PNG Milne Bay Day 1: On the Way!

Well...off we go again on another adventure to Papua New Guinea!  This time we are helping to facilitate a mission trip the UPNG students are taking to a village in the Milne Bay Province.  Our objective is to build into our students and staff as they train a couple of local churches in evangelism and follow-up, and lead them in a village outreach.

Waiting for Dan to return with passport

We got off to a rocky start.  The unheard of happened.  Dan forgot to include my passport when he got his off the top shelf in the bedroom closet...so we arrived at the airport at 4:30 a.m. minus one passport.  (If I had been the one to forget, it might be considered "normal."  But, Dan has never forgotten before.) 

Time for a hurried sausage McMuffin

 THEN, after leaving me to guard the luggage and racing in a taxi to retrieve the passport, he returns and discovers he doesn't have his wallet.  (He'd used it when paying the taxi driver and thought maybe he left it in the taxi.)  Just then, a voice over the airport loudspeaker is saying, "Will Dan Mills...(muffle, muffle, muffle.)"  A nice lady behind the check-in desk called on her phone and found out the Dan's wallet was being held for him just down the hallway, out the door, across a small alley, in a small (locked) building.  After ringing the bell, a nice man answered and said a parking warden found the wallet outside on the pavement and turned it in.  (A miracle.  And, again, so unusal for Dan...but it wouldn't have been out of character for me.)

All-aboard!

All this makes me wonder what God has in store for the next couple of weeks.  Just getting here and being able to write this blog from the missionary guest home in Port Moresby seems a miracle and a spiritual battle won.  I feel very ordinary and not a very likely candidate for the task ahead...but luckily this is God's work and He is BIG, and it will be an adventure to see what's in store.

Arrived in Moresby, waiting for ride "home"

Note:  The children's Sunday School at our church in Auckland has loaned us Wooly (a sheep puppet) to share our mission trip.  So, look for him in photos!