Our family arrived safe and sound back here in Tarakan just this morning. We're feeling kind of tired as our last flight from Jakarta started with a 2am taxi ride to the airport with 12 check bags and four tired kids. Actually, it took 2 taxi's. This was to Charlotte's delight as her favourite thing about Jakarta is counting taxi's, blue being her favourite. One time she threw a fit on the ground in front of our ride because it did not have the light-up Taxi sign on top..."It's not a Taxeet!!!! It's not a Taxeet!!!"
A couple surprises back home in Canada:
- Somehow I forgot that prices go up overtime. The rise of cost reminded us that what we thought was overpriced in Indonesia, is not as overpriced as we thought. The one exception: Costco hotdogs went down in price!! According to my calculations, a decrease of roughly 25%, not that I'm keeping track. Oh yah. I ate a few for the road. We don't have Costco hotdogs here, which is probably a good thing. But I'd certainly take a Costco, if they are looking to expand overseas.
- Winter driving is still crazy. In fact, we were a bit surprised that winter generally still exists and is going strong. Revelstoke gave us all the snow I could imagine or ask for, to the dismay of most Revelstokians. The road from Revelstoke to Vancouver was nasty in spots both ways. This was one of the main reasons (besides fatigue) that caused us to cancel our trip up to Prince George & Houston. But I must say, we were totally blessed by some friends of ours in Gibsons loaning a great vehicle to us while we were home. It ran awesome and was a real answer to prayer. Thank you Brian and Julie!!
- When spotting a Seagull at the Horseshoe Bay Ferry Terminal, Luke exclaimed to his cousins: "Wow!! Check out this massive Pigeon!! It's huge!!" Apparently he did not remember ever seeing a seagull.
- Helena was thoroughly confused what baby carrots were...She's eaten plenty of regular sized carrots, but baby carrots looked strange!
- On Simon's first day back he thoughtfully told me that he thought "Canada sure was a rich city".
- Charlotte...She just took everything in stride, including relatives she never knew she had and lots of snow to play in. Of course, her eating habits were a bit fussy, that is, until Amy made some Indonesian rice / chicken soup and she ate 3 helpings! As she was 6 months old when we left, it was so neat to have our family meet her, and her to meet them.
Thankful For Safe Travel
We are very thankful to God for watching over us during this trip, both on the snowy roads of British Columbia, and all of our flights to and from Indonesia. 1st Thessalonians 5:17 tells us to "pray without ceasing" and to "give thanks in all circumstances", and every flight we took and every highway we drove, either alone or with the whole family (10 different flights & a couple days on snowy roads) I had it upon my heart to pray for safety. I remember coming home on our flight from Hong Kong to Jakarta, thinking about how we were somewhere off the coast of Vietnam, and how 40 something years ago this was the very same air space that was full of B-52's & F-4's and who knows what else - all with the mission to bomb North Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Less than 2 hours after our flight landed in Jakarta, an Air Malaysia flight took off from Kuala Lumpur and went missing in this same area. As of now it is still missing and is all over CNN, BBC, etc. Very, very sad.
One Last Thing:
Last year my brother Jordan and my Dad were able to visit us here in Tarakan. Jordan was able to shoot a lot of footage of his visit, and edited down a some of it into a video. Of course I am biased, but I think it is awesome work by my brother. If you have not seen the links we already have on Facebook, please check this link out:
https://vimeo.com/88076506
