I was visiting with an old friend the other day and she asked, “How has technology changed since you first left for the field?” Wow, exponentially! I knew she was asking because Ken was on his long trip to SE Asia and she wondered if I had heard from him or not.

20 years ago it would have been over a week until our family received a letter from us letting them know that we had arrived safely to our destination. This trip was a first in that I received a text message from Ken from every place he landed except the last most remote location. Isn’t that great? I could “follow” him across the world with each message and pray him on to the next. What a huge change and this just in 20 years!

Ken must use the BGAN satellite that they are deploying just to get email in and out this trip so he warned me that I might not hear from him too often. But I did get one short message last night.

Ken’s email:

I remember when our daughters were little and we traveled long distances in the car they would inevitably ask, “Are we there yet?” I would almost always respond, “Not yet. Another 10 minutes.”

Russ, my colleague and I, were asking the same question Wednesday evening around 8:30 PM our time during the last leg of our journey to our final SE Asia destination.

Charlotte to Minneapolis/St. Paul -> Tokyo, Japan (12 hours) -> Singapore (7 hours) -> overnight in a hotel -> Jakarta (2  hours) -> overnight in Jakarta -> up at 2:00 AM for a 5:40 AM, 3 hour trip to an island -> another hour trip to another island -> 1 hour boat ride across the crystal clear watered bay -> 3.5 hour drive over some very challenging roads.

Around Wednesday, 8:00 PM, tired and weary, heads bobbing wanting for sleep, we were following in our children’s footsteps and asking ourselves, “Are we there yet?”

We arrived at our destination and were warmly met by people of the area. A nice meal, a cold shower, and a comfortable bed was all that was needed to answer, “Yes. We’ve arrived.”

We thank God for the opportunity to partner with brothers and sisters in Christ in this remote part of the world. The challenges are many but the blessings are greater.

Thank you for praying! I’ll update here as I can. He’s hit “the ground running” so I’m thrilled how God can use him and his partners to speed the Bible Translation task forward.