Greetings From Cambridge

Dear Friends,

After another pair of marathon flights for the kids and a very long night in the Abu Dhabi airport (our eternal thanks to the individual who decided to install play structures in the waiting areas), we successfully arrived at Heathrow with Mike and Shawna who were also headed to the UK before making their way home. A tube ride, train ride and cab ride later we were at Ulrich's place and so tired we could barely see straight, but extremely thankful to have survived yet another journey across continents with the kids. We realized with some surprise that it has been six years since we have been back to Cambridge (the 2012 Olympic Games were our last excuse to visit), and the town has definitely grown up a bit in that short amount of time.




We've already spent time with Carol's friend who has moved into a castle near Peterborough, and enjoyed a massive pub lunch down by the riverside in central Cambridge, strolled through the market square, as well as hit up a few parks and playgrounds nearby to exercise the kids after such long and cramped travels.
It has been a blast to see Ulrich again and be reminded of the wonderful years Joe spent studying here before getting married. As always, there is limited time to spend typing on the computer, but we wanted to give a quick notice regarding our current location. Next stop... Ireland!

Eight Days Later...

Never mind.

It is now 8 days later and we are now making our way back to Nairobi by way of Lake Nakuru! I was pulled away from that last entry in the middle of a sentence, and with the very slow mobile data connection speeds and absolutely no time to spend just typing on the computer or uploading photos, my good intentions of keeping a regular journal for you have been crushed (but for very good reasons like trying to wrangle two highly energetic children while being exposed to some of the most amazing life-transforming work that I have ever seen).

Unfortunately, I still do not have the time or energy to put into words everything that has transpired since Carol and I sat awake that night in Ilula, but I have selected a few photos to try and help convey a little of our journey. Briefly, after arriving at ELI we were immediately welcomed into a wide variety of opportunities to both experience and share God's reckless love, acceptance, humility, forgiveness, and open invitation to experience true LIFE through song, prayer, testimony, fellowship,  exchange of ideas, games, meals, training, laughter, and shared physical challenges. We'll try to fill in the gaps with specific stories one way or another, in the future, but for the moment we wanted to let everyone know that the whole family is still safe and sound, and post at least a few photos for the folks back home.

An Incomplete Night's Sleep & Post

It is about 4am.

I am listening to our three year-old daughter sing the ABCs in the corner of our little temporary home here at the training center. The kids were both wide awake at 2:30am having not adjusted to the new time zone (it may take several days yet for this to happen by the looks of it), and little Petra has picked up a bit of a stomach bug that has put one of our blankets out of commission and kept her hovered over the sink for a couple hours. She is handling it very well all things considered, and we think it is just a typical travel bug, but we’ll keep you posted on her condition. Carol and Matea have headed back to bed for another attempted round of sleep.

All this unscheduled nighttime activity follows what has been an amazing first day here at ELI. It would take pages and pages to fully describe everything that has happened in our first 24 hours, but I’ll mention just a few of the highlights….

4 Years Later...

Dear Friends and Family,

Greetings! After a four year break from publishing our travel related activities, we are rebooting The Adventures of Joe & Carol. Of course there have been more than a few adventures since we last posted an update, but perhaps of a different nature than what one would expect after our world tour (or want to read on a public blog for that matter). However, despite our rather domestic tendencies of late, these have been exciting, challenging, and growing years for us as a family and we would never trade them for anything. Briefly, bringing the reader up to date, we have since:

• Cycled a tandem mountain bike from the San Francisco Bay Area to the middle of Utah
• Returned to Southern California for work and friendships
• Lived communally with some extremely generous friends of ours for 9 months
• Found a most amazing church family
• Bought a house
• Had a daughter
• Enjoyed many wonderful outings to various parks
• Traveled to Australia with 1 year-old daughter
• Visited family in a variety of wonderful locations around the West Coast US
• Had another daughter
• Tried some prototype camping with two kiddos
• Tried our luck at Reality TV
• Participated in many Spartan Races
• Learned that business travel is very different than personal travel
• Maintained a house
• In general did many of the things that people our age are supposed to do

However, we find ourselves once again putting common sense and stability aside, and with our two wonderful kids we are headed back to Africa! To make a long story short (so that we can spend our time writing actual updates rather than reminiscing about the past), we are leading a team of 8 adults (us and three other couples) from our church on a two-week short term missions trip with Empowering Lives International (ELI, one of the groups that Carol and I met early on our round-the-world expedition four years ago). We are thrilled to have this opportunity not only to see our friends at ELI again, but to head back out into the vastness of this world and share the vision of ELI and enormous needs of folks in Kenya with some amazing folks from our church who have blessed us over and over again while we have been growing our family and learning how to be adults.

Right, so here we are on a plane with a one year-old and three year-old headed for the UAE, and then Nairobi and then back to Eldoret and our friends at ELI (though this time on a smaller plane rather than hitchhiking with strangers). We’ll try to keep you up to date every so often with a story and photos, so keep checking back if you are interested. So far so good!