Our flight out of Columbus was delayed for a half hour or so, due to something the captain called a “cosmetic external mechanical issue.” Yesterday, in an unrelated incident, an Alaska Airline flight was abruptly re-routed when a door separated from the cabin, sucking a young lad’s shirt clean off his torso, but leaving him otherwise unscathed. Our plane was cleared for takeoff, and we’ve been chasing a fiery sunset for the past two hours as we race toward San Francisco. All the doors — and shirts — seem to be intact. 

It feels like forever since Kori has traveled with me to Asia, and we’ve never gone to Cambodia or Thailand together without any kids, at least as far as I can recall. Our two boys are grown, 25 and 26, so their days of joining us on Asia’s Hope business are long past. Xiudan, our 18 year old daughter was supposed to come with a few more times, but Covid pretty much ruined the last few years’ travel plans…and now she’s in college, too busy with Physics, Stats and something called Linear Algebra to get away for long. 

So this trip feels pretty different. 

Also, last year was pretty rough. Some of it was just run-of-the-mill, everyone-deals-with-tough-stuff sorts of rough. But some of it has been catastrophic. And, I suspect, some of those catastrophes have nasty little tentacles intent on wriggling their way into 2024. 

But you know, God is good. As I told Kori last night, there are a lot of things I don’t know. But I do know for sure that we are supposed to be on this seven-week trip, and that we’re supposed to enjoy it. So, guess what? I’m ready to do this thing. 

Two nearly-empty-nesters who just celebrated 30 years of marriage, heading out over the horizon for a whirlwind visit to four countries, 35 children’s homes, a bunch of churches, a couple schools and a handful of student centers. I hope our presence will be an encouragement to the 800+ kids and 200+ staff of Asia’s Hope. And I pray that Kori and I will get filled up as well. 

Looks like we’ll be landing in San Fran in about a half hour. Then a long, long haul to Taipei. And then we should hit Phnom Penh something like 30 hours from now, just in time for lunch. And just like that, we’ll be off and running. 

I hope you’ll follow along both here and on the socials. I promise to post pics, stories and videos of people, places and meals that will make you smile. 

Cheers.