We are excited to come back to Canada for part of the summer. Below is a partial itinerary of where we will be. If we can we would love to stop in to see you if possible. (Large groups are "more efficient" than small ones.)
We leave Phnom Penh Saturday, May 30th at 11:25 am. Arrive in Hong Kong after 2:45 flight, to a long layover where we hope to leave the airport, for a quick visit into the city and supper. We leave Hong Kong at 12 midnight and arrive in vancouver at 9:05 pm on Saturday May 30th (hey, where did one whole day go???)That's after a 12 hour flight. Then, the horrendous layover--we hope to leave the airport to sleep at Edie and Al's as we don't leave for WInnipeg until 7:30 am the next morning, arriving in Winnipeg at 12:10 pm, a 2:40 flight.
Ok, so that's the juice on that. Wish us luck (or preferably pray for us) as this is going to be a long travel.
We are planning to reside at Dean's mom's place for the first 2 weeks of June, as she was able to get some much deeserved holidays at that time! yay! then with lesley's parents at the cottage and possibly in the city, for the second 2 weeks of June. This with little jaunts and sleepovers here and there with various friends and relatives. St. Anne, St. Vital, St. Laurent--better look out for us, all you "saints!"
We don't have an official departure date for leaving Manitoba, but we will be planning on getting to Edmonton and wherever the heck it is that Chuck lives BEFORE the July long, as we're scheduled to hang out in Calgary with Lesley's sister July 1-5. Hey Winship famiily, if you ever read this blog, are you going to be around that last week of June for a visit in Saskatechewan? We'd love to meet that newest member of your family, adn we missed you all last summer! Hopefully we'll connect with you before then.
Then, believe it or not, we're going to spend 2 nights camping on the lake in Kelowna with the entire Hein Clan (That's Dan Hein's family--he's our principal and good friend), as we've already booked to hang out with them and all their camping gear (We have no idea where ours is all packed) and it should be a blast!
That should set us up to arrive in Abbotsford July 8. Tim and Sylvia Smith have graciously offered us their basement for the month of July until we leave, to camp out there, and it's a great space for us-nice and roomy, private enough that we're not driving them crazy! So, we're really looking forward to that. They live close to the Abby Elem on McKee, so that's a new end of town for us. That should give us two Sundays at SOA, so hope you've all NOT planned your summer vacations then! We'll do what we can, right???
MIRACULOUS NEWS ALERT! I'm not sure how Greg Dyck, Darren Wall or Dave Jennings did it (they are all wonderful people who have been helping us with our paperwork, car issues and Dave, our sister-in-law's dad, has been collecting ALL our mail since we left and letting us know information all year! (WOW) but, between these three very helpful gentlemen, our van has been officially registered for the summer, so we will have wheels to do all this driving with! We were not sure how or if this registration across provinces was going to take place, but these guys did it for us, so we are super thankful, and really, it seems like a miracle out here to us that there have been no hassles (for us on this end) so it's pretty exciting! Now we're going to have to wear seatbelts for 2 months. that's going to be different...
As of this exact minute, we do not have departure dates finalized to return to PP, although it will be on or around July 24. Depends on a few factors that are not solidified, one of which is the decision for us to purchase one-way fares going back and leave our return options open at the end of next year, OR purchase return fares from this end, and get a very slightly reduced ticket price, but then we are locked in to returning out of PP. We are hoping we will have enough of our own cash to include Australia in our return travels, so that might mean we should just get to Cambodia this year, and work out our return details when we know more as the year transpires. Anyhoo, that's for later, but we would appreciate prayer in this way, as well.
So, we have begun some of the good-bye saying process, as we had our staff party this past Saturday. IT was hosted at a lovely little resort just outside of town with a gorgeous pool, and it was a very nice afternoon. There were speeches and tears for those leaving. High turnover is just a fact of life in this ex-pat/international world we are now living, and it's an ongoing thing. As hard as it may be at times, I revelled in the point that although we have many more good-bye's to say being in the position we are now in, we also get to meet more people this way, too! Also, God moves people in and out of Logos and they just have to continue their ministries in different places and often in different ways. There was much positive and blessings in the afternoon, and it was good.
Our last week is packed with "last" things--dinner with our landlords, dinner with some friends, getting final marks in Tuesday, finishing classes on Wed, cleaning up rooms on Thursday, and handing out awards and report cards on Friday! I think this week will fly. Oh ya, packing. How could I forget!!! Haha. I think that's going to take place sometime before we leave Saturday morning! I hope we can pack light--we are leavning most of things here and bringing as many WARM clothes as we can from here. I'm sure planning on a visit or two to VV Boutique to buy an extra sweatshirt just to wear at the beach this year! I know I say this over and over, but it's been + 40 C most of this week, and we just wake up, leave our aircon and sweat all day! We're so used to it, it's going to be cool to be cool again!
Last but definitely not least, we are on the precipice of buying a car for next year! As I write, it's sitting in our carport--we got to try it out this weekend. A 1989 Toyota Camr_. (The Y is missing, along with alot of the body work, which is par for the course here on PP street.) It was owned by a friend of Dean's who is leavning town, it's been well maintained, we can't beat the price and there's tons of Camry's all over town, which means used parts and maintenance is common, easy to find. It's a standard which turns me off a little, as the traffic here is enough to deal with without having to think about shifting all the time, but I did drive it a bit and think I'll get used to it. So, the deal should be finalized this week, then the car will sit for 2 months. Now is the time to buy as people are moving out, and things are going for sale. When we return in 2 months, everybody coming in will be looking for vehicles and the market is bad.
OK, I think that's about it. I'm coming home with PICTURES, lots of them, in actual HARD COPY format, that I will put into albums for anyone interested to see more of a glimps of our life and year out here. Cheap to print photos out here: 350 riels (that's about $0.03 per picture) so I got alot of them! Will album them when I get back right away. Been getting teacher gifts too, which is no easy issue out here--at least not for me. SO, all that year end stuff.
I will go and wish you God's Blessing until we either meet again, or we write again. Hopefully the former will come sooner!!! Looking really forward to seeing ALL of you!
L
:)
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