Packing, moving, and goodbye-ing.

Hello everyone, we have officially been here for a year. It has been a crazy year with lots of ups and downs. We wanted to thank you so much for supporting us and encouraging us as we continue to work and represent the Lord in our lives here on the other side of the world.

Our time on this island is coming to an end and we are making our move to one of the largest islands in the world. Our tickets are bought for the 27th of July. We have been hard at work packing up our home and saying goodbyes to our community. We had our entire neighborhood over to our house for a goodbye “party.” It was nothing like a goodbye party would look like back home in Michigan but it went really well.

We prepared food for about 100 people and opened our doors for receiving guests at 6:00 p.m. The first family showed up around 6:30 and waited to enter our house until more people showed up around 7:00. We even had a wave of people show up around 8:00 and we had just put the food away, so we got all the food back out and chatted with them for a while and after they left, we felt quite happy for it to all be over. It certainly added to how I miss having a simple BBQ in the backyard of my parents house.

We went to our church for the last time, at least for a while. It always amazed me how talented the musicians are. This week, at the beginning of a song the band realized that they were in the wrong key however, without pausing for a single beat, they all transitioned into the correct key between the verse and the chorus using eye language. I was very impressed as I(Eric) tend to think of myself as an amateur musician.

Lord willing, we have another year left before we are done with studying the national language. When we arrive in our new location everything may feel like we are starting over a little bit but we are really look forward to being able to speak the local language as new neighbors and actually be able to develop relationships with the people through actual conversation.

Cherie’s pregnancy is going well and she is now 24 weeks along. We are expecting to get a checkup and connect with our doctor after a week or two of being in our new location. Joshua is growing up fast and has definitely been feeling the stress of moving, so we are learning to be extra patient with him during this time.

For our anniversary Cherie and I spent a few days in a hotel in a different city close to the beach. It was nice and we went to the beach one day and I got stung by a jellyfish, that was a weird experience, but nothing serious.

We are excited and a little nervous as we transition our life and look forward to living in another temporary location inside a house that we are temporarily borrowing. I am reminded that our entire time on this earth is temporary and borrowed and we do not even have tomorrow promised to us, and so we press on. Thank you so very much for your prayers.