“Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart!”    Psalm 34:3

This verses aptly sums up the past month for us as we have been privileged to speak at 4 different family camp weeks.  Though it should go without saying that the deepest desire of our hearts would be fulfilled by a reinstatement of our lifelong ministry at Campus by the Sea, we are so very grateful that our passion for encouraging and strengthening families through family camp found expression again this summer in four wonderful weeks of camp.

It all started at the H.I.M. marriage conference in 2011, when Sonny Vu and his wife Christy were introduced to us.  In the years since, their journey has taken them back to their homeland of Vietnam and our knowledge of them has grown only through third party mention.  The “third parties” began to mention that the Vus would be interested in bringing us to Vietnam for a marriage conference if we were game, and, in the words of Brian Reagan, “…and one thing led to another…” and on June 27, we were on our way to Vietnam!

It’s been quite a month!  Within three days of returning from Lebanon, we were in the air again, this time to California.  Our 2.5 week trip there was in jeopardy when a visit to my primary care physician revealed that the pneumonia (which had been diagnosed in late March, but which we thought had been successfully treated) was still alive and amplified. She reluctantly agreed to let me travel, if I promised to do only what I had to do, and rested in between. Armed with antibiotics and a sobering report from the radiologist, we headed west.

After almost a year of planning and anticipating, our two-week ministry trip to Lebanon is now “in the books.” We’re in the midst of flying home from Beirut as I write this, and one of the benefits of this long flight is the opportunity to process and ponder the past eleven days as we partnered with our Evangelical Armenian brothers and sisters in Christ who are serving Him faithfully in this often times unstable part of the world.

After a wonderful week with my mom, I returned to New England for the longest stretch so far in 2018. Home sweet home. I do love it when we land here.

The past few weeks have been a mix of new and old. How blessed we are to have both the traditions of “old” and the challenges of “new."

Three weeks.

Three conferences.

Three typically “warm climate” places with below average temps.

Three visits to Urgent Care.

Three deaths of esteemed friends.

Three snowstorms.

Three times two flights taken.

Obviously, good (and bad) comes in threes.

The 16th annual mid-winter Marriage Retreat is now in the books and we’re still filled with gratitude and wonder as we reflect on the incredible ways God met us collectively throughout the weekend. 

One reunion bled into another as we wrapped up the nuclear Friesen family gathering in Pennsylvania on Jan. 4 and flew to California to celebrate my mother’s 88th birthday with the Collins side of the family. All of my siblings were able to make this grand celebration and, including in-laws, grands, and great-grands, the final count came in at 33. Sadly, Paul was stranded in New England by the blizzard which suspended operations at Logan and Kari and her family were felled by the flu the night before the party, so they were unable to make it.

After rolling in on a red-eye flight today and landing at Logan and going home for only our fifth day in the month of January (which is almost out of days), I am finally getting to what has been a near-the-top entry on my “to-do” list since the third week of December 2017: writing this blog post. I love to write, but I need space and time to do so and, well, that’s been hard to come by in the days that wrapped up 2017 and the ones that have begun 2018. I’ll rely on pictures to “say a thousand words” so this won’t turn into marathon missive.

It is a season of weddings, funerals, and falling leaves. Of football, pumpkins, and sweaters. Of hot soup, warm bread, and apple cider. Of Patriots Bible studies, marriage conferences, and counseling. Of birthdays, anniversaries, and memories.

This year, it is also a season of hurricanes, floods, fires, and shootings.

With visions of Yosemite’s matchless beauty still dancing in our heads, we flew east in time to do laundry and repack suitcases with appropriate gear for speaking at Park Street Church’s family camp held at Camp Laurel in Readfield, ME (central Maine) the weekend of August 25-27. It was the perfect ending to an incredibly paradoxical summer. Though we have partnered for years with Kris Perkins (Park Street Church’s pastor to families/marriages) by speaking at various workshops and seminars at the church, this was our first experience with their annual family camp. And we loved it.

Returning from Ethiopia on May 22, we were very thankful to have several days at home before heading to California for a couple of weeks. It was especially good in light of the fact that Paul was “under the weather” with a gastro-intestinal bug that hopped on board his system the previous Friday while in Ethiopia. Thankfully “Cipro” knocked it out of him fairly quickly and he was none the worse for the wear a day later.

Though it seems like a lifetime ago, it’s only been seven weeks since we returned from the Thrive Conference in California and flew to Uganda. A lot has happened between then and now, which “explains” why I haven’t “found” time to update this blog, but still . . . I’m a bit shocked to again be this far behind. So as to not overwhelm you, I’ll share about this space of time in a couple of posts, starting with a recap of our time in Uganda and Ethiopia today.