We hope to see you there!

Putting together our travel plans for May-June is quite a puzzle, but fun at the same time. We will be in quite a few places and look forward to seeing as many groups as we can, considering the time. We already know that we will not get to see all of our family (Scott’s dad and older brother), but we have also had some fun surprises. 

Back when Scott first moved to Colorado with his family, his dad needed to travel back to the East to finish hos military requirements and retire (at about 40 years-old). This was the last time that Scott saw any of his family, who mostly live on the east coast. But now that Scott and Shirley will be landing in New York and driving up to Rochester, they saw that Newburgh, New York was along the way. Scott got contacted information and it turns out that they will be able to visit his aunt who still lives in the same house Scott visited back when he was a teenager. 

If you are anywhere near where we will be, we hope that you will get in touch with us before we leave (April 26) so that we can plan some way of getting together. Maybe we can meet somewhere in the middle. Maybe we can call. Maybe you are in the same city and we don’t have your contact information any more. Drop us a comment here if you don’t have our contact information. 

We are also looking forward to meeting all sorts of new people in the congregations that support us. It has been a long 4 years since we last back and a lot can change in 4 years. It has here in Maastricht and certainly will have done where you live. So when we get to your city, your congregation - don’t be shy. We want to meet you. We may not be able to get to know you well, but we want to know who you are and thank you for your working together with us in God’s kingdom. 

Here again are the cities and states we will be visiting. We will begin in New York (and also visiting in Connecticut). We then move on to Minneapolis-St. Paul and the Woodbury congregation. They will help us on the next long leg of our trip to Omaha, Nebraska; Muscatine, Iowa; Indianapolis, Indiana and even making a quick stop in Chicago before returning to Minnesota. 

After the Midwest loop, we will fly down to Texas and drive out to Abilene, hoping to do some visiting along the way. From Texas we fly to Colorado where we will visit up and down the Front Range in Colorado Springs and Denver. By this time we will have hit our oldest son, Stephan and daughter-in-love Natalie (in Indianapolis), Shirley’s family (in Nebraska) and most of Scott’s family (in Indy and Colorado). 

We finish the trip by flying first out to California to visit our sponsoring church in Long Beach and to see some more of Scott’s family in San Diego. From LA we fly to NYC to finish up by visiting with son Sean and daughter-in-love Jill. After 8 weeks of traveling we will get back to Belgium before the end of June and just in time to have a church get-together down at Ardennen Bijbelkamp on the Saturday after our arrival. 

Travel in uncertain times

These days people are traveling for all sorts of reasons. Many are thankful that they can finally travel after corona rules shut down travel for so long. Some are happy to be able to see children or grandchildren. On the other hand, many are traveling because they feel they must - to escape poverty or war or danger. 

We usually plan to travel every three years. We plan a “Home Assignment” where we travel for about two months in the US to all of our supporting congregations and our family in the various States we find them. Our family members are not in the States where our supporting congregations are. This means a lot of traveling. 

Our last time making this trip was in 2019, a year before corona rules reared their ugly head. That would normally mean that we would travel again in 2022, this year. Considering that many of the rules are only now being changed or dropped, we have been waiting to see what might be possible before planning anything. And then gas prices started going up. 

At this point, we know that we will not be able to come when we might first have planned - from mid-May to begin July as we have in years past. It is simply too close now to try to plan and get everything ready. So we had started looking at coming in the Fall instead. It is a lot easier for us to travel from an empty nest. But as we look at the options, we are still very uncertain. 

So we just want to let you know that we MIGHT see you in August, September or October if things work out well. We would travel from mid-August through the first week of October. Nothing is set. 

We are looking at different ways of traveling as well. Usually our trip included 8-10 flights. As anyone who has flown can tell you, it is not necessarily the flight that is tiring or time-consuming, but getting to and from the plane. So we have considered making a driving loop along many of our midwest stops. This would mean some extra costs for a rental car. And of course, with gas prices, this might end up being worse than flying. 

We understand that we are very blessed to even consider traveling for these reasons and we are thankful that it might be possible. Please do keep us in your prayers as we try to figure out if this would be wise and how then to plan it. We would love to see you in person again.