On our way home

 Dear loved ones,

I'm (Gavin) writing this from the San Francisco airport after a wonderful week with my family in California. We are about to fly to the other side of the world to say goodbye to Papua New Guinea -- our home for 18 years! We first arrived in PNG in July of 2005 when Isaac was 18 months old. Now he's a joyfully married adult! We first took the quintuplets to PNG when they were 21 months old.  It is our home and where our kids spent most of their childhood. 

PNG is where we had an incredibly meaningful ministry and wonderful friendships. All the time there was intermingled with challenges, hardships and fully saturated with the presence of the Holy Spirit and the faithfulness of our great God.

We are braced for the range of emotions that will surely be experienced during this trip. We expect each one of us will be experiencing a unique amplitude and wavelength of feelings. We will be experiencing different "lasts" for each of us and deciding what important things of ours should come back and what of our stuff  should stay to be a blessing to others. Please pray that through all the good and hard times as we laugh and cry we would feel how deep and wide and tall the love of Christ is for us. 

Thank you all for your generous and selfless support in prayer and finances over the years! This so clearly could not have been done without you!

After our trip we expect to continue living in Dallas where I work in the maintenance department of the International Linguistics Center in addition to occasional trips to JAARS in North Carolina where I help with training new missionary pilots. I will also start working as a recruiter for JAARS soon after our return. 

With love and in Christ,

Gavin, Carrie, Will, David, Marcie, Seth, and Grace