Dear Friends, I have been so overwhelmed by the responses of so many of you. Your encouragement, your giving, your prayers, your words of love and support have helped me in seeing this dream become a reality. Thank you so much for the part you played.

I wanted to give you an update as I know so many of you are praying for us, cheering us on in prayer.

After going back and forth with my travel agent looking at what would be best I felt that the best thing to do would be to take the shortest route to Bolivia and back again, rather than being a little ambitious and try an around the world route. The truth is, I actually thought it might have been cheaper. Well, it wasn’t and Leeanne (my travel agent) was able to get me a return ticket from Bangkok to Bolivia for AUD$15,000 for the two of us. This was half of what I thought I might have to pay. So far approximately AUD$13,000 has been pledged and so I have decided to go ahead with the trip. Leeanne has graciously said that I can pay off what is lacking once we get back. I am sure the money will come in, it’s just hard to juggle money coming in from three different continents and sometimes it takes a little time for it all to get here. On top of this, there isn’t a lot of time if we are going to leave when planned.

So, we are looking at flying out of Bangkok on June 9th and arriving back in Bangkok on July 5th. We will have four days with our son Zac before heading down to Bolivia. On the way back we’ll spend a day with friends in Miami as all flights down to Bolivia go through Miami and then a very kind friend has said she would like to put us up in a beach resort near Los Angeles for the last four days before heading back to Bangkok. We’ll have two weeks to visit four different places in Bolivia where I lived and grew up.

By the way, I have just shared this surprise with Penny, as I wanted to be sure that she would be okay to take the trip with the level of pain she is experiencing from day to day, before I actually finally booked and paid for the tickets. I needed to include her in the decisions I was making. She was shocked, choked up and excited all rolled up into one. It was so much fun telling her. She is now busily dreaming about the trip and actually wants to spend a couple of days on a river boat traveling on one of the tributaries of the Amazon! It’s what I did when I was a lad and several times in our married life we’ve talked about doing this together.

Please pray that all the details will come together. I am still busy trying to get our internal travels together for Bolivia. Pray that Penny’s health will hold up and that all the traveling will not be difficult for her nor set her back. Pray for good weather – I have been told by several people that June is the best month to be visiting Bolivia which was one of the main reasons for trying to push for it now.

Thanks again for your love and support. Here’s a short note from Penny…

Thank you so much to all of you who have been ‘for us’ doing this trip, and for the ways so many of you have shown your love to us by giving. It is a quite an unusual thing when something you’ve dreamed about doing for a long time actually comes about. Not that I didn’t ever think it could be possible but I thought maybe it might be more of a retirement ‘treat’ that we saved for in the years to come. I appreciate your kindness and generosity more than you will know. Wow! Thanks, Penny