BFF

Today is a pretty exciting day for us - our very first guests are on their way here! I am so thrilled that Shannon and Tom are coming to visit us!

Shannon and I have a long history of visiting each other. You see, we met in London Heathrow airport on our way to Ghana (West Africa) in June 2003 on a Wycliffe Discovery mission trip. Now if ever a story about a friendship spanning miles needed the perfect place to start, Heathrow, gateway to the airborne world, is it. Shannon and I were assigned to be roommates our first night in the country and hit it off immediately as we figured out how to hang our mosquito nets and wondered how to flush the odd-looking toilet.

On the way home from Ghana we had a three-day layover in London, and while everyone else wanted to relax and stay in the London guesthouse, Shannon and I wanted to see the town! We learned how to use public transport in London and made our way all over the place.

During that trip I persuaded Shannon to go to the same grad school I'd already decided to attend the following year, and we also planned some other visits. I was going to college in Michigan and she was in college in Indiana, and our schools had identical schedules for fall and spring breaks. So, using cars, buses, and trains, that fall she came up to visit me and that spring I went to go visit here.

We had two FABULOUS years together at Trinity Western University in Langley, BC, Canada. We learned a lot about linguistics, grew a lot spiritually, and hosted lots of fun gatherings at our house, along with our third roommate, Rachel. During our time together in Langley we took a road trip to the Oregon Coast and another to Calgary, AB. We also had some unplanned road trips getting lost (turns out that one of the many things we have in common is a lack of directional sense).

I left for Tanzania after graduation and Shannon went back to Indiana. One might think that such moves would be the end of our spending time together, but oh no! Oceans can't keep us apart! I flew back to the States in 2007 for my sisters' weddings and Shannon flew out to spend five days with me. We took a trip up to Langley together and had a grand time catching up. In 2008 I was in the States for the second half of the year, so Shannon and I met up (in Panama, of all places!) for vacation and I also spent a week with her in Indiana after visiting friends and supporters in Michigan. In 2009 I went back to the States for my wedding, and of course Shannon had to be a bridesmaid, so she once again boarded a plane bound for Washington. After the wedding, Andrew and I were in England for four months for his Scripture Use training, and who should happen to be passing through England to visit us except Shannon? In 2010 Shannon got married and I made the trip to Indiana to be her bridesmaid (and have some time together before the wedding). Some friends are worth traveling for five days to get to spend five days with them!

So now Shannon and Tom are coming to Tanzania to visit us, because we couldn't let a year go by without at least one of us going to monumental efforts in the travel department to make a visit happen!