We finally got an internet connection at our house this week, and now I have a couple of minutes to put some thoughts down.  So let’s see what happens!

I’m awfully glad that we moved back into our house.  I don’t think we fathomed how difficult it would have been to come back to Airdrie, start back at work, get the kids in school AND move into a new house.  Here we know where stuff goes; which is actually a big deal when moving in.  So praise the Lord for our house NOT selling!

Culture shock?  Hard to say.  I’m sure there was more to deal with coming back to Canada than I can remember, but overall it feels like it has been pretty easy.  I think having the same job and same house has helped a lot.  I’m still not sure how I’m doing getting back into the “church scene” here after doing it quite a lot differently in Mexico.  I leaned over to Michelle today after the worship time and said “if it is always 3 or 4 songs, then this is gonna be a difficult transition.”  I’m not complaining, I’ll just need to ensure I am spending plenty of outside church building time worshiping.  Which is actually a good idea and perhaps another blessing from God.  Must stop seeing the building as the only source of time and the only place to worship.  And there are some other thoughts I’m working through in regards to church, but those are staying private!

Some cool stuff happening though.  On our first day back to church (last week) we had a couple of minutes to do an informal (well, we wrote up the questions before hand, so it was a informally scripted affair) Q&A time with one of the members of our Missions Team.  And I really felt like the Holy Spirit took over and said what He wanted to have said in that short time.  So that was cool.  Also, another missionary who is with Wycliffe in Oaxaca was there that day and we got to chat for a few minutes.  AND also it turns out there are a few Spanish speakers at our church from Mexico and El Salvador.  And we’ll be able to get together and chat in Spanish (for us to learn) and English (for them to learn).  One of them is getting baptized next week and then we’re all going out to eat somewhere (or possibly at our house, Michelle and I got confused during that conversation so we’re not sure what’s actually going to occur.  Oops.)  God, you’re so cool how you set things up for us.

One culture shock item.  The pop machines at work take credit cards now.  CREDIT CARDS.  And even worse, a bottle of Coke costs $1.75!!!!!  !@#$$#%$%#%$%#$%  That’s a lot of money for a 600 mL bottle considering we paid 12 pesos for a 2.5 L back in Mexico.  I also find myself referring to Tlaxiaco as “back home” a lot.  I’m not actually sure what that means.

The speaker at church this week was from the denominational district.  He spoke on how the district is wanting to plant churches in all the new people groups throughout Canada.  Oh wait, one step back.  He started off the message by saying that our denomination now considers Canada a least-reached area of the world.  Cool.  Because Michelle and I have really been feeling like that.  So now the denomination is focusing more time and effort on planting churches all over Canada, within all the immigrant communities.  Wow, that sounds familiar (check out the GFM USA area over at http://www.globalfrontiermissions.org to see what I mean)  Again, it appears that God has this really cool plan going on around here and Him sending us to Mexico was just one small part of some supersonic mega stuff.

And this is the part where Michelle and I realize that we need to pray even more.  Because if we’re getting prepped to be thrown into active battle, then there is a good (100%) chance that the other side will fight back.  But, I know we’ll be just fine and we can’t wait to keep talking about the churches full of new believers getting planted around here.

Moving on, but keep praying for Airdrie and Calgary and Canada.  Let’s fight back and allow God to do what it is He wants to do with HIS country, HIS cities and HIS people.

I know there was a lot more we worked through the past week or so.  But I honestly can’t remember much.  I won poker in my first game back last week, then finished second this week.  The moral is: practice less.  Chelsey and Jared started school and are enjoying it.  Our house is about 60% setup.  The important things (computer desk and entertainment centre) are all done.  Oh, and Michelle and I had a bed lent to us from friends so we weren’t sleeping on the floor any longer. We went to Red Deer for my new sister-in-law’s bridal shower yesterday and we will be back in the Deer in two weeks for the wedding.

I hope to give another financial update from our trip in about a week or so, just waiting for final numbers to get in.  But I can tell you that the final numbers are going to be cool.  Like way over the top cool!

~RD

We got home yesterday evening, but of course I haven’t gotten around to posting until now.  You know, I’m just a little tired.  But we made good time on our last day except for getting stuck for an hour at the border.  Only one window open for all the traffic coming into Canada.

