Friday, January 30, 2015

arriviing home

 
 
 
After our Ferry ride we had another nephew and friend meet us at the dock with another van to take us home.  We made it to our new home at about 4 and surprised Jonah's sister first.  we then gathered some friends and went to Jonah's parents house to sing Happy birthday and surprise him.  He did not even realize at first that we where there till Melanie pointed me out to him and then he was real surprised.  It was fun to see people for the first time over the next day or two as the surprise continued. 
 
 
 
Since arriving in Juagdan we have spent the time getting settled and adjusting to our new life.  We are staying with Melanie and Family for now as we are waiting for our house to be done.  Should be done in another week or so.  We have done quite a bit of shopping to furnish the house and get some much needed summer clothes.  we have waited to buy some things in the hopes that the stuff we need will be in the boxes we shipped.  We are praying the boxes arrive soon though.
The kids have been having a great time reconnecting and making new friends.  
We Thank you for coming on this Journey with us and will try to keep updated as much as we can.

What a Journey!

Its been a long time since we updated and we are sorry for that.  We had a good reason to be quite though.  We were trying to make sure Jonah's family did not find out when we were coming because we wanted to surprise his family and it worked. 
We spent the last couple of months at home in the US raising funds and packing up our life to move it and us to the Philippines.  We had our apartment emptied minus our suitcases the week before we left.  We spent that last week visiting family and friends and just enjoying the last few days we had with them. A huge thank you to our friends Scott and Kayleen for letting us stay with them for a week.
On January 19th we started the long trek to the Philippines.  It was a long flight but we all faired well.  I even did pretty well even though I was still fighting a bit of a cold but was most of the way healthy by the time we had to fly.  I am thankful to my family and friends that loaded me up on vitamins before I left. 
 
 
 
 After a little more than 28 hours of flying we made it to Manila and we where ready to take a nap.  The time change threw us all for a loop the first couple of days but then we adjusted pretty well.  We all woke up about 3 in the morning the first night we were here and ready for the day.  we took a nap later in the morning before we started our day.  We had planned to get my immigration paper work done in the morning after an hour or so and then go to Manila Ocean Park.  That did not go as planned.  The immigration offices here do not have a set procedure so we were sent to two different offices and had to get another blood test because I did not have the results they wanted.  Anyway.  The hour we wanted to spend there turned into an all day affair. most of it was spent waiting and waiting.  So after all day there we were all tired and ready for bed so we went back to the hotel and had supper and went to bed.  We went to Manila  Ocean Park On Friday before we flew to Cebu.  It was a great time and you will have to check out the pictures on Facebook soon.  It was a short flight when we finally took off.  We were able to catch an "earlier flight"  that finally took off at the same time our original flight was supposed to.  Our nephew met us at the airport with a van to take us to the ferry for the overnight ride to Bohol.