Travel Plans

Our plans are set for our travel to Central Asia. We received permission yesterday to proceed with purchasing tickets for our move. We will drive from Colbert to Portland on August 16th to spend a few days with Suzanne's parents. We fly out of Portland on Monday, August 25th about 1 PM. Since we cross the International Date Line we won't arrive at our new home until Tuesday close to midnight. I don't know just when we'll get to the school. It will almost certainly be a few days before we move into the house. There is an apartment in the city that might be available, but, the more likely option will be a small apartment at the school that is used for visiting professors. I believe that we'll be there for a few days while the house is made ready. (Note: the first picture in the previous blog post is a view south from the room at the school. Pretty cool, huh?)

We've discovered that the cost of airline tickets has gone up. Is that a surprise to anyone? The round trip (we're scheduled to return to the US on June 23, 2009) is about 25% higher than it was a couple months ago. With the increases in air fares we're having to rethink our option of returning to the States around Christmas. We have been planning to do some fund raising for a couple projects at the school while in the States. We included that trip in our budget for the year along with an ECC trip to Japan. There is now another ECC trip to Bangladesh I'm encouraged to make. We'll have to watch the fares and make sure that the schedule at the school is clear to make such travel plans. We also have to pray about wisdom to know what travel has His approval.

We haven't moved in 26 years and are out of the habit of packing up. We've discovered that we collected too much stuff over the years and it's hard to get rid of some things. As part of this move we have to set up a home. We have the blessing of a house on the school's grounds, but we will need to provide the furnishings. We are trying to purchase the previous president's things to set up the house. He and his family have left the country and moving their possessions wasn't an option. It is an advantage for us to be able to purchase them as we don't have to go through the process of shopping and transporting. This, however, is also proving to be more expensive than we had planned. (Actually, we hadn't budgeted to furnish the house. That is an extra expense we're hoping to provide for through the sale of our own household things - at least partly.) I guess we're learning as we go in this transition.

The emotions we had were interesting when we received permission to purchase our tickets. It was kind of, "Ok, it's now really real!" It kind of took our breath away. We are still convinced that this is the right move. And we're continuing to trust His leadership.