Seattle / Oregon

We were totally blessed by long lost friends we connected with on Facebook a short time before arriving in Seattle. They housed us, fed us, and provided a car for us the whole time we were there. While we have been amazed at the number of homeless in the States, we were anything but that! Praise God. It was great to renew friendship and to encourage one another in God.

We spent most of our time in Springfield, Oregon, with Bob and Lisa Scroggins, past National Directors of YWAM NZ. It was wonderful to catch up with them and the family. They are doing so well and we had the privilege of speaking in the Church they pastor and also to local children and youth workers through a seminar Bob had organized, “Seeing Kids Grow in Christ.” We had positive feedback from both. While with them we stayed in their mobile home which was parked in the bush a few miles from their home. We also went touring in it for five days! What a blast.

Our camping experiences have had similar beginnings with snow falling on our first day! We were unable to see the beautiful Crater Lake that we had traveled to see, but we did see the beautiful snow, and were reminded afresh of the purity and creativity (every flake unique!) of our Maker. The weather cleared the next day and we were able to enjoy so much beauty in that State including water falls, huge boulders in the clear green river valley, and of course the Redwood trees! Although they are actually in Northern California. What amazing specimens they are. Just huge!! Can you see Chris? Click twice for a better view. They have carved a hole through one so that you can drive your car through it, yet it still grows quite healthily in spite of the abuse! The grandeur and majesty of God displayed all around us as we walked through the forests was breathtaking. Photos cannot do Him justice! And of course there was the odd bit of wild life to enjoy as well with chipmunks and Elk doing their thing.

We traveled up the West Coast of Oregon visiting beaches and taking in the sights before crossing back over to Springfield. What an adventure. Thank you so much Bob and Lisa for trusting us with your Mobile home! The first place we stayed we mentioned to the managers that our friends had lent us there RV and his jaw dropped in disbelief that anyone would be that crazy! It had all the mod cons of shower, toilet, central heating, microwave, coffee perk, etc, so we were quite cozy. And it had plenty of raw V8 power, reflected in the economy of 7 to 8 mpg! That’s about 3km/litre, or 35 litre/100kms! But worth every bit.

We had a few more days back in Seattle before flying out to London. We drove to Vancouver (Canada) to visit a good friend for a night, then back to the YWAM Base at Discovery Bay where the KK leaders for the North West USA live. What a beautiful serene spot, and what wonderful hospitality again. It was so valuable to be able to see another Base and how it is run. What a great job they have done in the 9 years since I was last there, just after they moved in.

While there we learnt that British Airways were having problems with Cabin Crew strikes and that our flight to London had been cancelled, but BA had won a reprieve through the courts and it had been reinstated. We were thankful! But then the day we were to leave, we discovered that the union’s appeal had been upheld and the strikes were back on again, but thankfully it did not affect our flight out. But it does mean that our flight to Zambia was cancelled. Three flights in our trip cancelled now! 4 actually, with one reinstated. Bizarre. Never had this happen before. But BA have rerouted us through Sth Africa with another airline and will put us up in a hotel for the night’s delay in London. So we suffer again! We get to Zambia one day later. We are really looking forward to seeing Rebecca again, and I think she is looking forward to seeing us too!

We enjoyed catching up with Dee and Hye Young (ex KK staff NZ) and their little girl Jamie for a few hours while in London. We left a couple of bags of medical supplies for Zambia with them and then flew off to Norway on one of the cheapie airlines. $20NZ for our ticket and $90 for the bag check in! Still a lot cheaper than a regular airline though. Certainly no frills, but a great, slick service.

God really surprised us here in Norway. We have been wanting to experience a King’s Kids Family Camp for almost two years. We would have been prepared to fly to Hong Kong where Dale Kauffman runs them if he had run one in the past 18 months, but that has not worked out at all. Then we heard they may be running one in the States, but that didn’t work either. So we had pretty much given up, but 10 days before arriving in Norway we had an email saying they were running a Family Camp here, so we joined when we arrived. One of the main leaders had done a couple of camps with Dale and his daughter Kiersten. So we are blown away at the blessing of God! We really enjoyed the concept and are so glad to have been here for this time and learnt a lot.

We are staying in a beautiful unit at the house of some King’s Kids workers. We are enjoying a lovely view down the harbour in Oslo and the beautiful spring growth of Norway. The KK worker is also involved in the local city council so I am getting my political passion stirred as well! They are a precious couple. We fly back to London on Friday, pick up our left luggage and fly to Zambia on Saturday, arriving Sunday. Then we bus to meet Rebecca en route on Monday.

