The first question we’re asked when we talk about our trip is “Where are you going?”. That is a moving target right now as we plan with family and partner organizations. As of January 18th of 2022 it looks like this:

Fly out of Calgary in the middle of July to England. We’ll spend a few days in London where we will see the sights. We want to arrange a stay in the English countryside using WWOOF or WorkAway.info. These will be two of the sites we’ll use to help us meet locals m and keep costs low.

We’re hoping to attend a Suzuki institute in the south of England in August. After that we will head across the English Channel to France. We will be visiting Normandy and then move on to explore the continent.

In the fall we may end up in Prague supporting missionary work there. This would be a treat. It is the birthplace of Dvorak a favourite composer of ours.

Christmas plans would have us spending time in Rwanda with Heather’s sister and her family. You may have noticed we’re avoiding cold weather by escaping south.

This is two fold. First we don’t want to pack or buy cold weather clothes. Second, we get enough cold in Edmonton that we really won’t miss it.

Spring would have us picking up and moving east with the hopes of work for a little while with missionaries in South Asia.

We think we’ll end in Japan. Heather taught there for 4 1/2 years and will be a great tour guide. We love the culture there.

The hardest part of planning is thinking ahead so far into the future. It feels a bit demanding to ask other to make plans for our arrival a year or more from now. We are doing our best at being open and flexible with everyone. We’re also constantly aware of COVID and how that might slow us down or prevent us from entering countries. We don’t want to be spending two weeks in quarantine every time we enter a country. It is a new reality that we didn’t have to worry about 15 years ago when we first started dreaming about this year away.