Goodbye Oregon, Hello San Antonio

Tonight is Saturday, September 1, and I leave for Peru three weeks from tomorrow. I arrive in San Antonio on Monday, August 27 after a weekend in Corvallis and mostly Portland with Michi and her family. On Saturday th five riders (Michi, her brother Francis, his girlfriend Melissa, Michi's brother-in-law Justin and I) and our support team (Michi's sister Katrina and 18-month-old niece Malina) had a "carbo-load" pasta dinner followed by a concert in the park with the Oregon Symphony. The weather was refreshingly cool following the typical 100 degree days in Redding.

We and our bikes stayed at Katrina's loft downtown, and we took part in the Portland Century bike ride on Sunday, which was a blast. I rode the 50-mile loop through some great, long bike trails, streets, the Columbia River, bridges and residential neighborhoods under partly sunny to cloudy skies. When a train impeded our way for 10 minutes and then just stopped, the group of bikers piling up eventually to just haul our bikes over the flat car and hope the train didn't resume while we were on it. As far as I know, it didn't. After a gourmet meal and "goodie bag" of beer, Clif Bar and coffee, Michi and I took in the movie Once before going to dinner. On Monday, Michi resisted the urge to "accidentally" get lost on the way to the airport and, though the moments of goodbye were tough, I just did make my flight.

In San Antonio I have been generously hosted by Gina Anderson and her family at their home. Gina and I are friends from our time in Marina, CA, where we met through church retreats and youth work. She was on a two-week stay in SA after just returning from a two-year stint in Iraq, and it was intriguing and sobering to hear her assesment of the situation there. Some of her concerns are well laid out in the documentary currently in theatres called No End in Sight about the decisions leading up to and during the invasion of Iraq. I just saw the movie tonight and recommend it to anyone wishing for a clear, straightforward, chronological presentation of the mostly poor decisions made by various individuals concerning the conduct of the post-invasion period. Otherwise, I've made a couple trips to the dentist to get impressions for crowns (the dentist is Gina's cousin), studied and read Spanish aloud, building some general background in Peruvian history from The Peru Reader (recommended combination of historical articles, poems, short stories, and primary sources to paint a picture of Peru and its people), taking care of lingering logistical and financial details, and taking outings to visit family, friends, and prayer groups of the Andersons.

Tomorrow I go to the Incarnate Word campus here in town, and the rest of this year's missionaries (three of us to Peru plus two others) arrive on Monday for our orientation which begins Tuesday. I am ready to get started and look forward to this "in between time" of learning, prayer, spiritual preparation and community building. In a future post, I will give more details about what our orientation has included. For now, I wish you a wonderful week. I can still be reached at 541-602-4327, though you may have to leave me a message. I am unsure what my access to email will be in these three weeks, but I will post an update when I can. Go bless and have a wonderful week!