مع السلامة امريكا

Well, here we are...our last few moments on the American continent for who knows how long. Truthfully, leaving the country doesn't bother me as much as leaving our family behind, but there are still some things I'll miss about living here.

Grass, for one thing. I like grass. And friends, and family, and little comfort things like peanut butter and normal cheese. But, we'll adjust. Life everywhere is normal. People live everywhere. Therefore we could, hypothetically, live anywhere. It just takes some time to accept that lifestyle as normal.

We're looking forward to being back in the Middle East again. I love listening to the Call to Prayer. And the falafel shops all over the place. And camel crossing signs.

As odd as this sounds, Andrew and I both knew we would be back in Cairo at some point in time. We absolutely loved being there. The weather was perfectly not-too-hot, the sky was relatively clear, and our hotel was amazing. We found Cairo to be beautiful and intriguing. In short, we loved it.

We talked about coming back after we visited the branch on Friday. We knew then that we'd be back.

I think that was the Lord's way of preparing me to go. He knew we'd be back, so he made sure to make Cairo as beautiful to us as possible...so that we'd want to go back (not everyone enjoyed it as much as we did, apparently).

Since coming back to the States, we've planned our lives around going back, even though we didn't know when or why we'd be back. Every purchase that we've made, every little thing that we've done did not happen without thinking of moving back to Egypt at least once.

It's been remarkable how everything has happened to get us to this point. We definitely see the Lord's hand in our lives. With the financial aid that we've received and the people we've been able to meet and how everything has worked out...there is no way this is coincidental. We know this is where we're supposed to be.

We've both been rather in control of our emotions, unlike last time we moved to the Middle East. I don't think I ever lost it quite as badly as I did when we moved to Jordan. I was a complete basket case then. I've held together fairly well this time, which is definitely a blessing.

Anyway, before I get too sappy, I'll just say that we're so excited to be off on our adventure.

Now for a Rachel story... (how's that for a subject change?)

We've decided to take pictures of our child(ren) in front of a special landmark by each of our places of residence. In this case, it was the sign outside of our apartment complex.

We took Rachel down to the sign and got all ready to take a picture of her. Andrew went and set her in the grass; I was the one with the camera. Getting a picture of Rachel was difficult. She wouldn't smile or look at us and she kept whining and trying to climb up the wall.


After getting a few awkward pictures, I went to go get her.

Andrew had set her down in a little patch of thistles in her bare feet! Silly Daddy!