would have a chance to ask the doctors from the health center if they had had any contact with her.  But that was all.

Until Lorrie arrived on A Ward.  Lorrie had pneumonia, but not a severe case, as far as severe pneumonias go here.  She is a chubby, bright, happy healthy baby girl of about 8 months.  She seemed secure and happy.  She has evidently had some contact with BUWGs (Big Ugly White Guys) as she didn't seem too afraid of me.  She would even smile for me when I saw her on rounds.  Her mother was attentive and competent, answering my questions clearly as she sat nursing her baby.

It was only after she had been in the hospital for a few days that one of our nurse's aids who is from the Jimi, slipped up beside me while I was seeing Lorrie.  "Do you remember the patient Susie who was on bed B-5 last November?  She had bad liver disease."  I had to think for a moment before the memories of Susie's hospitalization came flooding back.   Yes, of course I remember her.  "This is the baby that she carried here; she died just two or three weeks later.  This mother has adopted the baby.  She has never carried a child, but she has breast milk for the baby." 

"Yes," added one of our nurses, "she took some Metamide, and now she has plenty of milk for the baby."  "Plenty?" I asked incredulously.  "Plenty?"

"Yes, plenty," said the mom, as well as several others more or less at once. "Plenty!" 

Lorrie is clearly well-nourished.  She hasn't had formula.  Baby formula is very expensive here.  It would take more than most families' entire income to supply a baby with formula if they have to buy it at the drug store.  We give some away as we are able.  People feed babies the milk that is available here, sometimes watered down.  Sometimes they feed them Milo, which is a chocolate powder that you can add to milk to make a tasty beverage that is popular here.  More often people have to mix it with water to feed the baby.  Milo in water has little or no nutritional value.  But it is all some babies get.  Even worse, many families use unsafe water sources, either out of ignorance or necessity.  We give either or both of two medicines to adopting moms that can sometimes stimulate some milk production, but this is usually not very successful, especially if they have not had a baby recently.

But here was this miracle right before my eyes.  Lorrie's dad is Kamda, a cousin of Susie's.  He teaches at Melanesia Nazarene Bible College, and directs the Extension Bible College program for pastors who cannot attend school full-time.  He and his wife Yamul had not been able to birth children, but now they are the obviously-proud parents of Lorrie.  As an adoptive father, I could relate to their happiness.

Romans 8:28 reads, "And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. (Holy Bible : New Living Translation. 1997 (Ro 8:28). Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House.)  I have to admit that I struggle with the application of that verse many times.  Did God allow Susie to die, just so that Kamda and Yamul could have a baby?  No, I don't think so.  But in a world where sin and evil still exist, God takes terrible circumstances and brings good out of them for His glory.

So, that's the story I told in February, 2005. Since then, Kamda has become the District Superintendent of the Bromley District of the Church of the Nazarene, which includes the Jimi Valley. To be honest, I had failed to make the connection between Kamda, the new DS of the Bromley District, and the couple of the story above. But this past Wednesday evening I had the chance to visit with him and his wife Yamul, and they reminded me. They mentioned that their daughter Lorie was a baby that I had helped to bring into the world. With a few reminders, the story came back to me.

Lorie is now a happy healthy 9 year old, and is in grade 3. Kamda and Yamul have now adopted 5 children. She has successfully breast-fed all of them. As I was visiting with them a 4 year old was sleeping contentedly on his dad's lap.

Most of the patients I take care of come into my life for a short time. For many, they come for a relatively-minor problem, and there really isn't much of a story. For those that I've been more deeply-involved with, they may come back, but many times see a different doctor. Or they come for a new problem, and don't realize that I don't remember the earlier events, or they assume that I wouldn't be interested in being reminded. So there often isn't any "rest of the story". But I love it when there is!

AB

Dad

Many of you have heard about the death of my father this past Friday.  Some of you knew him, and knew what a wonderful godly man he was.  I wanted to share a bit about him.  If this gets long and rambling, please forgive me.  It's my blog, and I'll ramble long if I feel like it.  And I feel like it.

