Many of you must have assumed that we made it safely to Port Moresby and beyond to Ukarumpa (our support center).  Your assumptions would be correct.  We’re sorry we didn’t let you know sooner; there’s a lot more adjusting than we expected in coming back to PNG (Papua New Guinea), but God is gracious, and we feel better every day.

We are very thankful for God’s intervention in a humanly impossible situation in providing Christina’s and Timothy’s visas in time for us to depart as planned on April 3, thus avoiding very costly flight changes.  We are also very thankful for the provision of lodging and meals in Port Moresby the weekend we got here and that there was space on the plane on the following Monday, both arranged at the last minute when we found out our plane was delayed from Brisbane to PNG.  Thank you for your prayers for us and our family, they are what carried us through and God definitely worked through them.

Because we did not make it to PNG in time to catch our flight to Ukarumpa, we had to spend the weekend in Port Moresby.  We were hoping to be able to stay at Mapang Missionary Guest House in Port Moresby.  About 10 minutes after we sent out our last email asking for prayer that there would be space at Mapang, we got an email saying there was none, but there was space at another location.  At the other location, we would have to cook our own food whereas at Mapang, it would be provided.  We were really grateful for the offer to stay at this other place but weren’t extremely excited about having to cook for ourselves.  We had really just wanted to relax and not have to shop/cook for a few days.

However, about 1.5 hours after sending out our email, we got another one saying they had worked out space at Mapang.  We know people prayed for us and feel that God answered those prayers in providing space at Mapang when just over an hour before they had said there wasn’t any.  After being there for about a day, we really felt like it was an unexpected blessing.  We had the opportunity to relax, recover some from our travels, and start to adjust to being in an entirely different time zone, all while having the time and energy to just be a family.  Having meals provided made it all the more easy to do this.

So, we were grateful to take advantage of this unexpected blessing while also looking forward to being “home” in our own house in Ukarumpa.  It was a good end to a long saga of God’s provision and blessings on us.  Thank you for taking part with us in seeing how God can provide in miraculous and unexpected ways.

In Christ,

James and Christina

P.S. Now it’s time for “Choose Your Own Adventure”:

-For those who would like to read Christina’s delightful account of how the girls responded to being “home”, click here.
-For the daring prayer warrior, click here to read about the scare of our worst nightmare (a returning bug infestation) coming back to haunt us.  Please DO pray about this and maybe you’ll get a laugh out of it too.