Canadian Cousins

After flying over half a dozen flight segments, we were really anxious to get settled at our next destination - Beamsville, Ontario, Canada. But we should not have gotten too excited. Because of a delay, we missed the very last flight of our travels. We ended up staying the night in Cincinnati on Friday night instead of in Canada. Thankfully we were able to fly into Toronto on Saturday morning. The only hiccup was that we did not get any of our luggage until Sunday night. We are blessed that Hannah is such a good traveller. She did exceptionally well on the flights! Now we are here and enjoying being with the Ford family (and attempting to get over jet lag). Yesterday we had lunch with the family. Hannah really enjoyed playing with her cousin, Eowyn, and meeting her new cousin, Kiera. We are looking forward to our time here in Canada.

Hannah meets her Canadian cousins,
Kiera and Eowyn. Craig enjoys playing with his nieces too!!

Hannah was very intrigued by the baby and loved giving Kiera kisses.

Japan

Fun with Jonathan, Michiko, and Hijiri Straker in downtown Sendai

Craig and Hirotaka in Tokyo. We have not seen Hiro since we graduated from York together in 2001, so it was a fun reunion. You still have great English, Hiro!!

Fords in Sendai, Japan

At the train station with Mamiko and Hirotaka



Our missionary friends, Joel Osborne and Ben Berry at Matsushima

We really enjoyed our time in Japan for one week. It was such an encouragement to visit our friends and to see what mission work is like there. We were so impressed by the Japanese people. Their service was incredible and they were very courteous. We got to try lots of new foods. (Joel, you can hold the tofu next time!) We actually really liked almost all of the food we tried and Hannah was perfectly content to eat rice almost every meal since it is one of her favorite foods. Thank you to our friends in Japan for being such great hosts. It was a fun week! Come visit us in PNG some time!!!

Beginning our Travels

Hannah eats with chopsticks for the first time in Japan.

Meeting New Friends --
Hannah meets Hijiri, son of Jonathan and Michiko Straker, in Sendai, Japan.
Saying Good-bye to Friends --
We spent a day at the beach in PNG with friends before leaving the country. Hannah will sure miss Rochelle Reese while we are on furlough!

Parks are a little bit different in Japan. Look at this huge slide!!

Pictures

Hannah loves the flowers!


Hannah is so excited to be at our new house. She is playing on our big front porch.

Here is our moving crew. Most of them are members at church.

Hannah loves Susan, a Christian sister. Susan helps us at our house every Monday.

A Much-needed update...

It sure has been too long since we updated our blog, but we really do have a good excuse! Well, at least for the last 3 1/2 weeks....

Our New House
We finally moved into our new house - the one that was supposed to be completed 6-8 weeks after construction began in November. We moved into the house in the middle of May. Needless to say, we were delighted to finally have our own home. Unfortunately, there is still no power at our house because there are some problems PNG Power is trying to rectify in the lines. So, we were able to have some great candlelight dinners. Craig also got a good workout carrying water upstairs from the rainwater tank. Since the tank has an electric pump, we are not able to have running water. We got just a tiny taste of what village life is like. I survived for about 3 1/2 weeks, but hope I do not have to do that again! I am hoping that the power will be fixed by the time we return home in October.

Furlough
We are now officially on furlough. We left on June 13. We flew from Alotau to Port Moresby, PNG and then to Brisbane, Australia. We overnighted in Brisbane and then flew to Tokyo the next day. We spent one night in Tokyo and then took a train to Sendai. We are now staying with some good friends from York, Ben Berry, Jonathan Straker, and Joel Osborne, who are doing mission work here. We will be here for about a week, then head to Canada. What a shock going from slow-paced Alotau, PNG to fast-paced, technological Japan. We are certainly excited to have access to good internet and, well, we are just excited to have running water and lights again!