An Inkling
Thank you
for your kind wishes and prayers for our anniversary trip. It was a great joy, and we’re still
processing all that we saw and experienced.
Here’s
where we went: we flew to Rome; boarded
a cruise ship from there to the Eastern Mediterranean, where we stopped in
Santorini, Istanbul, Ephesus, Mykonos, Athens, and Naples. It was a trip of both natural beauty and
historical wonder, the full account of which would take hours, and would surely
remind you why you try to avoid travelogues!
An immense
amount of planning goes into such a trip.
Moving 3000+ passengers and 1000+ crew members across that much
territory, feeding them and keeping them healthy, doesn’t just happen. And our place in it didn’t just happen
either. Ron Sleeth’s expert help was a
great gift as we planned the trip and its excursions.
But some of
the greatest gifts of the trip were of the kind that only the Lord can
plan. For example, we flew to Rome on an
overnight flight, arriving at our hotel at 9:30 a.m. on Sunday, and the clerk
told us that the Pope would be preaching at noon in the great Vatican Square,
less than a mile away. So we walked
over, and joined tens of thousands from around the globe – quite a preview of
heaven – to hear Pope Francis preach in Italian. I could pick out only a couple of words, but
the presence of the Spirit and the joy of that gathering were clear enough. I snapped the attached picture as he
preached. And so one of the greatest
gifts of the trip came to us with no planning of our own.
Then there
were other unplanned blessings. We met a
lovely Christian couple from San Diego, Richard and Nancy, and greatly enjoyed
hearing how the Lord was at work in their lives. On the Island of Mykonos we happened upon a
little Orthodox chapel, filled with icons, and offering a lovely place apart from
the crowds of beach goers and shoppers.
Then each night at dinner we were waited upon by Pedro, a Honduran who
leaves his family as he sails for seven months a year, and who served up not
only fine food, but also great kindness.
And then, to top it off, when we got home we had dozens of anniversary
cards from family and friends – amazing!
God is
good, and his goodness is sweetest when it comes by surprise.
Blessings,
Keith
