Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and … Happy Birthday?

Apologies for the lengthy delay! It’s been over a month since our last blog post but there is good reason for that. As we mentioned in our previous posts, we have spent the last month and a bit traveling around Africa and, as most of you know, making a surprise visit home over the holidays! It turns out that we lied and arrived in Vancouver just in time to surprise my mom (and the rest of our family) for her 60^th birthday celebration, after all. At first, we had no intentions of going home, considering the time and cost it would involve and that we had already planned our travels in East Africa around visiting our sponsored children in Kenya. But the more we thought about it, the more we realized how much it would mean to our families and how we needed to be home. The great thing is that we were still able to do everything that we originally planned to do in East Africa, just a couple weeks pushed back.

As you can tell from the video and pictures below, it was definitely the right decision!

Mom right after we surprised her

Seeing and spending time with these three little dumbheads alone made the trip worth it!

Baby Reese, Cynthia and Roger's new baby girl

The newest addition to the Chan clan, Theodore (Teddy), Melinda and Benny's new baby boy

Our nephew Tyson, chillin' with Gus and Dim Sum

Proud Auntie Diane and Uncle Byron

Uncle Byron loving nap time with Teddy and Reese

It was a whirlwind two weeks being back in Vancouver and Calgary over the holidays but it was a real blessing to be able to spend time with both our families, to see our friends and to enjoy some truly missed comfort food. It’s only been 4 months since we first left Africa but being away from all of you has definitely been the most difficult part of being here … well, that, and not being able to watch Colin Kaepernick’s record-setting performance as my (Byron’s) 49ers crushed the Packers to advance to the NFC Championship for the second year in a row. Should the 49ers make it to the Super Bowl, please consider sponsoring this poor missionary, and lifelong 49ers fan, for a trip to New Orleans!

What we craved the most ... our first bowl of home-made "pho" at Diane's parent's place

I know that we had the opportunity to say this to some of you in person, but to those that we didn’t, merry belated Christmas, happy belated new year and, to my mom, happy birthday! As we enter the new year, we want to give a huge thanks to those that have supported us financially and through prayer. Without you, none of this would be possible. TWATOTELA! (thank you, in Bemba)