As of New Year’s Day, we’ve been here in Madang, Papua New Guinea for three and a half weeks. I thought I would show everyone out there where we have been living. We are staying at an SIL guesthouse. SIL (or Wycliffe) owns a couple properties here in Madang and they were kind enough to rent one of their two-story flats out to us and the Canns for the full duration that we are in Madang with us staying upstairs and the Canns downstairs.

Theft is a big problem in Madang and most of the properties have barbed wired fences around them and sometimes a guard. We have both here. Here is our day guard, Alex.

What’s great about Alex is that he is from a tribe in the Finisterre Mountains called TapTap. It has been pretty sweet getting to know our guards because they don’t just guard our house, but they are also excellent language helpers!

These next pictures show just some of the amazing foliage in our yard.

 

 

For the first several days, since everything was so new, I didn’t really notice any part of the property. But by day four, I was walking around and stopped and thought, “whoa…was that a pineapple?” Sure enough, it was! We have bananas, pineapple, green beans, sugar cane and a type of pumpkin all growing on the property. And much of that produce is thanks to the gardening of our guard, Alex. He weeds the grass for us, plants flowers and produce, and brings us the fruit/vegetables as they ripen.

These next photos show some shots of the view out our back door.

Notice the large tanks.  Everytime it rains, all of the water from the roof flows into these large tanks, and that’s where we get all of our water from.  This is what we will be doing in the tribe as well.

And now, let’s move to the inside. We have three with Cameron and I in one, the girls in another, and the boys in another. It’s pretty sweet. Each room has a fan, which works pretty well (except when the power goes out). All of the windows are “louvered” which allows airflow, but can also be shut to keep out torrential rains.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While this doesn’t cover everything, hopefully this gives you a feel of where we are staying.  It’s an answer to prayer that this place exists and that SIL offered us to stay here.  This will be our home for the next 5 or 6 months, and then–Lord willing–we will have a new home somewhere in the Finisterre Mountains.