Hello again after a long delay!
After almost one year abroad, on February 16th 2009 we touched down at SFO airport and were back on our home continent, the land O high speed internet, In-n-Out Burger, and HDTV. Here was our return itinerary:
- Feb 2 Shuttle from Arusha to Nairobi. Accommodations at Kenya Bethel
- Feb 5 Flight from Nairobi to London Heathrow. Picked up and stayed with Sam
- Feb 9 Chunnel Train from London to Paris France. Hotel on Rue Cler market street
- Feb 14 Chunnel Train from Paris to London. Tube to Sam’s house.
- Feb 16 Flight from London to San Francisco. Picked up by Hilary’s parents.
During our stay at Kenya Bethel, the UK was getting chilled by a ice and snow storm that resulted in airport closures and travel problems. Fortunately, the storm subsided, yet the freezing cold temperatures remained. After being around the equator in Africa for the past year, an initial purchase was gloves and caps!
We toured Brittan Bethel, which is a printing branch supplying Watchtowers and Awakes in different languages to various parts of the world; we even spotted a stack of Amkeni magazines and met a brother who stayed with the Steiners in Mexico.
You can imagine the condition our clothes and shoes were in after wearing them almost daily and walking everywhere in the African dust and sun. The 14 dress shirts I left with had dwindled to perhaps two, so we took advantage of the decent exchange rate in London.
The cold seemed to follow us to France, so we did our best to deal with it by sipping coffee, nibbling chocolate, and eating baguette sandwiches in corner cafes; what a hard life.
Versailles, the Musee d’Orsay, and Arc de Triomphe were all great sights, but visiting the Eiffel tower was a highlight for us, and we learned that although they may try their best, you can’t ask just anyone around to snap your picture if you want it done right.
Freezing cold greeted us the morning we planned to take photos, but as we got closer, it began snowing and the top of the tower was obscured by the flurry, so we just hopped a bus and took what was a cheap mobile tour of the city ending up close by the Moulin Rouge and Notre Dame. Speaking of Notre Dame, what a shameful exhibitation of greed in an operational church. A church with a giftshop? haha…I did find it interesting that to protect the intricate stained glass windows of Notre Dame from looters during WWII, each window was removed piece by piece, labeled and hid them until after the war when they were re-assembled and installed.
Returning to London, Sam enlisted me to help with his remodel, so we sorted some bits out and hung a couple plasterboard sheets in the loft before hitting a pub for a pint. Hilary had hoped to see some of the English countryside, but relaxation took precedence…maybe next time.
After arriving in San Francisco and grabbing dinner, we surprised my parents with an early arrival in Sacramento. That’s where we have been living, in my parent’s attic loft, for the past three months.
An small update regarding Tanzania:
We received exciting news from Martin and Anita; they were the missionary couple in Arusha Central that got a temporary assignment in Moshi to evaluate English interest in that area. We visited them briefly in the month prior to our departure and they expressed what a large English population they had located who had basically never been preached to before.
What an usual concept for most of us in developed areas. Regardless of how large or established Jehovah’s Witnesses are in other areas, we are simply a new or unknown religion in areas like Moshi. If you had never heard “Jehovah’s Witnesses” before, you wouldn’t know whether or not it’s a Christian religion, what the beliefs are, that our beliefs are founded solely on the Bible not doctrine and traditions of men, etc. The fact that we can tell someone what religion we belong to and they recognize it and know at least a few details about our faith (even if it is just the door to door ministry) is just something else we take for granted. With the amount of work to be done in Moshi, they have been assigned there indefinitely to help with the establishment of an English group.
Posted by jonary 
