Upcoming Travels

It's hard to believe the time has finally come for our trip to Greece!  Every year our organization has a meeting (AGM) that allows us to fellowship and learn from the other IMB missionaries serving in our area.  From what we are told, each year is different - the AGM could be just among people in our Black Sea Orthodox Cluster, or possibly all missionaries in Eastern Europe, but this year the meeting is for all personnel in the European Affinity and it is being held in Athens, Greece!  We have been looking forward to this opportunity for quite some time now and decided to spend additional time there as a family vacation.  We are beyond blessed to have this opportunity!  I don't know whether we are more excited about the vacation time or the chance to see good friends again, meet new friends, and be surrounded by English speakers for a short time!:)

We are leaving on July 12th and will have a week of vacation before our conference starts on July 19th.  I suppose I should be packing right now, but I wanted to take a minute to share our travel plans and ask for special prayers during this time.

Our Itinerary:
July 12th: Our flight leaves Bucharest at 10am and arrives in Athens at 11:25am
July 13th - July 16th:  We are taking a 4-day Aegean Sea cruise and will visit Mykonos, Greece, Kusadasi, Turkey, Patmos, Greece, and Santorini, Greece.
July 16th - July 19th: We will stay in Athens in a rented apartment; our primary concern will be to "recover" from the cruise, then hopefully see some of the sights of Athens.
July 19th - July 23rd: AGM at Eretria Village Club Hotel; There will be programs for the children, workshops for us, worship and fellowship time, plus much more!
July 24th: We leave Athens at 7:25am to return to Bucharest

Prayer Requests:

• Please pray for safe travels, on-time flights, and cooperative children!
• Pray that all the kids sleep well throughout the trip as we will be staying at several different places, each with different sleeping arrangements.
• Pray that we have a restful and enjoyable vacation that strengthens our family.
• Pray that our time at AGM is a wonderful time of spiritual renewal and encouragement for us.
• Carter - that this opportunity to be in class with other American children will be a joy for him
• Kamryn - that she does well being away from us for long periods of the day with new people
• Alexa - that the details of her nursing schedule won't be a problem during the conference

We will be sure to share pictures from this experience when we return! (I better not make any promises about how quickly I will get them uploaded, it depends on how frazzled we are at the end! :)  )