Saying Goodbye and Taking a Trip

When we bought this table 26 years ago at a second hand store in Switzerland, I never imagined all the joy that would occur around it.

For the past six days we have sat down at this table together for delicious meals, rich conversation, and heartfelt laughter. It's the first time that we've turned the table this direction to make room for everyone!

How I praise the Lord for giving us our children, their spouses and their children to fill our home with joy this past week. It has been such a very rich week.

But it's time to say goodbye, for now, and let everyone go on with their lives. Tyler and Lara will head back to Ostrava, Caleb and Haley will catch a train for Bratislava to go see Haley's family over the New Year, and Claire will make her 8 minute drive back home to Celadna!

Dave will stay home with our little dog, while I too take off for a few days.

In an odd turn of events, I am getting on a plane in Katowice, Poland today.

And doing something I've never done before.

Coming to the States for less than 24 hours to deliver a suitcase full of all our Christmas packages that will get mailed to our faithful family and friends who stand with us in the ministry.

I arrived this evening into Chicago where I dropped off the suitcase at a friend's office who works here at the airport. He will take it to another friend who will mail them for me after the new year.

This year's Christmas mailing is a bit different than what we've done in the past as we wanted to celebrate God's faithfulness to JV for the past 25 years.

Unfortunately the change in what we were mailing meant it went into a different price category here in Czech, and would have cost $15 per package. When we realized that a few weeks ago, Dave had the idea that, if I was willing, could save us money on the mailing.

Airline tickets are usually not cheap during December, but the day that we decided to explore this option, a ticket was available that was the cheapest we've seen in ten years! I checked with my friends in the States to see if they could help me (so I didn't have to rent a car and take the packages to mail myself) and when they said they could, I bought the ticket.

Unbelievably, it saved us $700 to do the mailing this way!

So if you happen to get one of those little packages, you'll know why it has a US postmark on it. And you'll know that it came with a lot of love from us, hand delivered to the States so that you'd get it before the holidays were completely over!