You Really Can Go Home Again

This weekend we had the privilege of speaking in our home church. It was Faith Promise weekend for Marysville Nazarene. We spoke last evening (Saturday) for the dinner, and then this morning for both worship services.

We saw many old friends, and met a number of new ones. The church is currently in a time of rapid growth; it is exciting what is happening there. We have only known Pastor Craig Laughlin through Facebook and email, which isn't a perfect way to understand a person; now that we've been with him, we have felt his heart for the gospel and his heart for missions. We are beginning to really feel that he is our pastor!

We were also very happy to know that the church exceeded it's goal for the Faith Promise pledges for mission giving for the coming year.

We have also enjoyed the hospitality of our friends Gayle and Ralph Yunker. Our friendship goes back to the days when we lived in Arlington. We got acquainted through Band Boosters at Arlington High School, where our sons were both involved in Concert Band and Jazz Band. They are Christian brother and sister, and love missions.

The final bonus is that my sister Cammi and her husband Denny as well as Judy's sister Jacquie have joined us here for the weekend, and we are going together for a week of vacation on Orcas Island. That is a very photogenic part of the world, so expect good photos here over the next few days.

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Faithful Friends

We spent Friday evening with our long time friends Jim and Nancy Fletcher and Hal and Stephanie Clark. We've been friends since the second year of med school (for Jim and me--first year for Hal), and have stayed close ever since. Jim and I were partners in Whitehorse Family Medicine for 11 years. It was a great time of catching up, telling about our kids (10 among us) and even playing games. Oh, yeah, Nancy's great cooking add a lot to the evening.

Fletchers' youngest son Timothy and his fiance as well as our daughter Amy joined in as well. Great time!

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And Yet Another Judy

Well, for those of you who have gotten into the habit of checking this blog every day, I'm sorry to have left you hanging for a couple of days. We don't have internet access at our apartment in Nampa, and often have limited time when we are places where we do.

We are now in Arlington, Washington, where we lived for the 11 years prior to going to PNG, staying in the home of our friends Gayle and Ralph Yunker. Tomorrow we'll be knocking around Arlington, seeing what's changed and what's the same as in the "old days." We'll stop by Whitehorse Family Medicine (my old practice) and in the evening having dinner with Jim and Nancy Fletcher (my old partner--no, my relatively-young former partner) and Hal and Stephanie Clark (along with Fletchers friends going back to early med school days. Then on Saturday and Sunday, we'll be at Marysville Nazarene, our home church, for their Faith Promise weekend.

The photo is of Judy Mercy, Judy's latest namesake. She is the adopted daughter of Monica Tumap, our friend in Kudjip. The little Judy is beautiful, and the big Judy is most honored. The little one is also blessed indeed to have such a good, loving mom.

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The People With the Boring Life

Well, it doesn't seem like we have anything very interesting to tell everyone. However, we seem to be staying busy all day.

Our priority at the moment is to finish our deputation presentation and the associated Power Point presentation. In addition there are banking and financial chores, family matters, completing the furnishing and arranging of our apartment, keeping up on email, shopping (not for fun things), working on computer matters, various on-line tasks, and on and on. So right now our life is busy but boring.

You cant' take many interesting photos of that. Sorry.

Sam is off gold prospecting. That's right, gold prospecting. While the average college student in Idaho wants to go to some warm place, Sam and his buddies have packed up their sleeping bags, tent and gold pans, and are heading off to the Owyhees to seek their fortunes, just as their ancestors (never mind that fact that Sam's ancestors were in Korea) 140 years ago. They have heard of some recent successes there, and are off to check it out. If they don't freeze some critical portions of their bodies, I'll consider that their trip was highly successful.

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Being Motherly

You may think that this looks like a picture of a pile of dirty laundry. There's a good explanation for that. It's because it's a pile of dirty laundry.

What do college students do when they have a chance to go to their parents' house for the weekend or even a few hours? They take their laundry, of course. The rule when Sam was at home was that he did his own. And he must have done some since he's been at college. But it got late, and there was still a batch to go, so Judy offered to finish for him. I think it made her feel good.

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Home Again, Home Again

I promised more details, and here they are.

Our flights were from Mt. Hagen to Port Moresby on Saturday, to Brisbane (Australia) on Sunday, to Sydney and then on to San Francisco and Boise on Monday.

Drew, Andrea, Amy, Sam and Denny (my brother-in-law) were there to meet us, along with 2 of Sam's college friends. We drove straight to my Dad's apartment, where my sister Cammi was waiting and spent some time with there before going out to supper.

Then we went on to our apartment, kindly provided by Cammi, Denny and Denny's mom, Marge Ellis. It's a very nice 2 bedroom, 2 bath unit in a large appartment complex. It's modern and clean, and everything works! Sadly, there's no internet connection there, and it's too expensive to justify getting it at the present time. There is internet at the apartment "club house", but it closes at 6 PM. Anyone who knows me very well knows that this is not highly compatible with my life-style! But between that, my sister's house, and the occasional coffe shop hot-spot, we'll get by!

Yesterday (Tuesday) we went to get our Idaho drivers' licenses. We learned that we had to take the written test. Not feeling ready to "wing it" we went away to study near-by for a couple of hours. We didn't want to go home and back the next day, because it is pretty out of the way for us, and we had to depend on someone else driving. We went back a little later, arriving at 4:03, just to learn that they don't give the sritten test after 4:00! So we went home, studied some more and went back today and passed just fine. Now we can drive the Suburban that Denny has loaned to us!

I worked out with Sam and a friend at the university gym this afternoon, and Judy is out shopping with Amy. So, everything is pretty much right with the world for the moment.

For those of you who don't know our family, the top photo is me with my dad, Al Bennett, age 91. The second photo is Sam, Judy, Amy, Drew and Andrea.

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Home Safely!

We have arrived in Idaho. I'll tell more detail later. Thanks for all of your prayers and support.