Vision Trip: On our way...

The tickets are purchased!! We will be departing our nice, cool Seattle area at 2:10am on July 9th. We will then travel for 12 hours to point B and then have a 3 hr 10 min layover. It will take 1 hr 40 to get from point B to point C and will wait another 2 hrs 20 min for the next flight to point D. The flight from point C to point D will only take 1 hr where we will be picked up for the 2 hr car ride to our final destination. Our final arrival time will be approximately 12:20am, July 10th (our time) and will be 5:20pm, July 10th there time. This totals up to 22 hrs of travel time provided everything goes as planned! Yikes!

Now I know many of you have traveled overseas and know what it is like to endure such things but this is all new to us. I will be interesting to see how I manage my air sickness for that long and not be passed out due to the side effects of Dramamine the whole time!! =D We have been given lots of good advice and we will be sure to try every single one of them!

July is the hottest part of the year for the location we will be traveling to. It’s going to be HOT and HUMID there. By that I mean 90+ C and 90% humidity. We might even experience a typhoon while we are there since July is the typhoon season. Ugh...I am a red-headed, freckled, lily white, Pacific Northwest lady! What in the world am I going to do with that kind of weather??? Paul spent his younger years in Cincinnati, so he has some idea of what it can be like so pray we can withstand the weather well and be productive while we are there. Our return is scheduled for the evening of July 20th.

We are extremely thankful for the 3 families our boys will be spending the two weeks with while we are away. We know they will not only enjoy where they are staying but we are hoping they will be a blessing to the families as well.

Prayer Requests:

• Financial - for the Lord to provide for our needs with both the home front costs as well as the costs of the trip. If you would like to financially contribute to this particular trip, please go to online donation link to the left or go to www.mup.org/OnlineGivingMain.htm. Please make a note that it is specifically for our trip in July.
• Preparations - there are many details to tend to when traveling overseas (documents, medical, etc) and settling our kids down with other families. We need to not be fretting over unnecessary things but be diligent to the things that are truly important.
• Travel - pray for safe travel with the ability to rest on the flights so we can arrive with the least amount of effects. Pray for timely flight schedules.
• Trip - Pray for the Lord to prepare the location in which we will be staying. Pray we will get a clear picture of what the Lord wants us to be doing with our time and for us to start the groundwork of beginning new relationships with the hosts and people.
• Kids - we ask for safety so the hosting families don't have to deal with an emergency situation while we are gone. =)

Perspectives & A Vision Trip

Paul and I are celebrating this week because we have turned in our last piece of class work to complete our Perspectives class. This class work kicked us around quite a bit but it also challenged our thinking in many ways as well. So, 3 hour lectures once a week for 15 weeks with a quiz each week, 5 response papers and an (at least) 6 page Integrative Report paper are done! Yeah!

What are we going to do now that we are done? Well, we aren't going to Disneyland, but, we are making our plans to go overseas for a two week trip. Many have been praying for Paul to be able to get all the time off of work in order for us to take this trip, be home for a few days and then have Paul leave again for the Idaho/Montana Youth Mission trip with our oldest son Andrew for a week. The Lord has answered that prayer and even made it so we really only need to cover 6 days off of work out of the month he is taking off...we are praising God for that. Isn't He awesome??

We are hoping to purchase tickets this weekend for a trip leaving around the 8th of July. It seems like there should be many things to take care of, but honestly, the Lord has been so faithful in putting into place what has needed to be put into place, that we don't worry about any of it. We will keep you up to date on what happens.

Being a parent, your mind begins to think of all the "things" on the list that need to be done before we go and it can be somewhat overwhelming. So, please be in prayer that we continue to be looking to God for direction and not get caught up in the "to do's" forgeting that He is the one in control.

Thank you!