The Friesens in PNG!: Catch-up time!

Well folks, friends & family,
It's been a long dry spell for my blogging and I'm truly sorry! It seems that whenever I'm "in the mood" to blog, our internet connection fails or something else comes up. So tonight, sit back and let me catch you up on the going ons of the Friesen family out yonder in PNG. :)
I'm not sure if I've mentioned before that I am currently the school nurse out here for our mission school (NCA- Numonohi Christian Academy). In any case, I'm in charge of keeping the school lice free which means I check all the elementary kids' hair at the beginning of each term. So our final term started in the beginning of April which meant lice check time! :) I head off to school with my personal sized bottle of hand sanitizer and my hair in a bun. I'm always a little nervous at first as I really don't like lice, but after the first few critters scurry across my fingers I get braver! I have the do or die attitude with lice...if you show yourself I will catch you and squish you and then that child is sent home with a note to treat for headlice and how to prevent re-occurrence, etc. Often times the children who have lice are the ones who live in one of the nearby villages and attend our school and it's so hard to control lice in those kids. Part of the reason is that they live in such close proximity to other kids/adults with lice who are not being treated and the other part is that lice is ultimately a part of life for many of the village folk. You'll often see them sitting and visiting with each other while picking through a child's hair and pulling out the lice and nits. In any case, after I'm done head checking, I do a thorough washing of myself and I always have the heebeejeebies for the next day or two. (And of course, I'm always convinced I have lice too!) :)
We celebrated Easter a little different than usual this year. We still had an easter egg hunt for the kiddos, but there was no gatherings or church supper. We did have some friends over for supper and had a great time with them. The day after Easter, Clinton was able to go golfing for the first time since we'd been out here. He had a great time with a few other guys and actually won the game by a small margin! (all while using quite outdated golfclubs!) What a pro eh? :) A unique thing about golfing out here though is that you have to use a national caddy and you pay them 10 kina (about $5) and a bottle of coke. Clinton's caddy was a girl and he said she had an amazing eye for following where he hit is golfball...even when he thought it was in the complete other direction, she would find it!
April 23rd we celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary! Yay for us eh? :) We were able to go out for dinner to Goroka to a restaurant called "The Pacific Gardens" which is a really nice restaurant out here. We were actually able to go out ALONE as in we had a friend babysit for us, I believe that was probably our 2nd date since coming out here 10 months ago.
On April 27th Tayah participated in the NCA field day. It was so much fun! Clinton got the day off so we were able to walk around to the various events and watch Tayah participate in different games such as: sack race, 2 legged race, 50 meter race, jump rope, beanbag toss, obstacle course and some other group games. Tayah placed 3rd in the beanbag toss and got a certificate...she was so pleased! (as were her parents ;)) An unexpected medivac landed one of our bush missionaries in the middle of our races via helicopter. As the landscape is very hilly/mountainous out here, the only flat area for our helicopter to land is on our soccer field so our missionary who was ill had quite the reception with all the students and parents watching his arrival. (poor guy!) He's doing great now though! Turned out to be a pretty nasty case of Dengue Fever.
The end of April brought about the most exciting even for us so far...Grandma arrived!! :) For all of you who prayed for her flights...thanks! She had no unexpected delays, no baggage fees, all her baggage made it out here and she made it here to PNG in one piece with her sanity still intact! :) We were all soooo excited to see her come out of the gate...the kids were squealing (oh wait, that was probably me!), but in any case, it was a great reunion. :) Our time with her has been going by far too fast, but we are enjoying each moment and are loving just being able to "hang out" just like back home.
If you want to read more about our adventures together with Ann then keep reading on to the next post, but I'm gonna cut this one off for now as it is already quite long!