WUNDERLI WANDERINGS

I dropped Simon off at the airport for his exam this morning at 8:30am.  The exam was 40 questions and 3.5 hours long.   After hours of study he came out the exam with a 90%.  Lots of joy in our house tonight.  Another hurdle cleared and off to face the next one.  Thanks to those of you who keep praying for us.  The last few months have been seriously crazy but we are learning to take one challenge at a time or trying to. Tomorrow morning our shipment arrives from Brisbane.  It will be funny to have a sofa again to sit on, beds to sleep in, a dining room table to eat from, washing machine and all the other things we packed 4 months ago.  Having said that I will miss my frequent trips to Tree Tops (Guesthouse where we first stayed on arriving in Australia) to do our laundry and have theological discussions over folding clothes or learning about someones experience of living in the bush in PNG.  Might need to find some excuse to make a visit ...

We are thankful for this breakfast bar.  This is a multi purpose unit.  It is where the meals get made, the homework gets done and the flight planning happens for the following days flight.  Tomorrow (Wednesday 22nd) is Simon's next flight exam.  We are praying that he passes the first time although he has been warned this is the most difficult of them all and that it is not unusual to fail the first time.  Tomorrow we will know.

After an interesting few months of gathering information for our visa application and trying to figure out the system a surprising miracle happened.  Our visa application was finally applied for last week and yesterday we got an email and a phone call to say that it was already accepted.  To say we were surprised was an understatement.  We were told it could take anywhere from 8-12 weeks to be processed. This means that we now have a 4 year temporary permanent visa for living in Australia.  We will need to apply for another visa so that it is more permanent but all in due time.  Need to rejoice in making it this far first.  (haha). Thanks to all of you who have been praying for us and asking how we are doing.  Your prayers were answered and it is a huge relief to have jumped that hurdle. Now for the next one......

It has been busy last few weeks with lots of comings and goings.  Simon is finishing up his third week of his standardistion course with one more week to go.  He has enjoyed all the flying and also getting to fly another aircraft.  So lots to learn but thankful for his flying experience these last years in MAF Uganda. There are more courses for him to do as well as exams coming up so there is never a dull moment.  I am sure he would value your prayers that we he would retain the information well and continue to adjust to the newness of everything. This week he and another pilot were supposed to flying into a specific airstrip only to find that there were termite hills on the runway.  They returned to Mareeba and then drove to the airstrip where they knocked them all down and made the airstrip useable again.  Not too far from his days in Africa.  It was good for the other pilot who hasn't served in a programme before to see what could be coming his ...