This past year....hellos & goodbyes, coming & going

Everytime we leave somewhere its so bittersweet,  we say goodbye to family to go and see more family in a different place then move on to the place where we believe God has called us to serve.  Now in the next month we have more goodbyes coming up, we leave Youngstown on 19th July to head back to Northern Ireland arriving on 20th.  This is the longest time Bill has been home since 2011 and its going to be hard for him to leave.  The boys have loved seeing their cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents yet they are moving onto a place with more cousins, aunts & uncles and grandparents which they are excited about too.

 

No matter where we live we feel guilty about not being in a different place.  We felt guilty leaving Haiti when we did with such short notice, now we feel guilty about leaving Bill's family, then those same feelings will rear their ugly head again when we say goodbye in Northern Ireland. 

This past year we have been in Northern Ireland, Canada, Haiti, Florida and the Dominican Republic, on paper the excitement of being able to visit so many places looks great but the reality of doing it with two, now three small children is just not quite as much fun.  I don't even want to count up how many different beds the Sam & Joel have slept in in the past 12 months.  We are so thankful they travel well and will sleep anywhere as long as teddy & big doggy (for Sam) and blanky and dummy (for Joel) are along for the ride!

This past year we also had lots of visitors come and see us in Haiti.  My dad, Bill's sister, my sister and Bill's friend Brian. Even though these visitors make us say more hellos and goodbyes we love having them.  So count this as an open invitation, if you want to come and visit us in Haiti please do! We will show you where we work, where Sam goes to school, the local community, church and of course a Caribbean beach!

 Please pray for us as we prepare to leave Canada and move onto the next place we call home.  We will be in Northern Ireland until 1st September and arrive back to yet another home on 2nd.  We will go to Calgary this week to apply for Jacob's passport.  In order to get an express passport you have to show proof of travel so we went ahead and booked our flights, pray that the passport application goes smoothly. Today is Canada day so I had to be culturally appropriate and dress the kids in maple leaf clothing! Happy Canada Day! 

Joel is very patriotic!

We were speaking in Bethel missionary church in Hanna and then went to their town celebrations with BBQ, bouncy castles, face paints and ice cream!The boys had so much fun Sam wanted to know when the next Canada Day was!