Allen Andrew Bennett was born on October 2, 1917 on a homestead near Colville, Washington.  He was the 4th of 8 children born to Vena Duvall and Grover Bennett.  Grandma and Grandpa staked 2 different homestead claims, but failed to "prove up" either one.  Grandpa's brother Hermann was living with them at that time.  They couldn't make enough income from the homesteads, so Grandpa and Uncle Hermann went away to work in the fruit orchards or in logging camps.

During those years, a third brother, Clyde attended a camp meeting revival in the Midwest, probably in Iowa.  In that service he made a decision to trust in Jesus for his salvation.  In the weeks that followed, he felt that God was leading him to go to Washington to witness to his brothers.  He saved up for the train fare, went to Spokane, then to Colville and found the homestead.  Grandma directed him to the logging camp, and he eventually fount Hermann and Grandpa.  He got a job working in the camp, and began sharing with his brothers about his new-found faith.  Within a short time they each also confessed Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

At the first opportunity they traveled back to the homestead.  As the story was told to me, Grandpa walked in the door of the cabin, and his first words to Grandma were, "Ma, I got religion, and you should get it, too."  Her immediate response was to say "alright", and together they knelt on the dirt floor of the cabin and Grandma prayed a sinner's prayer.  Although the story makes it sound like it was easy for her, I'm sure that it was no little thing; she had been raised in an avowedly atheist home.

That was the environment into which Dad was born.  Parents who were kind and gentle, and were brand-new Christians.  They didn't have the resources that Christian parents have today.  No one told them about how to raise and train their kids, how to lead them to salvation.  They took them to church (including a Nazarene church), and taught them the basics.  However, Dad was one of the kids who didn't accept Christ during his growing up years.  But still, that family, that faith was the foundation on which all that came after was built.

The family moved from Washington to Iowa, where Grandma's dad, Andy Duvall had secured 3 farms, one for himself and one for each of his 2 children.  The family lived there until they lost the farm in the depression and dust bowl of the early 1930s.  They moved back to Washington, where it was possible for a man to earn as much as a dollar a day working in the fruit orchards of the Yakima Valley.  Dad finished his high school education at Yakima High School (which, I understand, no longer exists).  After graduating, he left home and worked in a series of jobs, finally teaming up with his life-long friend, Carl Gehmann (for whom my brother Gaymon was phonetically named) in Camas, Washington.  There he worked in the Crown Zellerbach paper mill.

The foreman of his crew on the graveyard shift at the mill was a man named Clarence Beaver.  Clarence, a Christian, carried a burden for the single young men on his crew.  He gave a standing invitation for any of them to come home with him on Sunday morning for a home-cooked breakfast, and to go to church with his family.  I don't know if any of the others took him up on the offer, but my dad did.  He enjoyed the loving fellowship of this family, and of the local Nazarene church.

I don't know how many times Dad went to church before he accepted Christ, but at a Sunday morning service he went to the alter to confess his sins, and ask Jesus into his heart.  He immediately gave up some harmful habits he had picked up, and began to study the Bible under the guidance of his pastor, Richard Tailor.  Along with this guidance came regular invitations to the Tailor home.  Pastor Tailor and his wife, Amy were caring for their teenage niece, Adeline Gudmundsen.  There was, to hear Dad tell it, an instant attraction.  Dad eagerly accepted all invitations.  On December 18, 1938, sitting by the Christmas tree in Uncle Richard and Aunt Amy's living room, he declared his love for her, and kissed her for the first time.  His love for Adeline has been unwavering since that day.  December 18 has always been a "sacred" day in our family, a day for the kids to be elsewhere, and let Mom and Dad celebrate the day however it was that they wanted to celebrate it.

Mom and Dad were married on September 18, 1939.  A week after their wedding they enrolled as freshmen at Cascade College, an independent Christian college in Portland, Oregon.  Dad studied Theology, and Mom studied Music.  After about a year and a half they left full-time study, and Dad became the first pastor of the new Nazarene church in Stevenson, Washington.