Alaska

As promised, we got cold weather. But the warmth of relationships and love from family more than made up for that! What an absolute joy to see Duane, Lisa and Owen again, and to meet Hudson for the first time. Both kids greeted us at the airport as if they had known us all their lives, and remembered us from last week. It was awesome. And we got right into being poppa and granma! Last time we were here Owen was 6 weeks old and we saw his first smile. Now he is five and we saw him ride his bike without trainers for the first time, and saw his first encounter with the tooth fairy! With Hudson, everything was first for us, and what a joy it was to love on this little man and be loved in return. He is such a cutie and a real sharp cookie. He has a real sense of humour and is such good mates with his big brother. They are both so grateful and so polite. "Thank you!"s, "You're welcome!"s and "Excuse you!"s roll off their tongues so naturally. It was so fun to be able to spend such a good amount of time with them.

A couple of days after we arrived it snowed. Up to 20inches in parts of Anchorage. For us it was gorgeous of course, to everyone else a pain. It was so pretty, but it didn’t stay long on the ground with the next morning breaking with clear blue skies. Duane and Lisa put their house on the market a week after we got there, so the first week was spent painting and fixing things and getting it spotless for the market. It worked! They sold it to the first people that came through.

After all this hard work we took a vacation in an RV (motor home) for three days. That was crazy! We left in the middle of another snowfall! Not supposed to be much but enough to make the neighbours think we were nuts! Camping in this weather?! It snowed for about two thirds of the journey, then it began to look a bit brighter. By the time we found a place to park for the night (Portage – the lake we sailed on 6 yrs ago totally iced over), the clouds were breaking and the sun began to shine. We pulled the deck chairs out and sat wallowing in the surrounding beauty! Amazing. Then we heard it. About every 10 minutes or so a cracking, roaring sound, almost like thunder. We soon realized the sound was avalanches crashing down the mountain behind us. We watched, and in the next hour or two we saw 4 or 5 of them. Wow! God made our day!! We roasted marshmallows around a campfire, ate them with chocolate between crackers (s’mores!), and stayed the night in the centrally heated RV, and the next day was brilliant clear skies. Mountains covered with “icing” all round!

It was hard to get our heads around 15 hours of sunshine, but colder than our midwinter! But it meant for long days to enjoy the beauty. We traveled on to Seward which reminded us of Queenstown, actually an inlet surrounded by snow covered mountains. Breathtaking beauty again. The Sea Life Centre we visited was stunning with fish and other creatures we never see in NZ of course. A most restful and enjoyable time all round, in one of the most magnificent parts of the world.

Later in our stay we took a drive north to Hatchers pass. We passed signs warning us of moose, but that was as close as we got to them. The bush in Alaska does not get a lot of opportunity to grow! It is too cold, and then the weight of snow keeps the branches stunted when they do grow. We walked up a snow bound road to get close to an old disused Gold mining plant (Independence Mine). The peace and tranquility of the mountains was wonderfully refreshing. Frozen rivers with patches that had thawed. So picturesque. Squirrels, snow birds, gofers, beavers, busy doing their thing. The family pet dog was very interested in this activity! Foxes here turn white in the winter and brown during summer. Amazing God! Thankfully, we didn’t see any of them until we went to the zoo the next day where the kids were involved in an annual fun run. The beast that really got our attention was the polar bear swimming in his pond. We could look through the glass side of the pool. What a massive creature, but looked weightless and so graceful and cuddly as he played with a large piece of pipe and some other “toys” they had given him. But I was glad for the glass between us!

We completed our stay with an early celebration of mother’s day. We went to the “Moose’s Tooth” restaurant for pizza extraordinaire! It is so popular you can’t book, and have to wait for up to two hours depending on the size of your group before you can be seated. Great atmosphere, great food, but best of all, the company! We were sad to say our goodbyes, and promised ourselves never to leave it so long before visiting again. We were also sad to have missed a family gathering to farewell Chris’s mum. We did say our goodbyes before we left, knowing they could well be our last. She is now in a far better place.

We have arrived in Seattle and after a few days we will be traveling to Eugene Oregon to catch up with the Scroggin family. Then back to Seattle for a few more days before heading out to London where we meet up with Dee and Hye Young who used to work with us in KKNZ. Then off to Norway for a few days, then back to London to catch our flight to Zambia to meet up with Rebecca.