Olrait, yumi troemwe lek. (Alright, lets go!)

Our helicopter pad - needs some work...

By the time most of you read this, Nate and Mason will be hiking up to our future home in Pal. We are hoping that they, along with the Pal people can clear ground for the helicopter and plots for our houses. They will also be asking the Pal people to help us find bush poles for our house posts, beams, and rafters.

Will you pray for our team on this trip:

• Health and strength for the guys - hiking 2 days each way and living in the bush can wear down immune systems. Also they have lots of work to do while in Pal. They will also have no means of communication with them while they are in Pal.
• Wisdom - The Pal people have expressed a strong desire for us to come and live with them and we will be relying on them to help us with materials and labor on the houses. We'd especially like healthy relationships from the start.
• Our families - For the next two months, our family will be all together for about 2 weeks.
• Understanding for the Pal guys of the urgency of finding the materials we need. In 6 weeks, we will be flying into Pal with a building team, hoping to put two houses up from posts to enclosed walls and roof in a short amount of time. If we don't have posts or beams, there will be no way to get done what we hope to on that trip - delaying our move in. *

Thanks so very much for your prayers, we hope to have great things to report in a week or so.

The Claasens.

* Just wanted to let you in on something that could complicate things for us this trip as well - the Pal people are involved in a land dispute with their neighbors the Pamosu people. Recently the tensions have increased greatly as the Pamosu people brought in police and accused some Pal guys of working sorcery on them (in PNG a jailable offense). So four Pal guys went to jail here in town (they think there was some bribery involved). When they got out, they were hot! We don't know what we'll be walking into exactly up in Pal, but we do have to walk right through Pamosu and the disputed land as we head in. We don't feel that we will be in any physical danger, but are concerned that this tension will distract the Pal people (posts? ....beams? ....guys?) and delay our building plans.

If you got this far, great! As a reward for reading all of our update, you get the chance to win something: Drop us a short note, we will select at random two people from all of the notes that we receive this week...as the recipients of a bag of genuine (awesome) PNG coffee. Please include your mailing address in the note.