This week I’ve been packing for our Christmas trip to Budapest and Germany, but this photo is from the trip we took 5 years ago. Anyone recognize this haul of luggage?
December 1st, 2010 at the San Francisco airport. We were headed out for our one year adventure in the Middle East. Destination: Cairo, Egypt. Today, five years later, the wonder, mystery, and excitement of our overseas life lives on. We never could have imagined we would still be able to call this region home and that we’d be jumping at any opportunity to extend our experience even longer.
This group of babyfaced boys is ready for adventure. The world was waiting for them.
I can barely remember this chub.
And when did she change from this baby
to this coffee drinking girl?!
Delayed at the freezing Frankfurt airport — our first of many opportunities to adapt and improvise.
Early days in Cairo, exploring our town
I still miss these streets of Maadi (Cairo suburb where we lived), but if we hadn’t been forced to leave, we wouldn’t be where we are now and wouldn’t have been able to live in two additional Middle Eastern countries. It’s been a great lesson in seeing how God hasn’t given us what we’ve wanted, but he has provided in more abundant ways than we could ever have imagined.
We never made it to Tunisia or Morocco (our trip was cancelled due to the Arab Spring uprising), but who can complain when we’ve experienced Egypt, Oman, UAE, Turkey, Austria, Jordan, Germany, Crete, Poland, Bahrain, Israel, Uganda, India, and France? And in 2 weeks we’ll be able to add Hungary to the list.
5 years later and I’m still blogging. Not as often as in the early days, but I’m still working at it. It’s the kind of discipline that grows even more valuable with time. How much fun did I have this evening looking back at all of these old photos and reading about our early days in Egypt? Those hours of writing and editing have and will continue to pay dividends into the future.
Camille was only 5 months when we left the US. She’s now 5 and a 1/2. She’s spent essentially her entire life outside the US.
From our first Christmas — for our 5th Christmas we’ll be in Germany, hopefully enjoying a day on the ski/snowboard slopes.
Our newbie Middle East family. Such babies, all of us.
And present day — enjoying a few drops of rain the other day. Gotta take whatever the skies give. No taking it for granted.
We couldn’t do all of this without the support of our family who thankfully gives us the freedom to go where God leads us. Or stay where God has put us. And at the 5 year mark, we have no idea where he will send us next. Will we stay and finish Calvin’s senior year here? Will we move elsewhere in the Middle East? Will we get assigned to Europe or will we come full circle and head back to the US? We are hoping to find out in Feb 2016, but until then, we’ll continue to soak up as much of this as we can get.
If you want to start at the beginning, December 2010 is where our story begins (choose from the archive on the right). Some of my finest work hails from those days. Good times. These two linked posts covers our travel from the US to Egypt. I’m hoping the story continues . . .