The Long Way Home: Part 3

Manila to New York City: July 19

Home, Sweet Home.  We are finally back in the US, currently at my parents' house in Allentown, PA.  We woke up at 3AM this Thursday, headed to the airport and later that morning boarded a plane bound for NYC via Tokyo, Japan.  After four hours to Japan, two hours in the airport there and twelve and a half hours to JFK, we were checking through immigration and putting our passport away (for at least a little while anyway).  Once again, Soleil did great on the plane and enjoyed having Lola and Grandpa to keep her company part of the way.  Now she has met all four grandparents, having met Bestefar (Norwegian for grandfather) for the first time and "re-meeting" Koko (Lingala for any grandparent but in this case referring to my Mom) at the airport yesterday.  We're still trying to shake the travel fatigue so I'm calling it a night and going to bed; just wanted to let you know that we've made it safely back and are once again stateside.  Thanks to all who prayed for our travels!

On Our Way Home...

It has been over two weeks now since we left the Congo and we still haven't made it home to the US yet.  Instead, we've made our way to Michelle's childhood home, the Philippines.  Michelle's parents, Ron and Alice Watters, are missionaries here and they live in Quezon City in Metropolitan Manila.  It has been an incredible vacation and we still haven't had time to rest.  I'm sure that will come at some point but so far we've been having too much fun!

A truly grueling vacation

We arrived in Manila late on Tuesday, July 3rd.  Tired as she was, Soleil took time to try out her new stroller, an early Christmas gift from Grandpa and Lola (Tagalog for grandmother).

On Wednesday we got haircuts and went "malling".  On Thursday we went for a drive around the neighborhood Michelle grew up in and went to a discipleship group in the evening with Michelle's parents.  On Friday, Ron and I went to Corregidor, a famous WWII island battleground at the mouth of Manila Bay while Michelle visited some of the ladies from Alice's Partners in Ministry group at IGSL.  We finished up the day at another discipleship group.   

Riding in a "tricycle" through Quezon City

Ruins at Corregidor

Gun Emplacement on the Island

On Saturday we drove up to Subic Bay.  The primary attraction for the day was Zoobic, a little animal park.

Petting a Goat

"What is that?"

Soleil trying to shake hooves with a deer

Feeding the canaries

On Sunday we went to church and then went malling again.  What else are you going to do to get out the heat?

On Monday we boarded a Philippine Airlines flight for the island of Cebu.  Our destination was a beach resort on the north side of the island called Alegre.  We spent four days here playing in the sea, kayaking, snorkeling, eating and (in my case) getting a bad sunburn.  Well worth it.

When we got back from Cebu we had a day to get our clothes washed and head back to the airport, this time en route to Taiwan.  Michelle's parents were missionaries in Taipei before moving to Manila when Michelle was in first grade.  So we spent three days in Taipei sightseeing and touring their old neighborhood.

We got back to Manila at 3:30 this morning and back to the house by 5:30.  Despite the lack of sleep, the late nights, the early mornings and the constant traveling, Soleil has been a real trooper.  She has seemed to really enjoy this vacation and has been making friends everywhere she goes, whether it's

with a flight attendant on Philippine Airlines,

on the beach at the resort,

in the Taipei airport,

at the restaurant in Cebu

with a fellow hippo-lover at the zoo

or with a young pianist in Manila.

Today we visited the International Graduate School of Leadership (IGSL) where Ron serves as the Academic Dean and heads the Theology Department.  We have one more day left here in the Philippines and all that we have to do is to pack.  We leave Manila the morning of July 19th, touching down at JFK twenty hours later.

Departure Service

Our church, Paroisse CECU Libenge-Moke, had a farewell service for all of us one evening during our final week in Gemena.  We hosted it at ELIKYA, between our house and the classroom building. 

This short clip was filmed during the final 'postlude' as people were drinking tea and the service was wrapping up.

Last Days

We are now exactly one week removed from our departure from Congo.  It is still hard to believe that we won't be going back.  We have left before- several times across the river to Bangui, once to Gamboula for Soleil's birth and once to Kenya for the RG Africa Conference- but this time there is no expectation of return, no timeframe, no date.  It is strange.  

Our last days in Congo were a flurry of activity.  We intentionally left our final week in country free of any training responsibilities so that we could focus on packing up and saying good-bye.  Yet, somehow, there seemed to be plenty of last-minute work-related things to wrap up even during the final week.  Many people invited us over for a final meal together so we ate very well, no doubt about that.  Our church in Libenge-Moke also had a special church service at the Elikya Center to bless our departure.  We had our own church service as well with the team we've spent the last few years training.  They have become so much more than colleagues.  They are true friends and we will miss them dearly.  I am sure that they have taught us more than we ever did over the course of our time there.  We worshipped together and prayed for each other.  The tears were never far from the surface. 

