Where in the World--Day 9 and beyond!

Aloha. I'm sorry that it has taken me two weeks to get this post posted. We woke early on Wednesday, June 6 and went to the airport in Oakland, CA to begin the final leg of our journey to Hawaii. We completed lots of paperwork to allow Fitz to travel and we boarded the flight for the final 5.5 hours of travel.

When we arrived in Honolulu, they paged our name on the airplane and took Fitz away from us. We went to retrieve our luggage and then made our way over to the Animal Quarantine Station. After filling out more paperwork we had Fitz and we were on our way to our new home.


On Thursday, June 7 our Matson container arrived at our house and the Killens (District Superintendent) and the Wongs (Pastor of The Bridge) came and helped us unload. The last two weeks have been busy with unpacking boxes and settling in. Last night we got pictures and artwork hung on the walls so we are feeling just about done with the moving phase. Our little blue car also survived the trip with Matson and we picked it up over at Sand Island on Monday, June 18.

Tim is serving as an Associate Pastor at The Bridge while we are working on the plans for The Point. Debbie is already active with the worship team at The Bridge and Alex is participating in youth group activities. This coming week is VBS for The Bridge. Debbie and Tim will be teaching one group of the kids and Tim and Alex are both doing drama for the week. Pray for the kids who come to VBS that they will experience the love of Jesus as we teach and play with them.

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One final photo for this post. Fitz seems to be enjoying his new home in Hawaii. However, I'm not sure that he enjoys wearing a flower lei around the house.

Thanks for being a part of our Prayer Partners Team and for praying for our journey to Hawaii.

Where in the World--Day 8

Tuesday was another non-travel day...although we did log quite a few miles on the car. We had to drive from our hotel to the aiport to pick-up a rental car and then to Richmond CA to drop the PT Cruiser with Matson for shipment to Hawaii. Here is a picture of our little blue car before we left home in KS. It has sure logged a lot of miles in the past week. I'm going to put a map of our full trip in this post. We have travelled a long way, but it has been a great trip and we have enjoyed seeing God's creation as we've travelled the Western US.

Tonight is a casual night relaxing in the hotel before the flight tomorrow. Alex and Fitz have spent a lot of quality time together in the back seat of the cruiser and on a variety of hotel beds like in this picture.

Where in the World--Day 7

Monday was our shortest travel day of the trip. We left Sacramento at 10:30 and we arrived in Oakland at 3pm. However, we made a few stops along the way. We discovered that the Jelly Belly factory is located in Fairfield CA and it was less than a mile off I-80. We had to stop. We had a 40 minute tour of the factory and then spent another 40 minutes in the gift shop where they give out free samples and sell the rejected jelly beans. They call them "belly flops".





When we left the factory, we decided that we were hungry. We took a wrong turn trying to get to a restaurant that we saw off the highway and we ended up on the Napa Valley. We got to see the grapes growing along the road and we were able to eat a California legend at In-N-Out Burger.






















We found our way back to the highway and passed the Matson shipping center in the Oakland area. Our goods went through Long Beach, but it was neat to see all the containers stacked up and the loading cranes like the ones that loaded our stuff.

After we arrived at the hotel, we found a place to get the car cleaned for its journey on the Matson ship. We drop it off on Tuesday and hopefully we'll have it in Hawaii in a couple of weeks.

Tuesday will be a busy day of errands picking up the rental car, dropping the Cruiser and doing internet check-in for our flight.

Where in the World--Day 6

Today was a non-travel day in Sacramento. We attended a church plant (The Crossing Church) in West Sacramento. It was a nice service and the folks were very friendly to us. We enjoyed lunch and a relaxing day at the hotel pool.

Where in the World--Day 5

We left Salt Lake City at 7:30am this morning and drove 644 miles and arrived in Sacramento at 5:30pm. This was the longest day of driving for our whole trip, but we survived.


We are going to have a nice dinner and Alex has plans to try out the first outdoor pool of this trip. Weather was great all day long and we especially enjoyed a quick stop at the salt flats west of Salt Lake City. Check back tomorrow to find out how we spent Sunday in Sacramento.

Where in the World--Day 4

Today was another non-travel day. We enjoyed a day of beautiful weather seeing some of the sights of Salt Lake City. We spent a couple of hours touring Temple Square (the home of the Mormon Church). We were lucky enough to arrive right before an organ recital began in the Tabernacle. That is an amazing musical instrument and facility. Pictured below is one of the temple spires and a photo of the organ inside the tabernacle.

We are gearing up for a lengthy travel day tomorrow. We will be traveling to Sacramento. We have been blessed with good weather and even better swimming pools (this information from Alex!)

Update for Yesterday

I was so tired last night I forgot to include the map for our days travel. We left Golden Colorado via Grand Junction Colorado and arrived at Sandy Utah only 507 miles later.


I just got off the phone with Matson and our household goods are already sailing on the Pacific Ocean. They are on the ship Manukai and are scheduled to arrive in Honolulu on Sunday, June 3. We don't even get there until the 6th. Thankfully, they will hold it for us until we arrive. Thanks for praying. Things are going very well for this journey.