And you know what?  IT’S COLD IN CANADA.  I don’t remember it actually being this cold before, so did I just get soft?  Wait, don’t answer that.

I had a nice surprise last night when Michelle and I went over to our house, Michelle had gotten some of our friends together and moved all of our stuff from the storage locker into the garage.  So we’re all moved into the house, now we just have to unload the boxes and place the furniture.  My wife is cool.

So that’s that.  For a seven day road trip with two kids, this was as good as it could get.  Ya, we had some disappointments like the amusement park, but we got to do some cool stuff like the Denver Zoo and the World’s Biggest Jackalope in Douglas, WY.  And the time Chelsey, Jared and I spent together was SO worth it.  I had a great time with them and I hope they feel the same way.

Thanks everyone for your prayers and support.  Now that we’re home we will hopefully be able to see and talk with many of you.

/RD

Um, sorry about not posting last night.  We were a little tired and I just couldn’t pull together any decent thought patterns to type.  I think we were all asleep by 10:30PM which was good since we needed to get up early today.  And I need to be somewhat awake to type coherently, for an example of what a sleepy me sounds like, just read Day 3 of this trip.  Glorified point form for the most part with incoherent ramblings and some “Screw Flanders” inserted.

Both kids just fell asleep now (it’s 10PM) after finishing Spiderman.  We’ve had quite a lot of fun the last two nights watching it together; the first time on that movie for all three of us.  I think Jared was asleep within 2 minutes of putting his head down, Chelsey wasn’t far behind either!  Man, they are pretty cool for lasting on how tired they are.  Thankfully there are only 2 days left until they can get back on their normal schedule.

So what happened on Day 4?  Well, for those who didn’t read my angry post on Facebook,  here’s a quick synopsis.

We slept in (wow! 8:45!) because we were planning a short drive from Abilene, TX to Lubbock, TX to end up at a little amusement park.  One problem, we woke up to a downpoiur of rain.  We hadn’t seen rain for weeks, and I guess Texas hadn’t either so of course it had to rain on that day.   We set out anyways because Lubbock was a few hours away, hoping that the rain would stop or that it wouldn’t be raining in Lubbock.  It can happen in Alberta that it is raining in Calgary and not in Edmonton (or Airdrie for that matter) so we figured we had a shot.

But no luck.  We got to Lubbock and it was still ugly.  But we drove down to the amusement park in an act of faith/ defiance that we hoped would pay off.  Nope.  The sign on the gate said it all “Park closed due to weather”.

(I just took a big bite of a Meat Lovers pizza from Pizza Hut.  Oh man, did I miss good pizza)

Chelsey and Jared took the park being closed rather well.  That’s probably because I had prepared them for this by telling them “if this park is closed, we can drive up to Amarillo because there is another park up there!”

So we drove to Amarillo.

And found that the park there was closed due to weather as well.  Have these people never seen rain and wind before?  Man, we were all a little disappointed (angry would work here too.)  But what can you do besides go to the hotel and swim in the pool?  Which is what we did and remarkably seemed to make both kids feel a tonne better.

We decided we couldn’t be too upset about all the rain.  For a few reasons.

1. The lady at our hotel in the morning said that Texas needed all the rain it could get.  I took this to mean they hadn’t gotten any for a while.

2. A sign on a building as we were coming into Amarillo stated “Pray for Rain”.  Um, I suspect again that Texas needed the rain

3. The baseball game in Arlington and the PGA golf event in San Antonio were cancelled that day.  OK, I get it.  This apparently was a big storm and was welcomed by all except the three Diks who wanted to play.

So that brings us to Day 5 of this little trip.  We’re about 3000 km’s in so far and from what we could figure we have driven 43 hours to this point.  The odometer on my van is getting painfully close to 100000 KM’s, but I think we’ll make it home without crossing that line.

We woke up early this morning because we wanted to get out of Amarillo and get to Denver to hit their zoo.  It was kind of funny trying to drag Chelsey and Jared (especially Chelsey) out of bed.  Chelsey was basically moving the speed of cold molasses.  But we got out at a decent time.

