The Journey Begins

Good Evening! this is kimberly. andy and i are safely in tanana, AK (our home for the next 9 months). we have had an awesome day. Our trip started off with landing in Fairbanks last night at 10:30pm and running over to some missionaries home for peach and cherry cobbler (which was absolutely delicious). they had just celebrated their first anniversary last week so us newlyweds united!! then we were driven over to a beautiful cabin in camp Li-Wa to stay the night. the camp operates as a horse camp and many other things as well as being Christian. We got up this morning, met some workers fertilizing the grass and enjoyed our first morning together in Alaska. then we were picked up by david and marci who took us to a delicious restaurant for lunch and we talked, talked, talked before beginning a road trip all around fairbanks. we got to see the pipeline, dave and marci's Native Bible Church (what an awesome story of Gods blessing and provision), we saw UAF and got to taste the "best coffee in alaska" which was pretty delicious. These crazy people in alaska put spoonfuls of honey in their coffee :) the weathers been chilly but lots like oregon (rainy and grey skies). we waited at the airport for 2 hours before the weather cleared enough for us to fly out to tanana. once we got to our hometown we were greeted by great friends Cynthia and Dale and we gave andy a tour of the "city". man, the village has changed so much since even 3 months ago. construction everywhere and trees no longer covered with green luscious leaves - just twigs now. we stopped to see a fishwheel and actually got lucky - a fish was scooped up and put into a basket within a few minutes of us standing there. it was a colorful dog salmon. once our roadtrip ended we got a tour of our house and store. how busy cindy and dale have been this summer. over ten beds in the back of the house and new tables/chairs, walls and lots of other stuff. the grill in the downstairs store is all cleaned out for some remodeling. andy and i are very excited to be here and cant wait to get things started although i must say that cynthia is a very good cook and i am a little fearful that once she and dale leaves andy will have to starve because his wife has little cooking experience and has a lot of big shoes to fill (i will never be able to compete with rebecca!) well, i think that is all that has happened these couple of days - i am quite exhausted.please pray for our families (we love them very much) and for our transition into village life, pray that we are hard workers (as a VERY large shipment will be coming soon) and pray for great relationships with the people of tanana. we'll keep ya posted on our continued adventures. oh, and we will get pictures posted as soon as we can figure out how!!