The long trip to New Zealand

We left Kelowna Airport on Tuesday, January 9th with a group of dear friends there to bid us farewell. There were a lot of tears and some laughter as we said 'see ya later'. A big heartfelt thanks to those who could make it out to see us off. And another huge thanks to all of you who prayed for our journey.







We get on the plane and who should we see, but Monica Houston! She taught all three of our girls at Peachland Elementary and was one of their all-time favorite teachers! Her and her family were returning to their new home in California. It was such a God thing to put her on the plane to soften our sadness!



Our final peak at Peachland as we left Kelowna. Our trip was thankfully very uneventful. The planes were all on time. We travelled in 4 different planes through 4 different countries. Our overnight flight was the longest, so we slept through most of it. After more than 30 hours of travelling and layovers, we arrived at our new home, Auckland, New Zealand! And....ALL of our luggage arrived at the same time with us with no damage! A true travelling miracle!


We arrived in Auckland and were warmly welcomed by our new NZ family! After we managed to get all of our stuff into their vehicles we made our way to our new home. The church family had cleaned and set up our new house for which we were so thankful! It looked great and it was wonderful to arrive to our own place. Throughout the next couple of days we had many people drop in to welcome us. We had connected with a few NZers online and they stopped in to meet us as well. After a good night's rest, we began the fun of setting up our house with everything we needed. That has been much more fun than the past 7 months of packing and purging everything we had!