The hardest part was saying good-bye.  For me, the opportunity to come back to Congo, where I'd spent eight years growing up as a kid was something completely unexpected when it was presented to us back in 2008.  So to come back and be able to reconnect with the land and the people was something I will be forever grateful for.  And to be able to return with my wife, to live there together and to raise our daughter there for the first eighteen months of her life are blessings that will forever impact who we are as a family.  And now that it's over there's this perpetual feeling that two years isn't long enough.  It's long enough to adjust to the culture, learn the language well, make good friendships and even complete the work that we went to do.  So it is long enough.  But it feels as though, after all that, it's just the beginning; like the full potential of the ministry and the work and the friendships were just coming to full bloom.

The last two years have been such a blessing and such a rare gift of an experience.  It was never easy, to be sure and filled with it's share of dissapointment, discouragement and sorrow.  But God has taught us so much through it.  And the pain in leaving is a gift too.  It means simply that the Lord forged something of great value between us and those we are leaving behind.  In that sense I am happy for this sadness that is tempered by the accompanying hope of return.  If not for two years, then two months will do; if not for two months, then two weeks.  God knows and we are confident that these things too will work together for good.      

Special June Newsletter

Here you will find our June newsletter.  It has some important information concerning our return to the US and our future plans.  

One of the reasons we are sending out this special newsletter is to invite you to join our support team.  We have made the decision to continue on with ReachGlobal and are once again raising support. The letter and additional attached document will have more information on what we'll be doing this next year, our future plans within the mission and how you can play a part.  You’ll also find our summer schedule in the newsletter so if you want us to stop in for a visit when we’re in your area just let us know and we’d be happy to.

We're not in Congo anymore...

Manila, Philippines

The Long Way Home: Part Two

Kinshasa to Manila: July 2-July 3

Following two good days of rest and visiting and a little bit of sightseeing in Kinshasa, the day of our departure from Congo finally arrived.  Following prayer at our hotel with President Bosokpale, his wife Janette, Vice-President Badi, Pastor Selenga, Jim Snyder, Kevin Kompelein and others, we got into a truck and headed for the Kinshasa airport.  Passing through immigration we ran into a single difficulty: Soleil did not have a visa.  We had been told by immigration in Zongo (across from Bangui) that she was covered under her mother's visa but this was, apparently, misinformation; definitely not how they operated in Kinshasa.  Assessing the penalty for not having a visa and the cost of the visa itself we were asked to pay $2500 for her.  Luckily, we were prepared for this encounter and we soon had Selenga on the line, who called the chief immigration official in Kinshasa who told the immigration officials we were dealing with to let us go through.  It's all who you know, I guess, and we were blessed to have some amazing assistance in getting through the airport financially unscathed. 

We boarded an Ethiopian airlines flight to Addis Ababa and said our final goodbyes to Congo as we took off on the first stretch of our 26-hour leg to Manila.  Soleil did extremely well on the trip and we enjoyed pretty good seating all the way through to the Phlippines, getting either bulkhead seats or three seats each flight.  Soleil slept through our entire 4-hour layover in Addis Ababa and before long we were on our way to Hong Kong via Bangkok, Thailand.  This was the big one: 13 hours, but again, Soleil slept for about 3 hours and we made it to Hong Kong incident-free.

Soleil out cold in Ethiopia

Our two-hour layover turned hectic when we were informed that to enter the Philippines we were required to present a printout of our tickets leaving the country as proof we would not be outstaying our free 21-day tourist visa.  We didn't have this and weren't able to obtain it until the last minute, finally managing to arrive at our gate halfway through boarding.  All's well that end's well, though, and we made it to Manila with all of our baggage.  We got into Michelle's parents' place around midnight, happy to be done with traveling for at least a few days. 

The Long Way Home: Part One

June 30: Gemena to Kinshasa

Since coming back from the RG Africa Conference on May 5^th, we have had June 30^th always in the back of our minds, knowing that that would be our final day at ELIKYA.  We have been working and watching our remaining time whittled down from a month and a half to several weeks, to just a few days and finally the day itself came.  We had packed one suitcase and a trunk, two carry-ons and a backpack.  The rest of our stuff was either left for the Elikya Center or had been given away in the preceding days.  Our luggage sat in the living room while we ate a final breakfast of bread and guavas and waited for the truck to arrive to take us to the airport.  When it finally came up the road shortly before 7AM we felt the finality of it.  Now just a few more minutes and ELIKYA would go from being our home to being a place where we once lived and worked.  We brought our bags out and began saying goodbyes.  Then we locked up the house and climbed into the truck and were off to the mission where we waited for a couple hours as our luggage was taken to the airport and formalités dispensed with.  The truck then returned for us and within an hour and a half we were on board a flyCongo airplane awaiting departure for Kinshasa via Mbandaka. 

Our flight was uneventful and by midafternoon we had navigated N’djili airport (with a lot of help) and were lodged in the Hotel Finesse, where a buffet dinner awaited us.  Eating French fries, grilled chicken breast, rice and cabbage and  drinkinga Sprite in an air-conditioned room made Gemena feel worlds away already.  So this afternoon we are to have a pizza lunch with Pastor Selenga—a former CECU President and currently the Director of ReachAfrica—and his wife, Claudine.  Then we are to see the sights in Kin this afternoon and this evening prep for our departure early tomorrow afternoon.

Soleil in the back of Selenga's car, checking out Kinshasa

Kinshasa downtown streetscape