Making Mission Memories in Mongolia

Well, this week has been pretty status quo back at the office, but there were still a few blog-worthy moments.  We returned to Guam early Monday morning— very early Monday morning (5:00 a.m.!)—and somehow managed to make it back to the office by 10:30 to start the week. A funny moment happened at the airport in Palau while we were waiting in line to show our passports to security. One of the guards motioned that it was our turn, and I suspect she was hoping J.D. would step forward. Instead, I handed her my passport. She looked at it and immediately said, “Oh yes! Rottweiler! I was trying to remember his last name. He’s the one who was trying to help the girls from Kiribati get in a few months ago.” (You might remember the story we shared back in November about having to buy the sister missionaries’ return tickets so they could enter Palau .) We joke all the time that everyone remembers J.D., and this was just one more example proving the point! I’ve mentioned before that one of...

When we first came to Palau, we knew we definitely wanted to snorkel in the famous Rock Islands at the Big Drop Off, along with several other sightseeing spots. Somehow we got busy and never got around to scheduling a tour, and before we knew it, we were leaving Palau. We were disappointed and thought maybe we had missed that opportunity. So when we found out we would be coming back to Palau—and that our friends, the Greenhalghs, would be here too—we jumped at the chance to check a few Palau bucket-list items off in between our missionary work. We did the Rock Islands snorkeling tour first, and it absolutely lived up to the hype. It was every bit as amazing as we had heard!  Even the boat ride through the Rock Islands was stunning. The Rock Islands are a collection of hundreds of small, mushroom-shaped limestone islands scattered across Palau’s lagoon. Over thousands of years, the sea has eroded their bases, leaving steep rock walls topped with thick green vegetation. From the wat...