Tomorrow is our last day in India. We are going to be visiting some Sunday schools and visiting children in their homes. Please pray that everything goes smoothly and that we are able to connect with the children on a deeper level. Thanks!

Our last day in India was amazing. We visited a Sunday school in a small village here in Chennai early this morning. We had the opportunity to visit one of the boys in his home near the church. It was a small single room dwelling with a small separate kitchen the size of a closet. The boy lives there with his mother and father, sister and brother. He was such a happy little guy. It was very cool talking to him about his faith and the Bible. Afterwards his mother asked us to pray for them to find a place with more room. Right.

In the afternoon we drove a couple hours down the coast to a small fishing village. We parked and took a “fairy” boat across the river then walked a couple hundred meters to a grass hut on the beach where they were having Sunday school. (Show me more…)

Although we love to people watch, sometimes waiting around airports can get boring. So Brent and I entertain ourselves by writing blog posts together and taking pictures.

This morning at the Chennai airport, we realized we had some gnarly breath. Yuck. So we went to “Port House” to purchase some gum and candy. Our Toblerone bar was delicious. But our Batook Mustaka gum tasted like bathroom cleaner. Seriously.

We arrived safely in Johannesburg last night after a long day of travel. Thankfully we were traveling on Emerates airlines, national airline of the United Arab Emerates. As you can imagine, this means they can afford to spare no expense. We were flying on the latest in jumbojet fashion, the Boing 777. It was sweet. Each seat was equipped with a 10″ monitor and hundreds of movies to choose from, plus games and TV shows and video cameras displaying the view from the nose of the plane to keep an eye on how straigt a line the pilot could drive down the runway.

Tomorrow we leave for the rural area north of Johannesburg. It looks to be beautiful country in a completely different setting.

We haven’t had much internet access this week, and when we did we had very little time (or energy) to writeSo here is an update.We are at the Abu Dabi airport right now. We are exhausted and in desperately need of sleep. We have a 14.5 hour flight to JFK so we should be able to get some rest. The flight from Johannesburg to here was 7.5 hours. We are missing our boys and eager to get home and it seems as though time is uncooperative with our feelings. At JFK we have a 12 hour layover. Not funny. We are hoping to go into the city to meet up with some friends. Well then…where to start… We arrived in South Africa late Monday night. We spent Tuesday in a township where we filmed and had lunch with a young boy named Tumi and two of his friends. They live in a township called Phola Park. Because it is government-sanctioned, they have roads & utilities. The house was quite nice, a small 3-bedroom home. Tumi was excited to show us their new washing machine. This neighborhood stands in contrast to the “squatter camps” that you see as frequently as you see these official townships. The squatter camps are the tin shack shanty towns that you have probably seen in the media. Some of these communities stretch on for miles. (Show me more…)

We have been in Indiana all week recuperating with our children. This evening we arrived home in Ventura. What follows is part of a post I meant to post on Monday but couldn’t find the energy to finish and a bit of summing up.We landed in Indianapolis late last Sunday night. Our flight was delayed. Not funny. The layover in Abu Dhabi and the flight home was a bit of a stretch. The Abu Dhabi airport was filled with smoke and I got nauseous. And then on the flight I just couldn’t really sleep and continued to feel nauseated off and on. But we landed safely at JFK and that’s what counts. After visiting all the other countries we had visited I felt very blessed to be standing in the US PASSPORT HOLDERS ONLY line. I wondered how many people in the FOREIGN PASSPORT HOLDERS line wished they were in my line. The US isn’t perfect and we have our share of problems, but I am GRATEFUL this is where my citizenship lies. (Show me more…)