our first two weeks in the tribe: part one

The last 3 weeks have been so full.  Full of excitement, anxiety, emotion, and lots of other feelings I really can't even name!  Just FULL.

I want to tell you all about our experiences, and the best way I know to do that is just to do a play by play.  So I'll start from the beginning...

On Monday January 16, we started the journey.  The first stop would be Yifki, which is another tribe that is somewhat close to Maliyali.  Yifki has an airstrip, and the missionaries and people there are so amazing to us.  We are able to use the Yifki airstrip to do helicopter shuttles to Maliyali, which is going to save our team thousands of dollars over the years!  

Nathan took the first flight to Yifki early that Monday morning.  He flew there, along with lots of cargo to unload.  David would go on the second flight, along with us ladies and the kids.  If you follow David on instagram (@david_rimestad), you probably saw the video he posted of Nathan in the airplane, all ready to go!  In the video Nathan said "I'm ready to jump bro!"...and that is exactly how we were all feeling.  We just needed to trust God to make this first "jump".

So the airplane dropped Nathan off in Yifki and then came back for the rest of us!

We were ready in our tribal clothes...only skirts for us ladies in the Yifki and Maliyali cultures!

Our NTM Sepik leadership was with us to see us off...I love this picture of Greg, our area leader!  These guys are the best, and they love our families SO WELL.

 Best support team ever!

So, once we got to Yifki we settled in for a couple of days.  You see, it is difficult to coordinate our flights, because we are dealing with both airplane and helicopter.  So it's not a bad thing, just details we need to deal with.  We wouldn't get a heli flight until Friday, so we would just stay in Yifki until then.  Thankfully, there is a house in Yifki that our families were able to stay in for our time there.  Those days were a great time of connecting with the missionary couple (Jon and Susan Kopf), and also the Yifki believers!

We spent time hiking and exploring...

 

Hanging out with the people...

The kids got to take care of some kittens, which was probably their #1 highlight!

We spent a whole day organizing.  Here, Nathan is organizing all of the tools and other cargo which would need to go to Maliyali on a flight about two weeks later.  There is so much planning and organizing that goes into this housebuilding stage of our lives!

We had to organize the food and other cargo we were going to be bringing in with our families...we tried to keep it as MINIMAL as possible.

Friday January 20 was the BIG DAY.  The helicopter arrived early that morning to take our families in to our new home...Maliyali!

Oh, the emotions we were feeling that morning!  I'll tell you all about it in the next post...stay tuned!