3/25/98: Today, we arrived in Athens, Greece via Frankfurt, Germany. We were picked up in the early morning hours after an overnight flight by Gerry and George Valiakas. Gerry is Ruth’s cousin, from Maui. Gerry and George met in college in New York, married and moved to Athens, which is George’s home town. The weather is rainy and cold, but nothing like the freezing sleet that coated Chicago when we left yesterday. (Photo: Our first day on the road! Ruth on the balcony of our room at the pensione.)
3/25/23: This post, along with the next few posts, will briefly describe the who, what, where, when, how and why of the trip that Ruth and I undertook in 1998.
Today, I’ll describe the who and what. First of all, we could not have done this without the encouragement and actual tangible support of family and friends back home.
Many people would think that parents would be the “voice of reason,” warning us off of the risk of giving up our jobs to take a trip like this. But our parents and family members have proven to be given also to adventure and learning, so, there was only words of encouragement. In fact, as a Christmas present in 1996, my uncle Paul and his partner Nancy, gave me a little stocking stuffed with a twenty-dollar bill as a step toward saving for this trip. I kept that bill, because their gift was about more than cash. They were the first people to express genuine belief that this thing could happen!
Then there was our Church family. Pastors Carl S and Paul H were willing to put the hard questions to us about preparation for the trip AND for the return! But they also enthusiastically cheered our efforts to fulfill this dream. Jenny H., Christine B., Nancy L., Liana W., Peggy H., Julie S., and Gina C (the women in Ruth’s Bible study) committed to pray for us on a regular basis. Jenny, in fact, helped by being the executor of our finances, transferring funds in our savings to our checking as needed throughout the trip. My mentor, Vern R, never failed to ask me about the progress of our plans when we met each Thursday night to work on scripture memorization. He also was one of the most excited about the scope of our trip, having served as as missionary for 30 years in South Asia and then for 10 years in the Caribbean. And my friend Tom L hosted our website for us. This trip could not have happened without people like these.
Along the way, we also made many new friends and now have a sense of community with people all around the world. And, because we approached this adventure as independent volunteers, we had the great privilege of building relationships with the 14 different organizations that we served, including: CRU, The Evangelical Alliance Mission, SIM, Harvest Ministries – India, Duncan Hospital in Raxaul, Western Regional Hospital in Pokhara, SEND, Frontiers, and several others. I’ll get to introduce you to them as I continue to re-post the 1998 blog.
The work we did for these organizations included photography, graphic design and other communications assignments for me, hospital and epidemiology consultations for Ruth, and lots of random as-needed help as well. Our goal was to simply use the gifts and skills that we had to bless others. We wanted to see the world, but we didn’t want to merely be tourists. We wanted to travel with purpose just as we wanted to live our lives with purpose. More on that in future posts!
