Stateside

We're going to keep the blog going while stateside, and this will serve as our first post. We invite you to keep up with our reporting and "visiting missionary-ing."

Our travel from Vanuatu was event-free. We ended up finding a shipping container to rent in Vila to store our Vanuatu things. After one last trip to the storage container, we headed for the airport. Several from the church in Vila, as well as a friend from Ambae that I've been studying with all came to see us off at the airport. It's encouraging to see those whose lives have been changed, and it's always nice to be missed.

We boarded our plane in Vila about 1:20pm on Saturday, and believe it or not, we arrived in Los Angeles about 1:20pm Saturday - the international dateline is a funny thing! Our six hour layover in the Nadi, Fiji airport was a bit tedious, but besides that our intercontinental flights went well. The kids slept several hours each on the 10 hour flight from Fiji to LA.

Our 3 hour layover in LA was filled with Immigration, Customs, baggage, walking from international terminal to domestic, checking in, and eating lunch (old McDonald's, as our kids say). There are two families in Ripon, CA who have been supporting us financially for several years, so we had a quick flight over to Oakland and a two drive to get there for a long weekend. We always enjoy starting our furlough time with the O'Hara family because they are good friends and very easy going (it takes us a few days to get our bearings). The congregation where Caleb preaches asked me to share a presentation on the Vanuatu work during Bible class, and then preach during the AM assembly. Having arrived at their house the night before about 9:30pm, I wasn't sure how coherent I would be on Sunday morning, but it worked out fine. There are some exciting things happening among that congregation, and it was a pleasure to be with them.

We were up super early Tuesday morning for an 8:30am departure, in order to contend with the San Francisco Bay Area traffic. After another uneventful flight, we made it to Denver. It has been a pleasure to be back together with Shawnda's family. Mema and Auntie Leesha took Titus and Alexis to the zoo today, while Shawnda and I stayed at the house and tried to get our things organized.

We are scheduled to be in Denver for a week, and Lord willing will head on to OKC next Tuesday. School starts at OC on the 26th, and we have a few activities planned for the weeks leading up to that.

Please keep us in your prayers as we travel and adjust, and we look forward to seeing many of you in the coming months!