The picture above is from the feast our friends made for us before we left Nobnob. If you look really closely you can see a pig hanging in the middle of the fire. They were burning the hair off the pig before it was cooked. I will write a blog post about the feast later. For now I just wanted to share my immediate feelings. I put this picture with this post because I feel a little bit like the pig today. When we arrived at our house we opened the door to find that every drawer and cabinet door was open and everything we have had been riffled through. We came up about a month and a half ago and brought some boxes up and all of the stuff we shipped from the US in the sea container had arrived. The housing department here was generous enough to let us go ahead and put everything in the house and leave it here while we finished up in Madang. While we were away someone broke into our house and stole a good bit of stuff. Myself (Matt) and the boys were the hardest hit. All of our good tee shirts and shorts were taken as well as all of my shoes. No one was left unscathed. Tiffany had some tee shirts taken as well as all of her wrap skirts (laplap). They also got her warm hats that she was looking forward to wearing now that she has had to cut her hair. Everything was rifled through. All the dry goods that were in our pantry were stolen as well as some of our pots, pans and dishes. Maybe the most painful was the 2 external hard drives that had all of our old pictures on them.
We are all still feeling a little pained and numb from this. When you combine that with the fact that we just left all we know and all our friends for a place that is very different and a bit strange to us we are hurting (especially me). To top it off our friends who came up with us were supposed to go back on POC’s truck yesterday. They left in the morning and made it about 45 minutes away before having a flat tire. They then discovered that the spare was flat too. Fortunately, the truck they were driving has dual wheels on the back so they took one off the back and put it on the front and limped back to our house. I have to admit I had mixed feelings when I got the call that they were having tire problems. I was truly worried for them but I was happy to have them here again. I have some friends in the auto shop here so we were able to get in and fix the tires even though they were closed. By the time the car was ready it was too late for them to leave so they stayed with us last night. It was nice to have them one last time. They left early this morning and I got word just a little while ago that they had made it to the halfway mark.
I know the numbness will fade and we will settle in to being here and we will make lots of new friends here but for now it is hard to do much but sit here and be sorry. Please pray for us as we adjust.
