Tyler and Emily in PNG

I am embarrassed to see my last post was before Thanksgiving on November 22. Wow…I must confess I have been out of the office more than I have been in the office since then. A quick recap, Thanksgiving I spent in Ukarumpa (6 day holiday) back to Madang for one day then caught a plane to Mt. Hagen to visit the Nazarene Hospital station for 7 days then finally back to Madang on Tuesday, December 6. So here we are twelve days until Christmas but who is counting…all that comes to mind is “on the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me twelve drummers drumming…”.

On 29th of Nov I jumped aboard a Cessna 206 flown my mission partners, Mission Aviation Fellowship. Pilot Jason from Alberta, Canada flew me and three others first to Simbai then onward to Mt. Hagen in the Western Highlands. It was my first bush flight with MAF and an exciting opportunity to see the jungles, rivers, and mountains of beautiful Papua New Guinea.

The main reason for this trip to the Nazarene Hospital station was to visit the College of Nursing and help with networking their computer lab. It is a new computer lab with 20 computers with hopes of up to 36 computers. I brought 610 meters or 2000 feet of Cat5 network cable with me to do the job. I worked hand and hand with August who is a Nazarene pastor and supervisor of the computer lab. In fact, August just graduated with this Masters of Religion the Saturday before I arrived.

August and I started by mounting 50mm PVC pipe throughout the room so we could neatly manage all the network cables. Then the arduous process of measuring and using the fish tape to pull all 36 cables started. The ‘measure twice cut once’ line came to mind frequently as I measured over and over again before I cut the cable. After all was said and done I left with only 15 meters or 50 feet out of 2000 feet left to spare. The last step was to correctly wire each individual cable to a RJ-45 network connector.

I taught August how to separate the 4 pairs of twisted wires and correctly orient and crimp the 8 wires into a connector. After 72 completed connectors we tested each cable end for quality and correct orientation. Only three connections needed re-worked with new RJ-45 connections. August was happy and I was happy as well. On Monday before I left town to come back to Madang, we bought 2, 24 port network switches for the computer lab.

They (College of Nursing and Nazarene Hospital station) was very pleased and glad I came to volunteer my time. I had many good compliments from missionaries and national staff that I came to help. I took joy in serving the Kingdom one meter of network cable at a time. These students will now have the opportunity to share and store files and data in a computer lab environment as they seek a Christian education in nursing from the Nazarene Health Ministries.

I will be sharing more pictures and stories from my recent trip to Kudjip and my visit to the Nazarene Mission Station.