Trip to the States for International Conference

July 12, came quickly and it was off to the States for a short trip to our sending organization's conference. We were excited to be refreshed and renewed at the conference but not excited about the long trip there.

Our trip began by sweet Thai friends taking us to the bus station in our city.

Then some of the kid's school friends suprised us by showing up to say "goodbye". You would have thought we were going to be gone a lot longer than 3 weeks. It was quite nice. They all waited with us until our bus arrived.

And we are off on a 3 hour bus ride to Chiang Mai where we will catch a plane!

The Thai people were great as they assisted Samantha in getting a wheelchair at the airport. If you remember, the Dr. had said since she had the leg injury she would have to have wheelchair assistance in the airports. It was a huge help!

We arrived in Seoul, Korea, very tired and ready to relax for a while. Davis took over as Samantha's protector and he pushed her wherever she needed to go for the rest of the trip, which was a lot because we got on 5 different airplanes on this trip.

When Samantha was laying down Davis decided to sit in it just to see how it was. I think he preferred walking.

This was our little home away from home in Korea as we had a 12 hour layover. We pushed 3 of these together and for a long time we were all 4 sleeping on them together. We were worn out! This picture was after some rest!

Well, we finally made it to the States but still have a way to go, we are now in Seattle, Washington!

Still jetlagging we finally made it to our International Conference (ICON 12). This was the resort where we had the conference and just the scenery itself cried out to the greatness of God!

We were so blessed at ICON for many reasons. They had so much planned for the week for our kids. They had great times of worship, prayer, testimony, and teaching to really stir up more faith in them all and more love for Jesus. But they also had many great times of fun as well. One surprising thing was the weather. It was really cold there and coming from Thailand, where it was really hot, that was somewhat unexpected. We had on jackets and sweatshirts all week, which was kind of fun!


REUNITING WITH FRIENDS AT THE CONFERENCE WAS SO MUCH FUN!!!

This is our teammate's daughter Joy. We were so excited to see them because they had been in the States all summer!

And Samantha and Davis made lots of new friends. It was good for them to be able to spend a lot of time with other missionary kids around the world who really understand them. So now they both have new friends!

It was the day to leave the conference and we had to leave at 6AM to catch a flight. Samantha and Davis had a faithful friend working at the conference from TX, David, who got up just to come and say goodbye! We had a wonderful time at our conference. We were truly refreshed, renewed and faith was stirred greatly to continue to expect the harvest as we head back to Thailand.