We have made it to Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea safely and with God's blessings! Thank you so much for your prayers for us as we traveled; it has been quite evident that we had so many lifting us up to the Father these past few days. Kristi was pretty sick for our 14 hour flight from Los Angeles to Brisbane, but that was really the only true hardship of the trip. Every detail was taken care of in His own way, from smooth check ins, short walks (and rides!) to gates, and kids even sleeping the first 7 hours of our 14 hour flight. One funny thing that happened that truly showed God had control of all things was our arrival to PNG. As soon as we stepped off the plane and started down the hall to customs, Millie had a dirty diaper that had left her diaper. It was all over her, soaking through her clothing from the neck down. When the people working there saw this they moved us from the back of the extremely long line (like 100 people, really) to the front so we could get through to the only bathroom on the other side of the guy stamping passports. Then we got all of our bags (6 locks missing, but at first look it seems that everything is still there) and the guy waved us through the check point without x-raying even one, which was a major blessing given our 5 carts that were piled high. God is amazing!
The kids fell asleep before dinner here at the missionary guest house that we are staying at. This ended up being a double blessing because Kristi and I got the opportunity to have an "adult meal" with a pastor and three others from a church in New Zealand that were passing through to a missions conference. Three of them were originally from PNG and one was from South Africa and it made for an incredible and encouraging time.
We slept last night here in Port Moresby, and are flying out this afternoon to Ukarumpa, where our initial 9-week orientation is and where we will be serving. It's been raining since we arrived here yesterday afternoon which has cooled things off to 78-degrees, just to give you an idea.
Our days of unlimited wifi are over for now; we have to purchase packets of data. So I've had to try to turn off everything that wants to update in the background on the iPad so that I can transmit only what I want to. We will post more pictures as soon as we can!
We love you and miss you,
John and Kristi