Carlyn

We left at 7:30am on Tuesday morning from my parents house.  My dad drove his truck, towing the trailer that we borrowed from FBC, loaded with our luggage.  James drove his Blazer so we could leave it with his sister.  We picked up Meemaw on the way to Atlanta and met my sister Catherine, her husband, my mother in law, her husband, my sister in law and my nephew at the airport.  We were able to park on the curb side very close to the Lufthansa check in area.  The men all used carts to unload the trailer and bring all of the luggage in.  The Lufthansa staff were expecting us and were very kind and helpful.  They weighted all of our luggage and kept complimenting our packing and saying how easy we made it for them because everything was right at the 22kg(50.5lbs) or slightly below.  I'm so thankful it was because we had weighed everything just using a scale at home with James holding the boxes and subtracting his weight. We had one carry on suitcase...

Our move date got changed to December 22nd due to delays getting the paperwork that we need for James's business visa. I wanted my prayer warriors to know our new move date! It's one week from today!! James is back with us now and had a very successful trip. He was able to work for 3 week at the CURE hospital, register the kids for the homeschool program at Bingham, register me for language school and find us a house. He also learned the basics of getting around Addis Ababa on foot and on public transportation. He got to visit the international evangelical church and loved it! He bought us several appliances- washer, oven, refrigerator and deep freeze. He also purchased a printer, a pack-n-play, SIM cards for our phones and a 4G stick. He learned a lot in the process of buying all of those items that should help us out in locating and purchasing everything else we need to set up house.  He also hired day and night shift guards to watch over our house. So, all of his purchases ...

Going away party at my parent's house Building a fort with Uncle Patrick at the beach Having fun with Granddaddy Fishing Kids with my parents Picking up where I left off.... after our Disney trip the first part of September, we all headed to my parents house in Alabama .  The kids and I stayed there for 10 days while James went to Romania on a medical mission trip. The kids and I had a really special time with my family.  They had a going way party for us complete with slipping slides, a jumpy house and ice cream sundaes. We went to the beach, had a campfire and s'mores on a creek bank and went fishing.  When James returned from Romania we headed back to Arkansas to finish cleaning out our house and packing.  We had three full days to work and then we needed to leave on the 4th day to head to our training in North Carolina .  Krista fed us several times and watched my kids many hours. Anna...

We have been in a really long transition time as we leave our life in Arkansas behind and move to Ethiopia. There have been more stops along this transition path than we ever anticipated!  So, what have we been doing?  Well, our transition really began way back at the end of July. Knowing a long school break would be unavoidable during the transition,  I (with the help of our super nanny, Anna) did school with the kids everyday until the end of July.  We actually started the new school year in June right after finishing the last school year the day before! The perks of homeschooling ;) We did lots of school and finished as much curriculum as possible in June and July. At the end of July we ceased our "normal life" and began our transition. First of the agenda was visitations! We had 2 full weeks of visitors. We enjoyed visits from friends and family. We took our visitors to all of our favorite spots in Little Rock. Then, I took the kids on a trip to Memphis and Jack...

We have been busy busy the past 3 weeks.  We had 15 day a row of company visiting us here in Arkansas.  Then the kids and I headed to Tennessee to do some more visiting while James headed to Pennsylvania for his CURE orientation. And, now that we are all back home,  we have less than 3 weeks to get rid of everything we are not taking with us and get all packed up.  As I was going through a stack of CDs today trying to see if they needed to be packed or tossed,  I found a Word document titled "Summer 2004".  I'm not sure what I wrote this for, but it seemed like a really good throw back blog post to me! "I am a newly graduated nurse and my husband is a first year medical school student. We have both been interested in medical missions since our early teens.   This summer we had the amazing oppertunity of going to the middle east for a month.   We flew out just three days after receiving our degrees from Union University, mine a BS i...

Here are a few questions that friends have been asking :) Our prayer requests are in bold.  Q: What will transportation be like? A: We will be living in the capital of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa.  Addis Ababa is heavily populated and growing rapidly.  No one really even knows how many people are currently living there because of how rapid the growth has been.  A guess would be around 5 million.   So, what does this mean for transportation?  Well, first off, CURE will provide us with a 12-passenger Toyota van.   It is a company vehicle, but it is ours to use for our family.  It is very expensive to purchase a vehicle in Ethiopia.  Even a 10-year-old economy car will be well over $10,000 due to the tax rate on vehicles.  So, we will not be purchasing another vehicle, at least not in the near future.  The traffic in Addis is pretty crazy, not US big city heavy traffic/traffic jam crazy, but more like pedestrian...