Back Overseas

A happy little doggy greeted me in the night late on January 21st as I returned to my apartment in Bamboo Forest after a nearly three month absence. She has hardly left my side since then.

Due to all the security measures I have to use on my computer when here, the internet is slowed down to a turtle's crawl. It's a bit frustrating to use the internet now.

Anyway, thanks for lifting up my travels, and I'll be in touch again sometime soon.

Wow, thanks!

Thanks to those of you who have written/called/visited in the past couple of months, but especially during the past week. I got 33 birthday cards, and I haven't stopped to count the Internet greetings I got. And some of you didn't know it was my birthday, but you kindly wrote/called/visited/gave gifts anyway.

By the way, I had one of the best birthdays ever!

I want to write to thank all of you personally, but those individual thanks will come later. I have to leave here in less than 24 hours and I don't have everything packed. Plus, I have to go to the bank, the doctor, the hardware store, the post office, and renew my driver's license. Things are hectic. I need to get up at 2 a.m. tomorrow, so I plan to be in bed by 7 p.m. tonight.

Today is the only day I am both eligible and present in the USA to get my driver's license renewed before it expires 362 days from now.

My flight plan: Here to DFW (20 minutes) to Tokyo (14 hours) to Shanghai (3 hours). The longest layover is in Dallas for four hours. My first flight leaves at 7:10 a.m., but I need your prayers at least as early as when I check in at 5:00 a.m. Wednesday. :-)

More news soon!

Running Out of Time

Uh-oh. I only have four full days left before I leave the country to return to Asia, and one of them is going to be spent traveling from the USA east coast back to Texas. Yikes! What happened to the time?

Please remember me as I run to buy a few last things, figure out where in the WORLD I think they will fit in my already full luggage, say good-byes (the hard part), get some sleep, do banking, walk my parents' dogs one last time (not that the white one even likes me very much, but I still kind of like her anyway), mail off some paperwork after I do the paperwork, reconfirm flights, etc.

And, though I know it is not your fault Mr. late Martin Luther King, Jr., your birthday, which is now a banking holiday, did not fall on a very helpful day. How I am I supposed to go to the bank when it is closed?

And, despite the way things sound, it is not all about me. My mom has a doctor's appointment Tuesday morning (I leave Wednesday morning) -- I pray that all the news is good.

Worth Propagating

"The reason some folks don't believe in missions is that the brand of religion they have isn't worth propagating." -- unknown