VISITORS

In the middle of my preparations for my move to Torrance next Friday (1/27), I took two days out this weekend to drive down to Fallbrook to Annie and Cam's because of special visitors.

Matt Newman - My cousin Jane Walvoord's son Matt, now in an MBA program in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, was in town for a buyers' convention (Jane opened a Dutch souvenir/food store downtown just last year, and Matt got to go on a "buyer's" trip to LA on the store's dime.) He was staying with a college friend (also named Matt) who is now studying in Escondido, California, just down the road from Fallbrook. So, I drove down from LA, and we all met up at Annie and Cam's place Sunday afternoon to watch football and share a late afternoon meal before the boys headed back to Escondido. Cam took them on a tour of the avocado grove and showed them how to use the long-armed picker to get at the avocados. (They took home a bag with their pickings.) With a little wine in us, we had a fun conversation around the dinner table, and they left later than they had planned. (A good sign, usually!)

Dave and Joan Nichols - The second batch of visitors was due to visit Annie and Cam today, Monday. Dave and Joan have worked for Wycliffe Bible Translators/SIL since the mid-1970s, and were old friends of Mom and Dad's. Dave and Joan lived for a while in Germany in their early SIL career, so they would come up to Holland fairly often to visit and were supported by my parents for many years till they died. In fact, Dave and Joan stopped by to visit Dad at Samarkand the November after Mom died in 2002. Mid-morning today, however, Ann got a call from the hospital where Cam's brother Jeff has been since his car accident New Year's Day. He's been on many tubes the last few weeks, and today they found fluid around his heart and his kidneys began to fail, so they had to operate again. The case worker said Jeff was "failing", so we weren't sure how dire things actually were. Ann ended up having to cancel on the visit from the Nichols to be ready to go to the hospital if needed.

I called the Nichols's to reschedule (they are staying with friends in Hungtington Beach in Orange County), and since Ann wasn't going to be involved and I'd be heading back to LA anyway, we agreed to meet up in Newport Beach, much closer to them. I got there from Fallbrook a bit early in the afternoon and worked on an assignment for Tuesday's Web class before they arrived at 5 pm. We strolled down the pier and back, but the wind was pretty rough and it was getting unpleasantly chilly, so we checked into a nearby Italian restaurant for dinner. Dave and Joan now have grown and married kids (I visited them in Germany when they were just little tykes!) and the two of them have been stationed in Malaysia for over 10 years now on the island of Bornea (the states of Sabah and Sarawak have been carved out of the northern coast and belong to Malaysia). There are over 100 languages in Malaysia alone; hence Wycliffe's interest in the area!

Tomorrow I have my weekly DreamWeaver class (the industry standard application for creating webpages), Friday (27) the moving van comes to pick up my larger pieces to drive down to Torrance, and Saturday (28) I fly back to Champaign-Urbana for a week to visit and pack up some vital career-oriented things still in storage back there. A busy week ahead!