Tim went to town today and put diesel fuel in our new vehicle. The price worked out to $3.22 per gallon.

For you cat lovers, our family cat, “Slinky” was found last night. We knew she must be around as our friend had seen her yesterday morning. She must have been in the house the entire time Sarah was looking for her because when we came home last night she was inside the house meowing. Slinky loves to climb up in the attic for some reason and the access door to the attic was left open.

We continue to unpack and clean today. The kitchen is the priority as everything must be washed before it is put back in the drawers and cupboards. Our 2 wooden cutting boards looked like Swiss cheese thanks to the termites! So far we haven’t found too much damage to the things we had in storage.

The girls have gone to a hotel in town for a swim in the pool with the other missionary kids.

Much to do…

This blog comes to you from our home in Honiara.

The flight to the Solomons was ahead of schedule and as there weren’t many people on board, we got off quickly. We stood in line for immigration for a while until a man came and said there weren’t any immigration officers at the airport and he didn’t know where they were. He promised to keep us posted. A few minutes later we found out that they were on their way and would be there soon. We got through immigration and collected our bags which arrived safe and sound. For the first time we had our luggage carefully checked, but no duty charged for which we are thankful.

We piled our luggage on 3 carts and wheeled it outside expecting to see some faces we knew, but no one was there. Our colleagues had called the airport a number of times to check on the arrival time but were given various answers – ranging from noon to 2 pm! After we waited about 10 minutes our director’s wife arrived followed by others and we were on our way home – Tim even drove our new car home!

Our friends have spent a lot of time getting our house ready. They have spent several days cleaning, organizing and even finding our towels and sheets and making our beds. What a blessing. Apparently a week ago the house was quite a mess.

There are many places where we will have to repair the termite damage. Some walls are missing, some that have been replaced need painting. Some of the ceiling has mold spots on it and needs to be repainted. It’s a bit discouraging after we spent so much time and energy last year painting the house.

Sarah was very sad to discover the termites had gotten into her doll case for her American Girl. We hope we can clean it up a bit and replace some of the paper lining to improve how it looks. It was all a bit devastating to a 9 year old who has not has a lot of sleep over the past 24 hours or so. She is also disppointed that she hasn’t seen our cat yet. But it was seen this morning around the house, so it is sure to show up soon.

It’s good to be home, but it’s going to take a lot of work to get the house up and running again. It’s 90°+ and high humidity. Nothing can ever prepare you for how hot it really is here and how draining it can be.

I hope this all makes sense as I am a bit sleep deprived but hope to start getting on top of that tonight. We will eat dinner at with our director and his wife tonight.

One of the things we love about working in the Solomons is the smallness of the place. We are always running into people we know. It happened in Fiji – sitting in the transit lounge at the airport I saw a Tongan friend whom I had gotten to know from the last time we lived in the Solomon Islands. We were soon catching up with what had happened in Honiara over the past year.

On our way to the Solomons, we had a stopover in Vanuatu. We were asked to stay on the plane while they cleaned it and prepared it for the next leg of the journey. Sarah and I head to the back of the plane to use the restroom when we found our friend, Rex, sitting at the back of the plane. Rex is originally from the village we lived in when we first came to the Solomon Islands. We met him in New York City in 1997 where he was serving at the Solomon Islands Ambassador to the UN, USA and Canada. Rex has a degree in applied linguistics and has always been interested in our translation and literacy work in the Solomons.

At the moment, Rex is the head of a large non-profit organization that works in development around the South Pacific. It was great to catch up with Rex and hear what is happening in the area and to provide him with information about what our group is doing. We exchanged business cards and the networking has begun again – before we even stepped foot on Solomons soil.

Oh, yeah. At the end of the conversation, something came up about our carpenter friend from the village who has helped us a lot with building projects on our house. Rex said he wants our friend to build him a house in their village and will pay him to do the work. Our friend will be thrilled to have a way to make some money in the village.

After an almost sleepless night, we flew out of Detroit and into San Diego. Recent changes in airline regulations regarding baggage has resulted in us having 2 checked bags at 50 pounds a piece. Previously bags could weigh up to 72 pounds, and trust me we could easily fill the bags! Keeping the weight down to 50 pounds is a challenge. Our carry-ons are heavily laden with computers and other electronics that we don’t want to chance to checked baggage.




We are staying with friends who we worked with in Papua New Guinea. We always try and stay here for a week when we enter or leave the USA. We call this time in California the “Buffer Zone” as it gives us a chance to recover from our tearful good-byes and prepare to re-enter the USA or Solomon Islands.

On Monday we visited the San Diego Zoo which was wonderful. Yesterday we enjoyed a visit to Sea World. As we walked around and saw the shows, we couldn’t help but wonder what our Solomon Island friends would think of the trained sea animals.




Friday we head up to Mission Viejo to spend the weekend with friends there. Saturday we will celebrate Emily’s 14th birthday.

Sunday evening we fly out of LAX to Nadi Fiji which should take about 11 hours. We have a brief layover there before taking a flight to the Solomon Islands via Vanuatu (travel time of about 4 hours). We lose Monday to the International time line arriving home in Honiara, the capital city of the Solomon Islands, on Tuesday.