Our travel journey began on October 16, when we flew from Eugene, Oregon to San Francisco, California. From there, we caught a big plane packed with 285 passengers (including Mark and Shauna) which was flying to Melbourne, Australia. This was a 15 hour flight. It was hard to get sleep sitting up in tight quarters. But we are so thankful for many blessings on the journey...

For example, when we reached the Melbourne Airport, we headed to the gate to catch the next flight to New Zealand and discovered that Mark didn't have his cellphone! We were concerned that maybe it had fallen out of his backpack and gotten left on the plane. We are so thankful to report that that is exactly what had happened, and Yahweh heard our prayers and blessed us with a speedy recovery of it.

Then we discovered that something was wrong with Shauna's Visa permission to enter New Zealand. But the flight attendant worked with us and got Shauna's Visa resubmitted while we stood at the desk. Again, we praise Yahweh! We were on the flight and have reached New Zealand without further incident.

Our friend, Belinda McCallion, who has invited us and arranged this trip (with all our appointments) graciously met us at the airport in Auckland, New Zealand. We are staying in the guest room of a precious believer from the local group here. And we are so blessed to be tucked in safe and sound and preparing to sleep in a bed tonight.

God is so good! Thank you for your prayers for our safe travels. We are very happy to be here and are looking forward to getting a bit of rest on our first day here tomorrow, after our travel journey, which totaled a bit more than 24 hours.

We are very excited about all that the Father has for us here... Shalom and thanks for your prayers!