This weeks news is less about me and more about Chris. Last Sunday Chris flew to Cipanas, 60kms south east of Jakarta in Indonesia. It is near an extinct volcano called Mt Gede. He was part of an ADRA team responding to a volcanic erruption. Luckily for the residents the volcanic erruption only existed in the simulation training reports as the team got together to test the ADRA Indonesia disaster reponse plan. The simulation exercise was as realistic as possible, with the cooperation of local villagers happy to play the role of disaster victims. The organiser was keen to make things even more realistic by simulating a fire evacuation of the disaster response centre at 3am one morning. The pictures above are some that Chris brought back with him. He had a great time, learned a lot and is now sleeping off the jetlag.
Meanwhile Alesia and I held everything together at home. I worked on getting used to my contact lenses. Alesia worked on getting used to using a toilet. We were quite successful at both things by the end of the week. I had strategic planning for ADRA South Pacific Division on Wednesday, which went really well. A second session is planned for the coming week. We also visited Alesia's Family Daycare provider for 2007 and both Alesia and I decided she was going to have fun at "Darshna's house" next year.
This weekend it rained all weekend. Chris came home on Saturday morning. We took Alesia out twice to stomp in puddles - a fun thing to do that is becoming harder and harder in the dry weather. The novelty must have been tiring, as she fell asleep on the couch tonight at 7pm, an hour earlier than usual. Things were much more exciting for my family in Victoria today, with a surprise birthday party for my Grandmother to celebrate her 80th and the birth of little boy to my brother and his wife - Lachlan David Abel (sorry if the spelling is wrong as I have not had the official spelling confirmed yet). Only 17 days until the due date of our baby. Alesia is getting very excited about her new little sister.
We also had a lovely long chat with Steve Piez, a friend from PNG who was in Sydney for the weekend. He and his wife Kym are leaving PNG at the end of this year and returning to Melbourne. We stayed up until midnight on Saturday night talking about children, life in Australia, working for the church and a host of other things.
Have a good week.
