Travel Days

We are here! We made it to Papua New Guinea last friday evening, and it feels a little bit surreal! But it also feels like we are home. Like our family finally has a place to settle in. And in a sense, while we left one family behind with tears, we have been welcomed by another family, our dear friends/coworkers the Sanders and Hambrices. After flying on 5 different airplanes, through 6 airports, over the span of 33 hours plus one overnight…we made it. Here’s how the travels went:

We said our last goodbyes at lunch in Fayetteville, AR on Wednesday, July 23.

We headed to the Fayetteville airport and said some more goodbyes with the Crabtrees before flying to Dallas.

The Dallas airport is a GREAT place for a layover with small children. There are several play areas. We ate dinner and changed into PJs before our big 15 hour flight that left at 10pm.

Nora was asleep before the plane took off, and Rynn followed close behind. We could not have asked for a better flight, all the prayers were definitely felt! Both girls slept a full night’s sleep and didn’t wake up until a few hours before we landed.

At 5am (Australian time) we landed in Brisbane, and due to the short layover time combined with gathering up and rechecking ALL of our luggage for moving across the world, we missed our next flight. Fortunately, they booked us on the next one!

I would say our layover in Cairns, Australia was the toughest, because the girls were just loopy from endless hours of traveling. Good thing the terminal for the flights to PNG was nearly deserted, so they were able to run off quite a bit of energy!

Finally we landed in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, and we could feel the jet lag. We overnighted there, because we came in on the last flight of the day. We had a great time at the guest house there and spending time with the government reps, the Trostruds. We woke up and had a peaceful morning sipping coffee and getting to know the Trostruds’ two parrots. The girls loved it there and did not want to leave!

Nora is a collector, and PNG has all new treasures for her to find!

Then, on July 25, we hopped our flight to our new home in a coastal town in PNG. Definitely a cultural experience!

We were greeted by some new and old friends, and had dinner waiting for us in the fridge (Thanks Shawna!!) The girls loved their new home right away!

Here is the view from our front porch.

Nora loves all the beautiful tropical flowers here. These are in our front yard!

We all love this new home. It’s a very bittersweet time, but we are looking forward to jumping into life here! Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for all of the prayers during our time of transition! We take them to heart.

Much love from PNG, The Crabtree family