Finally Bom!

Yes, we are finally in our home in the tribe and once again able to use email. For many of you, it has been a while since you have heard from us, so allow me to do a quick update.

The last New Guinea News was about the birth of Sierra Dawn on January 18. She is a healthy little baby girl and has been growing and keeping us intrigued by all the little changes. Three days after Sierra was born, I left for the tribe with my dad (my parents came to see us in PNG and my mom stayed with Lori to help with the kids). Because of the land disputes over where we were to build, my dad and I had to check on the new piece of land that had been offered and begin the clearing of all the coconut trees.

A couple of hard, long days later and after several encounters with biting ants, the land was mostly cleared and the work team from our home church in Iowa arrived. In one week the ten person team turned a bare spot of land into a wonderful home on poles 30 foot off of the ocean bank. The month of February meant more separation for Lori and I as I tried to finish up plumbing and electric and get the screens on so that it would be comfortable for a new mom, a two year old, and a one month old.

Lori and the kids were finally able to join me in the Patpatar Tribe in the village of Bom (rhymes with home) on February 24 exactly one month after the first pole of our house went into the ground. During the month of March we continued to work on all of the details of finishing a house and attended our annual islands region conference for one week.

As April comes upon us, I will begin to dive into language and culture study and start the process of being able to one day explain the gospel in the language of the people for the glory of God. Thank you for all of your prayers, notes, and gifts, and a special thank you to the work team and those who helped get them here.

An important side note: We will once again attempt to keep you updated on a more regular basis and let you know of our current prayer requests. Our email is all done over HF Radio, so not only is it slow, and time consuming, it can also be unreliable. (Last night was the first time we were able to check email in the tribe. We had not checked in a month, so we receive over 100 emails and it took 4 hours to download them.) We would love to continue to hear from you, but if you could help us out by keeping all messages you send to us under 30kb in size, we would appreciate it. We will try to respond to you in the weeks to come as well as let you know some stories from here in the tribe.

Among the Patpatar for Him,

Aaron, Lori, Avalon, and Sierra