Lake Pepin

On our way home from visiting some folks in Minnesota a couple weeks ago, we were able to drive by the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum in Pepin, Wisconsin. The museum had some items from the time period of the books, and other things.

Jamie & Lisa at Lake Pepin (Thad was sleeping)

I remember reading in the book, Little House in the Big Woods, the Laura was surprised at how big Lake Pepin was...I was surprised too! You drive past it for miles!

Lake Pepin

We also stopped at the "Little House in the Big Woods" Wayside ~ which was just a house that had been built to commemorate the book. There's not much for "Big Woods" anymore, as the land is mostly farmed around there, but it was still neat to see...the house was really small!

Lisa and Thad at the "Little House in the Big Woods" Wayside

And, as we continued on our way home, we drove by this cute little school house, which appears to now be someone's home.

cute schoolhouse in Wisconsin

Baker

Growing up, we never really were a pie eating family, and I was never interested in learning to make them. Jamie grew up eating fruit pies, though, and makes some yummy ones.

Well, we received a bunch of blackberries from Jamie's dad who went and picked them, but they started to head over the hill rather quickly, so I decided to give pie-making a try. I got the recipe for a crust from Jamie's sister, and for blackberry filling from his sister-in-law and tried my hand. It came out ok-so maybe I'll have to keep practicing :)

Trying to catch up!

Well, long time since I've written, but I've been thinking I'd better get back to it! Let's see how to catch you all up ~ Jamie and I returned to the USA in April on a 9 month furlough. We've been trying to catch up with many family and friends, hearing what's up with you, and telling you all about our life in Papua New Guinea. In June we welcomed a new member to our family ~ Thad. We're enjoying our happy guy, and he's putting up with a lot as we drag him around the country meeting all of you.

rewards

I am not a morning person. Sadly, the market where we get fresh fruits and veggies here at Ukarumpa is only open Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings from 6:30am – 8:00am. So, not only do I have to be UP (which I usually am by 7am), but I also need to be smiling, friendly, and somewhat able to converse (much harder for me at that hour) if I am to get fresh produce.

One of the GREAT perks of being married is that Jamie IS a morning person—and doesn’t mind going to the market! Today, though, he had to be out to the airstrip for an early flight, and I was left to make the trip. I did find some great deals—a yummy pineapple for less than $.50! and then, the best reward of all when I got home, my favorite breakfast: a peanut butter banana smoothie!

workdays

In the Linguistics Office, the job responsibility that I job-share with my friend, Joyce, we are getting caught up on emails. We’ve had some requests for old documents (pre-computer era) from folks doing masters or doctoral linguistic studies. These particular documents we only happened to have on paper in our Linguistics Library or in our archive room, so we had to hunt them down, see if we had them, if the authors had given permission for them to be given out, that sort of thing. I’m glad to have Joyce to use as a second set of eyes, when crafting emails to other folks, so that I make sure they sound nice J

I’ve also been starting to menu plan for the June module of VITAL. Our meals there mainly consist of rice served with some type of soup/stew/meat topping, root vegetables (sweet potatoes, taro, yams) boiled in coconut milk, cooked greens, and some fruit. This framework is fairly set, so mostly I just decide on the soup/stew/meat dish for each day. I’m so glad that I discovered dehydrating before the last (February) module, as that gives us more and cheaper options for ingredients for the dishes! I plan to dehydrate again for this module, so hope to get the menu worked out enough to be able to get a start on it next week.

the box of horrors

So, last night for dinner I made sloppy joes with a twist. Juliann and I have a “box of horrors” in which is a jumble of all sorts of packages of things that we don’t remember (half used bags of pasta, rice, nuts, etc.) and in the box we had two opened and two unopened bags of lentils that came from who knows where. I heard that lentils make a good filler in a recipe when mixed with other meat like ground beef, so I tried half ground beef and half lentils in the sloppy joes. I think I ended up with a bit too much liquid, but it didn’t taste bad—so we thought over all it was a success!! (since you can’t buy buns at the store here, I also made the buns ~ which I was pretty excited about J hee! Who knew I’d have to turn into such a cook!!) AND I emptied the two opened bags of lentils, thus removing them from the “box of horrors” which made it a double success! Hurray!!

Exciting news!

I have some exciting news to share! I’m engaged J Wow! You may say, this is fast…well, not really. I met Jamie Halverson at my orientation course when I first arrived in Papua New Guinea in August of 2007. He was on staff at the course. His normal job here is as a pilot serving in PNG. We began dating last fall. From the very beginning when I met Jamie, I was impressed with his love for other people—desire to help and serve them, and his desire to please God and draw closer in relationship to Him. So, when Jamie asked me to marry him on March 14^th, I was very happy to say, “yes!”

We are still trying to figure out wedding plans, plans for meeting each other’s families (he’s from Wisconsin), and plans for furlough—so we would be glad for your prayers as we make those decisions.

I’m looking forward to serving in Papua New Guinea for a long time with Jamie; and I can’t wait to see how God can use us together to see changed lives as the people of PNG are transformed by the power of God’s Word!