Last week in Washington DC

We arrived at Sacramento Airport at 6.00 am for our flight to Washington. Our seats 22A and 22B were good and Kevin had enough leg-room. The surprise this time was that we needed to buy some breakfast food for then early 4 hour journey on the airplane, By the time the food trolley was near us they had run out of the healthy options and in stead we had to survive on a box of ‘survival rations’. The flight was wonderfully uneventful and we arrived at Dulles Airport to be met by Mike Woods.

Mike with wife, Lynnette with their great kids, Kathy and Steve live in a home in a leafy housing cluster. It is not far from the New Zealand Embassy where Mike works. It was quite an experience to drive in a car with ‘Diplomatic’ registration plates. As we drove out of the car park and showed a pass we did not have to pay. The car was technically not local territory but under the authority of another country’s rule. A thought came to us that it was much like the way we live as God’s people, in the world but not belonging to it!

After dinner that evening Mike took us for a walk along the magnificent Potomac River not far from his house. As dusk fell we watched birds reflected in the silver waters and looked out for deer and moose that frequent the area. Kevin was wearing a pair of new sneakers that rubbed his heel so much that he hobbled along the track more than he normally does! Stupidly he kept going and resulted in a pretty impressive blister the size of his thumbnail!
It was great to have time to catch up with the Woods. We talked till after midnight!

The following day we ventured out into the streets of Washington with the Woods family, viewing the monuments and museums and caught a little picture of this busy city which is often the scene for world changing events. We took some time to visit the Aerospace Museum and saw the collection that included the Wright Brothers famous plane, ‘Sputnik’ the very small satellite that we remember peering into the sky to see when we were kids and many other craft including the space capsule that landed on the moon and a facsimile of the motorized craft that explored Mars.

In the evening Mike had invited over lots of people who again, shared some of their journey and fired many questions at us - it was such an interesting night - to meet total strangers and feel as though you have known them for a long time. They came from a radius of 30 miles and were of many ages and backgrounds. All had sensed God had led them on to walk without the structures of the past.