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Leaving Maui

We are now within driving distance of home and will head that way Friday.  It is hard to believe that over the last 24 weeks we have slept in 26 different beds, flown over 49,500 miles, been in 27 different airports ... entered airports 43 times, sometimes the same airports ... on 19 different airlines for a total time of 126 and 88 hours on airlines and in airports respectively.  This does not count the 20 and 12 plus hours on trains and long distance taxis in Siberia not to mention the many short rides in taxis and buses as we traveled around the different cities and towns.  One sad note was our suitcases were covered with all the baggage handling bar codes indicating how much we travelled but some time between Hawaii and Chattanooga, someone decided to take them all off.  The evidence is no longer on our suitcases.  You can see some of them in the picture.  Now that I have totally over whelmed you with the data, it is a good time for  Jan to share something on a more personal basis.


...and I thot the blog was coming to an end :)  And the most amazing statistic is that we were never delayed on any flights ... or lost our luggage ... more on the side of miraculous I would say!
Tomorrow we head home and I am excited at last.  The family that has lived in our house while we were gone will still be there another week or two and since we have been staying with people the last six months I think it will make our transition even smoother.  It will be fun to have a houseful of activity rather than an empty house to wander thru and wonder what to do with myself.  We have been planning to visit Roger's parents in Florida shortly after coming home so we will be heading down there next Tues so won't really be home long.

View of Joe and Marsha's farm

We have had a great time here with Roger's sister Marsha and family.  The surrounding hills are so pretty and the smells and sounds of a farm are so fun and somehow very relaxing  We have enjoyed walks down the lane to the barn, and walk to the swimming pond, petting the horses, listening to the parrot (somewhat annoying at times) make all sorts of sounds as he imitate every noise he hears from people snorting to the dryer buzzer to the squeaky door.  I can't explain it... but I love coming here.
As we leave our travels behind i thought I would share a couple of the many stories that we weren't able to share before...
We heard a story about a church in one country where it is illegal to share the gospel or hand out Bibles that is trying to be creative in spreading the word.  They decided to leave the building windows ajar and leave bibles sitting on the window sills... as if they had forgot them.  They (100 Bibles) were all gone in no time at all .... so they thot bigger and over time over 1000 bibles were taken.  They are praying that they are going to the hands of those that the Lord has led there.  We pray the same.


Another interesting story that made me realize how big and awesome our Lord is...and how we tend to focus on the here and now when He has such a bigger thing in mind...  If you remember back when the movie The Passion of the Christ came out there was alot of different publicity the movie here in the states.  One of those being that it was very anti-Semitic ... people were upset about that ... Jews and Christians alike.  Well guess what the Arab world thot about that?  Anti-Semitic ... let's show it in our theaters here ... for a whole month ... several times a day!  Many lives were touched and some people told us how they would wait outside the theater waiting for the movie to be done and then offer to take people out for coffee to discuss it.  Can you imagine the opportunities to share the truth?.  People were coming out of the theatre in tears.  They were shocked that a great prophet like Jesus would allow himself to be killed in such a manner ... so while we were on the other side of the world with our narrow views and listening to so much talk about that movie ... our God who is so amazingly creative and huge was using it for His glory in a country that is blind to the Truth!

Liberty (standing) and Cassie

I could go on and on with stories that reminded me of what a Huge God our Lord is and i hope to share little by little more of what we saw and heard...
I guess that means i will keep talking on this blog :)  I enjoy writing and so I will keep writing I guess till I run out of things to say...
We can't forget to say that we are picking up our one baby in Tennessee ... Liberty our dog.  She has been enjoying herself here with her cousins and romping around the farm.  She was glad to see us but we are sure she is going to miss her cousins and the big outdoors here at the farm.