Shari went to Canada (now she’s back)

Yes, you read right.  Shari went to Canada in December!  Here is the mostly untold story…

In the middle of December, Shari flew to Calgary, mainly for the purpose of visiting her sister Amy and her sister’s boyfriend, Nate.

As nice as that is, you may wonder – why now?  Well, what we have here is a slightly unusual situation.  Here’s the short story…

Shari’s sister Amy lives in Sudan, Africa.  She’s a child nurse.  She made an unexpected trip to Canada and the USA in December with Nate.  Nate is from the US, and he also lives in Sudan where he is involved in relief work.  None of Amy’s family had ever met Nate.

For those of us living in Mexico, chances are we would never meet Nate, unless we made a point of it.  We asked if they wanted to come visit us in Mexico, but at the time it didn’t look possible (in the end, they did go to Mexico, but it wasn’t near us and we didn’t have the time once we found out to make any plans to meet them).

We wanted to all go, but we were in the middle of school and other activities, and the cost of flying four people to Canada is just atrocious.

So, in the end some kind people paid for Shari’s flight (thanks!), and she was able to make a brief trip (a little over 4 days in Canada).

Because she had such limited time, Shari wanted to spend her time with family.  So we didn’t advertise the fact that she was coming (and of course it was a last minute thing!).  We did however pay a little extra to get a later flight on Sunday so that she could make a surprise appearance at our church in Calgary.  The looks on people’s faces were worth the money!  🙂

So Shari was able to see Amy and Nate, and her parents, and brother and his family (a nephew and niece!  We’re jealous but we have pictures and video of the event).

Shari even got to do some wild things like … seeing snow … going to a hockey game … drinking tap water.

Actually, I asked Shari to share with us some of the things she noticed about Canada while she was there.  I’ll put all that in another post – stay tuned.  And, of course, we’ll have some photos of the trip in our photo gallery soon.

Anyway, we were sorry we couldn’t all go, but were able to talk to everyone via webcam.  And we had a fun time here too, with a birthday party to go to, Christmas to prepare for, school, and other fun things.  And we’re glad to have Shari back home!