VOLUME 7: No. 2                                                                                                   FEBRUARY 1984

Dear Brethren;

Greetings in the service of our Lord!

BRINGING IN 1984 WITH A BANG
Here in Papua New Guinea it is usually the custom to bring the New Year in by throwing mud and stones at passing cars and trucks or by beating on drums or trash cans which are handy. Most times they take the trash drums (44 gal.) and roll they down the streets (rolling the trash out as they go). This year we planned a New Year's eve party for the congregation so that the brethren would have something to do constructive. We had over 105 people in for the evening. We moved back the pews in the building and had group games as well as darts and pong-ping. (Our version of ping-pong). We involved all age groups. We had the kids in teams blowing up balloons and then sitting on them to break them. We had the old sack races and balancing pingpong balls on spoons while running a short race course. We then served sausages, bread and drink before finishing off with super 8 cartoons and movies and with a singing devotional to bring in the New Year. Overall an enjoyable evening.

GOSPEL MEETING HELD
During the 22nd - 26th (January) I preached a GoodNews Meeting for the Goroka congregation. My talks were centered on strengthing the local church. We averaged 87 per meeting with a high of 123. During the meeting we had 4 restorations and 3 baptisms.
During month of January we had a total of 5 baptisms and 7 restorations. Our averages were: Sunday AM 87; Thursday PM 90.

BIBLE SCHOOL HAS NEW HOME
In our August report we mentioned that our Bible School was being evicted from its present location as of the first of the year. Andy Scott was able to locate property close to the church building here in Goroka and put a down payment on it. During December the Lord provided: Andy received word that funds were available sufficient to buy and fix-up the property here by the building. The Goroka church had a special collection and provided over $667. toward the total price of $8700.

We took occupation Jan. 1st. The school guys have been staying and schooling at the old school but have been helping clean up the new property. I installed all new light fittings and switches in the rooms and Jab Mesa painted the rooms with everybody else working on the doors, windows, floor, and fence around the outside. When Andy took possession of the building there were people living in it. When he came back later they had moved out like they were told but they also took the doors with them. The building should be ready when the second term of school commences in March. Thank You Lord

TOPPLING THE POWER THAT BE
During the school break here I have been busy building, remodeling and fixing both Terasa and Jason's schools in consideration of their school fees for next year. (Jason's over $1200, Terasa's over $2300). One of the jobs to do was to cut down some trees at Jason's school. The power company isn't the only one able to cut off power. (I wonder how many cherry trees George Washington would have cut down it he had had a chain saw ?) The main tree needing to be cut was a whooper about 2 1/2 feet in diameter at the base and some 60 feet high. I had planned on topping it but couldn't get up it. Sooooooo, I hooked a rope on it to the car and had Kathy try to direct it away from the obvious path of plunge (toward the power lines on the road and the boundary fence). The chain saw worked fine, the car and rope were not enough. In hoping to direct the plunge of the tree I had moved a jungle gym and when the tree fell it fell right into the jungle gym. Not only the jungle gym but it also fell on the monkey bars (they were too tall for the smaller children anyway) and fell on the boundary fence. The only problem was that the tree I cut took out another tree when it fell and the other tree fell smack dab across the main power lines out by the road. July 4th, I mean we had sparks flying everywhere. One wire burned in two and the other three just kind of stretched down with the weight of the tree. After about a minute everything was shorted out and I began cutting up the disaster. That section of Goroka was without power for about 5 hours.

The only way I could reach the trunk of the tree across the power lines was to lean a ladder up and top-off the tree to lessen the load on the lines and then be able to pull the rest of the tree off the lines. Wellllll, I leaned the ladder on the trunk. Guess what happens when you cut off weight of a line under tension, the line springs up right, RIGHT! Guess what happens to a ladder which is being supported by a tree which is on its' way up, right! IT GOES DOWN! I went down. Fortunately I anticipated this and when the ladder went out from underneath me I fell standing up with a good hand on the chain saw. We fell about 12 feet. (Don't let my mom hear about this, she'll say "same ol Tobey")

SUPERBOWL LIVE
This month I was able to run a coaxial cable to connect with a satellite dish just up the street. The dish picks up 2 channels: Australian Broadcasting & Armed Forces Television. Because our TV is able to receive both Australian and American systems we were able to watch the Superbowl live on Monday at 7:30AM. This of course brought no conflict of interest here as I am sure congregations there experienced.
It is really amazing that we can watch things like that LIVE all the way across the globe. It has been a really treat to be able to watch the CNN news. Usually things which happens in the USA aren't reported here. We did get to see where you were facing those chilling temperatures. (Who's got it tough now, it has been averaging 85-90 degrees here during the daytime.)

RAINY SEASON WITH NO RAIN
I mentioned last month that we had been really been getting the precipitation. I repent During this month we have had very little and most of it coming within the last week. We are not geared for periods without rain. Our soil begins blowing all over the south forty whenever we go for 3 or more days without rain.

MORE GOODIES ARRIVE
This month we also received another box of food items from the Rhodes class in Bovina Texas. You kids are something else. We thank you and we appreciate what you have sent.

PRINTING UPDATE
With preaching the Gospel Meeting and since I have been doing considerable work on the school I haven't really done much printing this month. I am also waiting until after February when the schools start back up to begin any major projects. These months are the only ones in which we can do things with Jason out of school. I was able to print 2 booklets for a total of 19,900 sheets of paper.

Your servants for the kingdom,

the Huffs