One of the stories that Dad used to tell about the days concerned church finances.  The system there was that on Sunday, the church treasurer would count the money in the collection, take out enough to cover the bills for the week, and hand the rest to Dad as his salary.  Sometimes it was fifteen cents, sometimes it was ten dollars!

It was while they lived in Stevenson that my brother Gaymon and sister Camelia were born.  When the due date was near, Mom would go and stay with her parents in Portland, and the babies were both born there.

Dad continued taking classes on a part-time basis at Cascade College.  After a couple of years, he accepted a position as associate pastor of Mount Scott Church of the Nazarene, in Portland.  He later became senior pastor there.  One of the unique features of that pastorate was that his mother in law and father in law were both on the church board!

Dad later made the decision to transfer to Northwest Nazarene College, in Nampa, Idaho.  There he studied, either full-time or part-time, as he could afford to pay tuition.  He worked several jobs at a time during most of the years in Nampa, including laundryman at the hospital (which included firing the coal burning boiler which heated the building), construction hand, and others.  At one point he bought a house that was to be moved.  He bought a lot for it, digging the cellar by hand, and pouring the foundation by hand.  As I recall, he sold it $2500 making several hundred dollars in profit, and felt guilty for taking such advantage of the buyers!

After graduation in 1947, Mom and Dad moved to View, Washington.  This was only a post office and a gas station in those days, and doesn't exist at all any more.  The Nazarene church there thrived under Dad's leadership.  At first it met in the old one-room school house, but later acquired the newer 2-room school house.  They used one room as sanctuary, and divided the other one into 2 Sunday school rooms.  Dad's responsibilities included building a fire in the pot-bellied stove early on Sunday morning so that the building would be warm enough by service time.

After 4 years in View, they moved to Kalama, Washington.  The big event in their lives during those years was my arrival.  My earliest conscious memory of my father involved being sent from the parsonage to the church building next door to get him for lunch.  I was trying to get in the wrong door, the handle of which I could just barely reach.  He apparently heard the rattling of the door, but came out a different door, further along the wall of the building.  I just remember him leaning out the door, looking at me and smiling.  So my first memory of my dad was of him smiling at me.  From that moment to this I have never doubted his approval and support for me.

When I was 3 we left Kalama and headed to the Rocky Mountains. We lived in Butte and Kalispell, Montana; Cheyenne, Wyoming; and Thornton, Colorado, pastoring Nazarene churches in each place.  After Thornton, there was a period of 4 years when Dad was not a pastor.  For most of that time he worked for a construction company that specialized in building church buildings.  It was a difficult and trying time for my parents, a real trial of faith.

Then in 1969 we moved to Quincy, Washington, where Dad was the pastor until after I finished college.  The years in Quincy were the most rewarding and fulfilling time of Dad's ministry.  He once told me that he believed that all of his life up to 1969 was preparation for his work there.  When he was young, Dad had thought for a time that God was calling him to become a missionary.  As part of his preparation for that, he studied Spanish in college.  Little did he suspect that his last church would be the fulfillment of that call.  The ministry in Quincy was a bi-cultural, bilingual ministry. The congregation there tripled in size under Dad's ministry, most of the new people being new Christians.

From Quincy the folks moved back to Nampa, Idaho, where both my brother and sister were living by then, for what was planned as a brief time away from pastoral work.  In fact, it continued until full retirement.

In 1998 (I think, my siblings will correct me if I'm wrong) Mom and Dad moved to Karcher Estates in Nampa.  They lived in the Retirement section until Mom's care was more than Dad could handle.  Mom then moved to the Health Care section, and Dad took a small apartment in Retirement, that was as close as possible to Health Care.  There they spent their mornings together in Dad's room.  Dad was there to help Mom with every meal.  After Mom's death in 2008, Dad moved into Assisted Living.  Last December after suffering a stroke which left his left side paralyzed, he moved into Health Care.  We will always be grateful to the staff at Karcher for the great care they gave both Mom and Dad through the years.

