Welcome Home, Dad!

Dad got home at 6 yesterday morning, and I was really excited to see him!  I woke up right away and used him as a jungle gym while he tried to fall asleep.  Finally, Mom had to take me for a run to give Dad a couple hours of rest.  (He needed that because their journey from Darjeeling, India, across the border at Chagra-Banda and then all the way to Dhaka took twenty-four hours!)

Mom wonders if any of you pastor types can come up with a good analogy here about how these prayers end up in heaps while prayers offered to a living God reach the heights and survive the elements.

Later in the day, Dad showed us pictures of the thirty-kilometer trek he coordinated for sixteen of his students and three of his colleagues.  It was fun to see because it intersected the trek we did in October, but now many more flowers are out and it wasn't so rainy.  

Dad was really proud of how well his students hiked and encouraged one another.  He felt a little badly about the fact that when some local kids joined them for a game of 500 in one of the villages they hiked through, the kid ended up with a bloody nose, but other than that there were no injuries or problems.  

I spent most of the afternoon helping Dad unpack and inspecting the tea he brought back.  Did you know that Darjeeling has over 80 tea plantations and three tea harvesting seasons?