In which Aaron leaves the country and we have visitors to distract us...

 

 

Last Thursday, my amazing husband left to go back to the Solomon Islands for 3 1/2 weeks of intense work - both helping our SITAG branch in Honiara and working with the Lavukal translators out in the Russell Islands.  But to help ease our transition, God placed one of our favorite families across our path!  Lisa, Kyle, and Jack arrived in time to share lunch with us and get hugs from Aaron before the kids and I took our world traveler to the airport.

 

Everybody smiled for the picture in front of security because we are choosing to be joyful in this opportunity for Aaron to continue to work and aid Bible translation in the Solomon Islands.



 

But the reality is that inside, we are all pretty sad about Team Choate being split up for almost a month.  We are reminding ourselves that "Choates can do hard things" over and over again.

Thankfully, our SITAG bosses slipped us some ice cream money to help with some sweet consolation on the ride home.



And when we got back to the house, we had this cutie pie to help distract us, too.  We got to know this sweet couple when they came to help with the children during SITAG's conference in 2011.



They spent the night with us, and we sent them on their way early Friday morning to enter the last year of seminary. Their sweet spirits still provide encouragement and laughter for our family.



And Saturday morning when we woke up, there was this good-looking dude on Facebook letting us know he had arrived safely in Honiara.



This picture, posted by a colleague, makes me so happy.  Included are a German volunteer who has been tirelessly helping SITAG, the Solomon Islands' BTLP (Bible Translation & Literacy Partnership) director and his beautiful wife, another American translation advisor working on a language cluster project, and my awesome husband, fresh off the plane in his long sleeves.  A tiny snippet of what heaven will look like!