Ad we ended up in Denver right before 2pm and hit the zoo.  (I removed 7 hours of VERY uneventful driving through Northern Texas, New Mexico and South Colorado.)

Oh wait, we were in God’s city of Colorado Springs this morning AND WE DIDN’T GO TO CHURCH.  In fact, we did the exact opposite: we went to McDonalds!  And to get there I drove through a red light (accidentally).  And what is it in Colorado Springs, do you not want people to get off the Interstate and infect your precious little utopia of WASPiness?  Would it hurt you to post some signs pointing me to restaurants like EVERY OTHER CITY ON THE INTERSTATE?  Something is weird in Colorado Springs.  Not Steven King weird, but definitely John Gresham weird.

The Denver Zoo was ok.  Honestly, I expected more.  They had some cool animals the Calgary Zoo doesn’t have anymore (polar bears, seals/ sea lions and rhinos) which we all enjoyed.  But the penguins were nowhere to be found.  You know I get it. The penguins like cold weather. Then perhaps they should have an exhibit where IT IS COLD so they aren’t put away at the first sign of heat?

There were also all kinds of empty exhibits.  I guess it is because they rotate the animals to different pens to keep them interested, but what a pain for guests.

“Hmmm, what is in this exhibit?  Nothing.  Again.  Moving on to the next empty cage.”

Another interesting thing was the amount of red hair floating around the place.  One of the families at MTS were from Colorado Springs (oh boy, that city is lucky I have friends from there because that is the only redeeming thing I can find for it right now) and the dad and all of their 28 kids (well, it might have been 4) had bright red hair.  I thought it was just their family, but now I think it is something in Colorado.  It could be the water, or possibly something much more sinister.  Even the clerk at our hotel had bright red hair.

We might be hitting Steven King level of strangeness in this state.  I’m glad we’re leaving tomorrow.  I might end up with red hair, even though hair would be nice again in my rapidly balding state.  Although, is it better to be bald and not have red hair?  Tough choice but I think I will stick with bald, thank you very much.

It’ll be nice to get to a couple of states tomorrow where the people are normal and don’t all share the same genetic characteristics: Wyoming and Montana.

Oh, crap.

~RD

We decided to rename our trip in honour of us watching “Monsters vs Aliens: 3D” this afternoon in San Antonio.  We realized that we are 3D as well (3 Diks).  So there you go.  This road trip is in 3D baby!

We started out this morning by taking the van into the Dodge dealership.  The “check engine” light had been on for 2 months and I figured now that I had the chance to get it checked, I should.  I figured that it was a faulty sensor (when isn’t it one of those?), probably on the emissions system since we constantly scraped on topes.

I was right.  But it was an expensive correctness.  Our trip budget was doing ok, but it just got a lot tighter.  But we’re still trusting God to provide all the necessary finances.

The cool thing was that the mechanic understood that we were in a hurry and got the work done really quickly.  We then ripped up to San Antonio to watch the movie.  It was SUPER FUNNY.  We got out of the movie and into…

San Antonio Rush Hour!  And that’s not a Jackie Chan movie either.  But it wasn’t that bad.  It just slowed us down.  (Calgary should learn how to make traffic flow like that)

We ended up driving for 4 hours up to Abilene, Texas and got in just before 9pm.  The kids desperately wanted to hit the pool, so we did.  For about half an hour until they finally got too cold.  But it was a good way to wear them out.  When we got back, we prepared to call Michelle and when it came time for Jared to talk I noticed that he had passed out!  I guess he was tired.  Chelsey crashed about 20 minutes after that.  So ya, if you want to wear your kids out, I suggest three, 10.5 hour days of driving and getting up at 6:30 each morning.  Followed by a nice cold swim.  Works like a charm, but you really need to be committed to it.

Tomorrow should be a fun day.  We’re getting to sleep in tomorrow, then driving three hours to Lubbock, Texas and Joyland.  I love that name, it sounds like it should be the Christian Amusement Park that Ned Flanders opened.  Maybe it is!  But anyways, we’re going to go play for the afternoon.  Chelsey and Jared deserve it.  And then once we’re done we’re just driving for another hour to the next hotel.  Good times.

Thanks everyone for your prayers.  We can totally tell how much God is with us.  Please keep it up.

Ryan, Chelsey and Jared