It's been hard to get back into planning, but with the approval of the Coronavirus vaccine, I am hoping travel will be back again, at least by this summer.
I am currently working on the August 2020 plan though I'd like to actually leave a couple weeks earlier, both to be back in the US for the election (I am an election official) in November, and so that my husband Mark can vacation with me in late August rather than mid October. He'll be coming for two weeks, and that two weeks, a vacation, will occur in the middle of the sabbatical.
I am not sure what will happen with Brot und Rosen, and am thinking about how I might use the extra four weeks if I am unable to do my service work. I can come back to the US early and do the service in the US, or add additional touring to my itinerary, or just slow things down a bit. I have already rearranged some of my time to add an extra day on the Jesus trail and an extra day in Jerusalem, maybe I'll add Caeserea Philippi, Bethsaida, spend more time in Galilee, or visit Petra. And, while I'm still resistant to doing so, maybe a quick visit to some of the Pauline sites in Turkey, or Cyprus. And certainly, an opportunity to visit my sister's child in Bath, as well as reinstate the visit to Canterbury!
In addition I am facing the reality that my passport expires in 2021, and that I cannot travel within 6 months of its expiration date, so I am, right now, renewing my passport My new passport will contain the stamps associated with my sabbatical travels, but I also look back at the one I am giving up.
In this passport I had, for several years, work permits for Canada, as I worked on IBM projects up there under the NAFTA regulations. This passport took us on a Catamaran cruise in the British Virgin Islands, and to Havana, Cuba for a day and a half on a people to people program from an MSC cruise ship. It has stamps for entry and exit from Amsterdam, Lisbon, Frankfurt, Brussels, Glasgow, Iceland, and Madrid as well. It's ready for a new continent (Israel is in Asia) and a new adventure. So I'm packing it up, getting my husband to take some pictures of me, and going back to planning, from the ground up, really, and preparing anew, with a somewhat changed itinerary, the same goal: to experience the context of the incarnation in the place it happened, and much hope.
