Congratulations. You are now reading the very last of our updates from Jerusalem. Why? You guessed it! We are leaving Jerusalem.
I’ve finished my studies here at JUC and we’ve decided to set sail for home. For a long time, we had considered staying an extra year or half-year in order to study some more, but as things stand now, we feel that there are better opportunities for God to use us in Kansas City.
We actually leave in less than two weeks, but it’ll take us almost two months to arrive in KC. We’re flying to Rome to spend a month there studying spoken Biblical Greek. Then we’ll spend ten days in Greece and Turkey to see some New Testament places. From Turkey, we’ll fly back to Dallas to spend time with Joey’s family (which we’re excited about!) and then we’ll finally pull our travel-weary camels back into KC. We pray that the Lord will use us well there as we try to focus on loving people of all shapes and sizes.
We had some free time this last month, so we took a couple of trips. One was to Eilat at the very southern tip of Israel. It sits right on the Red Sea. If you remember the story, Solomon sailed ships from this area to bring back gold from Ophir. Later, Jehoshaphat tried to do the same, but his ships crashed. Bummer. In any case, we enjoyed our time at a Christian hostel there called The Shelter. We even met someone from Nebraska that we took on our next trip to the north.
The north trip was pretty crazy. We picked up a tiny rental car (our new friend Tommy drove), threw some tents and sleeping bags in the back, and took off. The goal was to take six days to go to as many biblical sites as we could. Around 5 or 6 o’clock every night, we would ask ourselves, “So, where are we going to sleep tonight?” We would drive around whatever area we happened to be in and would eventually find a camping spot. I think we would say that it was one of the best trips we’ve ever taken. The Lord bless you all! We look forward to seeing many of you in August when we get back to the States. We arrive in Dallas on August 7.