About a year ago, my wife and
I were having dinner with our daughter and son-in-law when they casually
mentioned that they had made the decision to take a bold leap of faith. Kaila and Taylor had made the decision to quit their
jobs, give up their wonderful (and very affordable) apartment, put their stuff
in storage and take off to travel the world for an entire year.
The look on my face must have
been quite a sight. My head was swimming
with the classic parental discourse… Quit your jobs? Travel the world? Put all
your belongings in my garage? Anyway, once my wife and I thought about it, we
realized that this was indeed the perfect opportunity for them to journey like
this before kids, mortgages and normal adult routine would make a trip like
this an unlikely event. Now, I must admit that I am a softy and very protective
when it comes to my daughter. I have never been out of touch with her for more
than 3-4 days at a time since the day she was born so this was going to be a
huge adjustment for me. This coupled with the nagging threat of terrorism had
me very worried and praying constantly for God’s mercy to be upon her. Since He
is the God of miracles, I knew that He could pull this one off.
The first miracle occurred
when we discovered that they would be joined by their best friends in Thailand
to begin their journey. They would be
traveling together as a unit for the first six months of their walkabout. Yes…
Safety in numbers! The second miracle occurred when my son-in-law called me. He
told me that his employer had decided to hold his position open for him until
he got back. I don’t know who these particular people are, but I want to thank
them for seeing that Taylor is a more than worthy asset and well worth the
wait!
Over the past year we watched
the two of them scrimp and save and plan out their intended route. The discussion also included the perils and pitfalls
of jamming their entire world into a smallish backpack to last an entire year.
This time included an abundance of prayer for God to reveal Himself in a very
real and powerful way in their lives. Also, for God to show them exactly what
He had in store for them and lead them to witness and share with others the
incredible peace and joy that exists in the love of Jesus Christ. With that
said, here is a recent excerpt from their blog written in Thailand…
“Despite the craziness of travel that
our trip has introduced us to, the good we have already experienced outshines
any of that and is exactly the reason why we chose this lifestyle. First off,
being reunited with our best friends and being able to do this journey together
has been one of the highlights of my life so far. I think we all just feel so
grateful to experience this with each other and the memories we get to create
and lessons we will learn will last us a lifetime. I know times will get tough
and combining four personalities can make things tougher, but honestly I
believe God has us here together for a reason and I wouldn’t want to be
anywhere else but right here with these three people right now. I have loved every second of this journey so far and
I cannot wait to see where it takes us. Bangkok gave us a nice warm welcome to
our journey but we are already feeling the nomad spirit and ready to move on.
Up next, the jungles of Chiang Mai!”.
The world is a book
and those who do not travel, read only one page.
~ Saint Augustine
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