We arrived in Washington after a dizzying haze of packing, flying, packing, cleaning, celebrating holidays, packing, cleaning, standing in lines, more standing in lines, loosing luggage, finding luggage, loosing luggage, standing in line....Now we are here, in a house we have a signed rental agreement to stay in, with Visas, and all of our belonging and a wonderful tenant of our own taking care of our place in Edmonton.

As we were preparing to leave we were talking with some good friends about this theory that when God closes and door he opens a window, and we generally agreed it was a pretty simplistic sentiment. That in fact sometimes that window is on the ceiling and to get you to it he might then go about filling up your now doorless room with water. Or snow or sleet or whatever, or perhaps it won't be a window at all but just a calm comfortable relationship with the room you are in.

All of that is to say that we are learning that God does call us to go places that are not easy, and even though we have no idea why we are being called we go. You may be thinking, what is so bad about being asked to go to Washington for 6 months, and you would be absolutely right. The struggle with this experience has been the process not the end result. I could now engage in a long list of complaints and groans about the last 6 months of life in the Stone house, which in the midst of the pain and suffering in our world, well we have nothing to complain about. What has really given me pause is realizing that God called us here, called us to leave Edmonton, we said we would go and things continued to be bumpy and crazy and well down right ridiculous. For those of you who didn't live with us through the last few months here is my favorite one: we are in a Montreal airport when we realize the forms we have to take to Calgary the next morning are in the luggage the airline lost 5 days before....prompting us to call on family to take "passport photos" of our children (in Wetaskiwin), email them to us on Liam's blackberry, print them at WalMart (yes I know leave us alone even the Stone's have to enter Walmart when forced to print photos in passport size before 8 a.m) and then take them to the US consulate in Calgary. Thing is I always felt okay about the decision to go, and knew things would eventually fall into place, it felt like watching a domino display on pause, if one of those guys would just fall everything else would follow but they just leaning!

Liam and I have been trying to keep our agenda in check for the next 6 months, we don't know what God's plan is for us here, what we do know is that he wants us to be faithful to Him. I have been carried through this whole process by these verses: James 4:13-15

"Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that."

I am planning to blog a bit about our time here, to keep me focussed and to record the experience for our girls. There is a ridiculous amount of things to do and see here so there should be some good pictures and occasionally witty dialogue (especially when Liam has time to write it!)