Just a quick update. With mixed emotions and several heartfelt thank-yous and goodbyes, Nancy and I left Tirana on Thursday. A significant chapter in our lives closed as we flew out, but the departure was with hopes that our time was meaningful to some of the people we had contact with, gratitude for what they had meant to us, and an anticipation of a short return some time this fall.

The flight to London deposited us in a completely different world, and Friday as we walked through James and Regents Parks in the beautiful cold of the day, then in the evening attended a performance of the musical Wicked (the other side of the story of the fearsome witch of Oz), we sensed the difference. Today we flew to Belfast and we will spend the next few days enjoying the hospitality of friends in Lisburn. Then back to London and to N. Carolina to be with Emily, Steve and Colette--then on to Mexico for me.

Nancy describes our life in terms that readers of the Chronicles of Narnia may recognize, as a life in the woods between the worlds. In the Chronicles this is a half-way place between the world as most people know it and the magical world of Narnia--a place of transition and of options, each somewhat undefined and each important. That is where we are. A time of pausing with gracious friends as we leave one world and journey into the next... I guess life is always like that to some degree, each day is a step beyond the day before and towards the day to come--but sometimes we see this reality more clearly than others. And this is such a time for us...