Thursday, September 13, 2012

Sabbatical

Within the next few days Tom and I will head off for our annual sabbatical. It is a much anticipated event that we prepare for all year. Reading, planning, talking with fellow travelers, and just preparing ourselves for the change in our routines takes us from the end of one trip to the beginning of another. This year we plan on heading West where we will  travel Military Space Available (Space A) through Hawaii, onward to Japan, then to Singapore (our thoughts…we will see what actually happens). From Singapore we will catch a commercial flight to Bangkok and then meander north through Thailand stopping to explore along the way. Places like Ayuthaya, Sukhothai, and Mae Hong Son. Eventually we will be in Chang Mai and from there we will catch a flight to Ventiane, Laos. Here we will visit with a partner of ours, a pastor that MMI has worked with for over ten years. We are excited to be with him and see what MMI has been a part of. From there we plan to  head to Viet Nam exploring both the Northern and Southern parts of this country. We have heard that spending a few days on a junk wandering through the many limestone islands in Halong and Cat Bay are beautiful and we long to find out for ourselves.  From there we will head down the Mekong Delta traveling through some of the areas that Tom had been in during the late 1960's. When we are ready we will head over to Cambodia and visit the temples of Angkor Wat and all the incredible   sites that this country has to offer. If we are able to get a visa to Burma (Myanmar) we will do so and visit the Inle Lake area. And while all this is our plan at the moment…we are excited to see what actually transpires. Part of the beauty of these trips for us is being flexible and being content in the moment we are in even if it is unexpected or different than we had planned.

Often times people ask us about our 'vacation' time and we are quick to say that we are taking a sabbatical. A sabbatical... to learn what? Well, about  life really. I found myself reminded about an event the other day that had occurred while we were traveling through Spain and Portugal. We had stopped at a place called Priego de Cordoba to see, what we had been told, were some  exquisite fountains in the piazza. In the busy season tourist from all over would come to see these fountains and so we were expecting to see something like the Trevi fountains in Rome. What we found were three, very small fountains with the most beautiful sounds of water flowing from them…certainly not what we had expected but beautiful in their own way. And, I remember thinking that there is always an opportunity to find beauty in the unexpected...

Our mode of travel encourages flexibility in the unknown. When we leave we only have tentative plans. We know the direction we are traveling in and we know when we would like to return. The rest just is. We find we have the time to think about things a little differently. Finding beauty in the unexpected. As many of you know we have had a few 'unexpecteds' lately. Tom with a recurrence of his bladder cancer, having surgery and starting chemotherapy last month. Me, with a change in my job. All things we had not planned but things that gave us a moment to put into play the lessons learned during our sabbaticals. Finding beauty in the unexpected. We look forward to the next several weeks when we have the opportunity to discover where these changes in our life will lead us and we are excited to be together.

We are in Travis as we speak…maybe a flight tomorrow to Hawaii and then on to Japan. Maybe not. Either way we are together and enjoying the beauty of being with each other. We will let you know what tomorrow brings when we know!

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