How to Pack Your Entire House and Change Continents

Here's a bit of a timeline describing what we've been up to for the last few weeks:

June 11 - 15

This was the final week of school at RFIS. Kevin spent most of the week giving and grading exams, as well as writing comments on report cards. The children spent the week taking exams and cleaning out their lockers, as well as beginning the process of saying good-bye to all their friends. On Thursday night of this week, Josiah graduated from high school, which was a great event. On Friday, we all attended the Senior Open House, which is a time in the afternoon for people in the community to say good-bye to the graduates and anyone else who might be going on furlough, like us. This was the last time that some of our kids had to see and say good-bye to several of their friends.

June16

The day of frantic packing. Several friends came over in the morning and we took apart and moved out almost all of the furniture in our house in preparation for our furlough. Most of the furniture went into a storage container on one of the centers, though some is being used by various people during the time we'll be in the States. In the midst of all our packing and moving, we also dropped off our two dogs to the two places that they will be staying while we are in the States, one to the Naine family and the other to RFIS (she'll be one of the "watch" dogs at school for the year). We settled for dinner that night in a friend's house (she was heading to a nearby city that day, so she offered to let us use her house for our last days in the country, a HUGE blessing!) with our house about 2/3's empty and the family pretty much exhausted. On Saturday night, we said good-bye to Josiah as he headed to Europe to meet four of his friends for a bike trip from Holland to Italy and back.

June 17 - 19

The completion of the frantic packing. Unfortunately, we didn't finish clearing out our house on Saturday, so Kevin and Lori went back on Sunday afternoon after church and continued the process for another few hours, taking a few more loads to the storage container and trying to organize the things that were left so that Lori and Daniel could finish the job on Monday morning. Kevin would not be helping with the move on Monday because he had to go back in to school for end of the year meetings.

Kevin's meetings went a bit better than the packing; though Lori and Daniel managed to get a great deal done, they weren't able to finish it all, and we went to bed Monday night still with stuff in three houses. Tuesday, Kevin went to school for half a day while Lori worked to eliminate the stuff we had in one of the other centers, where we had stored it in hopes of selling some of it; we did sell a great deal, but still had a fair bit to pack up. Kevin got back from school near 10:00, helped Lori and Daniel finish the packing and got all the rest of the stuff out of the houses and into the storage container. While they were working on that, Kaiah and Caleb were at the house where we were staying busy packing our suitcases for the flight to the States. The two of them packed every one of our bags, and if they hadn't managed to do that, we probably would have missed the flight!

In the early afternoon, we took time out for a wonderful "last supper" with some friends down the road, then, at about 4:30 in the afternoon, we piled into a van driven by some other friends and headed to the airport to check in; we took off at about 8:00 PM and started the long journey toward the United States.

June 19 - 20

Travel, travel, travel, travel, travel! We visited five different cities on three continents in the space of about 40 hours of travel, from the time we left home in Cameroon to the time we arrived home on Lookout Mountain in Georgia. Overall, these 40 hours were uneventful, which is always a very huge blessing. At the end of the journey we were joined by all of our checked luggage (a very good thing!) and a sweet reunion with Bradley, our oldest son, and Lori's parents in the Atlanta airport.

June 20 - 22

We spent a few days resting and visiting with Lori's parents on Lookout Mountain (as well as reorganizing all of our luggage). Then, we headed east to Athens, GA where we took up temporary residence at the Snows Mill Guest House, a wonderful house set up like a bed and breakfast but available free of charge to missionaries who are connected with certain ministries, Wycliffe among them. So, we moved in to the guest house and got ready to spend the next month resting, playing and having fun together as a family (though still without Josiah, who was spending these days beginning his bike trip through Europe).

June 22 - July 23

We spent a very restful and enjoyable month at the guest house in Athens, playing and spending time as a family. We shopped a bit, took walks through the woods and at various local parks, enjoyed a wonderful 4th of July fireworks display, went swimming at a local pool, and played lots of games here at the house. We also had a chance to connect a bit with a great church here in the area, Faith Presbyterian Church, which was a wonderful blessing for all of us. Overall, a very nice month.

Today, the 23rd, we are finishing packing up all of our stuff and getting ready to head north again for a rather short visit in Chattanooga with the folks in that area. If you are nearby, drop us a line; we'd love to get together if we can!




Stay tuned for more updates on our various wanderings!