Passport photos

For our visa application we need passport photos for everyone, so yesterday (amongst LOTS of other things) we tried to get decent photos of everyone.

These were Ruben's efforts:

Not bad really :) The fact that he can now sit up on his own (and incidentally, almost stand on his own) made it a lot easier than when we had to do it at 4 weeks! 

This was the end result:

And for good measure, here were everyone elses:

Not sure whether they will let us in or not...

You wouldn't believe the amount of paperwork we have to fill in for the visa application. We would be grateful for your prayers as we try and collate everything that is needed, and try and find all the bits and pieces of paper that we need. 

Some classic questions on the 'character assessment form':

"Have you ever committed or been involved in the commission of war crimes or crimes against humanity?"

"Have you ever been associated with or involved in a program related to the development of weapons of mass destruction?"

Those are the easy ones - much harder to identify every visit to every country in the last 10 years, and in Libby's case, remember the name of her dissertation supervisor at University!

7 years

28th April 2006 was the day we first arrived in Tanzania. That's 7 years ago (or at least, it was when I first planned to write this post). 7 years of ups and downs; joys and sorrows, lots of hard work and a reasonable amount of fun.

As we mentioned in our past newsletter, we have been thinking and praying about our future, and particularly  in relation to a request by MAF to move to a new location. 7 years in Africa seemed a fairly perfect time to make the final decision, and by Sunday our feeling was that this was God's direction for us.

SO...at the end of this year (actual dates not yet decided - and largely dependent on our ability to get a visa), we are expecting to more to Cairns, in Northern Australia. Cairns is the regional Head Office for the Asia-Pacific Region of MAF International, supporting the bases in Arnhem Land (Central Northern Australia), Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Bangladesh (and maybe more, we are not entirely au fait with the AP region!) My role is not completely fleshed out at the moment, but primarily I will be looking after the finances of the Mareeba  maintenance base - which does the heavy maintenance for all aircraft in the AP region. Mareeba is about 45 minute's drive from Cairns, but due to the wider range of schooling options in Cairns we will probably opt to live there. As I am also likely to be involved in work at the Cairns office this should hopefully be a practical option!

Anyway, we just wanted to let you know what was going on with us.

We should also apologise for the paucity of postings on this blog. As we may have mentioned before, we are finding going back to the baby stage quite a challenge - and coupled with three bigger children with all their demands (and work and home) we find it difficult to find time to get on the computer - or to do pretty much anything that isn't fire-fighting! We shall attempt to keep you updated though as things progress.