This past Friday, the nurse went to get Dad up, and found that he had suffered a further stroke, leaving him completely paralyzed and unable to speak.  Although he appeared to respond to the presence of family members, there was no real communication until he died quietly in the evening.

Dad was the ultimate "people person".  He loved people.  He loved them without regard to their station or status, race or background.  He loved his kids and his kids-in-law.  He loved his grand kids.  He loved his neighbors, his barber, the people at the grocery store, the members of his congregations, the residents of the local jails, the local politicians, the drunks and panhandlers who showed up at the back door of the parsonage, the guy at the gas station, the housekeepers at the nursing home, the... well, you get the picture.  He really, truly loved everyone.  And people responded and loved him back.

Someone once said that if Al Bennett had two cans of beans he'd give you one; if Al Bennett had one can of beans he'd give you one.  My brother remembers one cold winter in Butte (they are all cold there) when Dad had two coats.  He met someone who didn't have a warm coat, so Dad gave him his good one.

I remember a time when Dad had just given a couple of sacks of groceries from our cupboard to a family who came asking for a handout.  Thinking my dad was naive, I angrily confronted him: "Don't you know that they are just taking advantage of you?" I asked.  His answer stopped me in my tracks.  He said, "Of course I do.  But we minister to them any way."

While home from college, I went with my dad to call on a new family in the church.  I sat there in their living room and watched as my dad lead them to saving faith in Christ.  Last year while I was on furlough, I was with Dad when he received a visit from one of the sons of that family, now in middle age, still following Christ.

Dad was excited and happy when God called Judy and me to the mission field.  He and Mom were unreservedly supportive our our decision to go.  I have felt bad not being with him much during the last years of his life, but I know that he wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

So what is our legacy?  What do Gaymon and Cammi and I along with our spouses children and grand children inherit from Al Bennett?  What do you who knew him, or those of you who have only heard about him receive?  Really, it's just a picture.  A picture of a life lived in complete, unreserved, enthusiastic surrender to the will of God.  A life lived for others.  A life lived for eternity.  What more could we want?

 AB

Just a Link

I wanted to pass on a link to a blog I think you all would enjoy.  Jordan and Rachael Thompson have been missionaries here for almost 3 years now.  They first came so that Rachael could be our high school teacher.  After an initial 2 years term, they felt that God was directing them to continue in service here.  Jordan is now Maintenance Director, and Rachael is teaching the elementary kids.  We love them a lot, and are happy that they are staying on.

The latest post on their blog is about my ward.  The pictures are all from the other side of the ward, where they were under the care of Dr. Imelda Asaigo, at the time the photos were taken, but you won't care.  They are just as cute as the kids I take care of!

This is the link!  Bookmark it, and enjoy all their stories.

AB

Our Little Sisters

Nazarene College of Nursing, here at Kudjip has a program called "Big Brothers, Big Sisters".  The idea is that a staff or missionary couple "adopts" a group of students for the duration of their time in nurse's training.  The sponsoring couple will provide social and recreational times, spiritual mentoring, and friendship.

Judy with Loritha, Elis, Edna and Lavina.  Lottie was not present.

After talking about it for several years, this year we signed up.  Part of our motivation was that a young family friend is now a student at the CON, and wanted to be in our group.  The email arrived, announcing that we have been assigned a group of 5 young ladies, 2 first-year, 1 second-year, and 2 third-year students.  They are a diverse group, representing vastly different parts of PNG (except that 2 come from here in the Wahgi Valley).  Two come from single-parent homes.  A couple of of them have parents who are professional, some are subsistence farmers.  They are all Christians, coming from different denominations.

We had our first get-together last Saturday evening.  They came for supper, we visited, each sharing about our families and backgrounds.  We watched a brief devotional video, then we prayed together.  We agreed that we'd meet once a month for now, but we might revise the plan as time goes on.  We think it will be a lot of fun to get to know a few of the students better.

AB