Planes, Trains and Automobiles

#sigosherts #ha2026

Planes, Trains and Automobiles is the perfect title for this blog post, because we’ve had a lot of all three of those these past two months. After our time in Daytona Beach we headed to Teen Missions International (TMI) in Merritt Island, FL. Teen Missions is near and dear to my heart; it is where I first experienced the joy of serving the Lord on the mission field. We have friends that live there, and are missionaries with Teen Missions, so we just had to stop in for the weekend and see them, and give the kids a tour of what really started it all for me, The Lord’s Boot Camp.

It’s hard to believe it was 30 years ago this summer that I first entered through this gate! A lot has changed, but a lot was still the same too! It was so cool to show the kids around. We had a personal tour from our friend. He was kind enough to take us all around the grounds.

Teen Missions now has a sort of museum you can tour. The kids got to try on hard hats, like the ones I would have worn 30 years ago. It just tickled me to see everything from so long ago. But at the same time I couldn’t get over the fact that something from my past was in a museum! That felt very odd.

Below, Asher is pretending to drive one of the buses that was used to transport kids. They had the front part of it cut and put on display with everything else. The kids had fun playing in there for a bit, opening and closing the door, turning the big wheel. (Side note: 29 years ago this June, I would have ridden on a bus much like this one, from California all the way to Florida, picking up teens along the way.)

If you are not familiar with Teen Missions, please check them out! It is a really cool ministry. Basically teens sign up to go on mission trips. Those teens show up for a week of Boot Camp, where they learn to work together as a team, as well as other skills (puppets, singing, construction) depending on what their specific mission trip will be. Then each team heads out to a different location. It used to last all summer, now I think it is only two months.

Next we headed back to Orlando for a family vacation. My mother rented and AirBnB for us an my sister’s family to stay. It had a pool, and the kids had a lot of fun relaxing and playing. Thankfully it was a heated pool! We ate yummy food, and just enjoyed being together.

Yaya flew down to meet us a few days later, after we arrived, and we got to pick her up from the airport with signs, flowers, and balloons on Valentine’s Day. What fun! One of the airport security guards said we were the best welcome crew he had ever seen.

Asiel didn’t want to look for the picture, unfortunately. We each had our own sign; we were trying to make it look like Yaya was some sort of celebrity, and it worked! Lots of people stopped to read the signs, and one woman remarked, “I wish I was Yaya!” So fun! It had been five years since my mom saw three of these kids, and she had never met Asiel. The tears streamed down as she kissed everyone.

While in Orlando, I also got to drive to the next town over and visit a friend that I first met at Teen Missions! We both lived in the same town when we were in high school, but we didn’t know each other. Someone from my first Teen Missions team knew us both, and introduced us. We became fast friends. We then returned to TMI the next year, on the same team this time. It was so nice to see her, her family, and her home. She took me on a tour of her town, and we had a lovely dinner together.

After our time in Orlando, we flew to our ultimate destination, “home”, Portage, MI, to my mother’s house. Her house will serve as our “home base” as we visit all the people and churches we would like to see. The above picture is of us “filling the pew” at my mom’s church.

Not long after our arrival in Portage, I was given 3 ticket to a concert in Grand Rapids. I had a dear friend who lived about 30 minutes from there, and asked her if she would like to join me for the concert. It was a really fun evening.

Our first order of business, once we landed “home” was to find a vehicle. Josh spent much of his time looking into purchasing or renting vehicles that would hold all 6 of us. He finally found a good option in North Dakota, but he had to take a train there to get it. It would have been a 42 hour trip, there and back, but because of weather, the train stopped in Chicago and would not continue on to North Dakota. Josh was then scrambling for a way to get to his destination, and ended up on a bus. This added a lot of time to his trip, making it a 56 hour round trip! But he beat the bad storm blowing in, and was safe and sound with us again, and we now have a great vehicle that we are renting for $100 a month! God is good. In the picture below, Josh is excited to find soursop juice, one of his favorites from the Solomons! Surprisingly *dripping with sarcasm* all the pictures Josh took of his trip to get the van were of things other than himself. HA!

Abigail came to stay with my mom as well, for her spring break, which was two whole weeks! What a joy to spend so much time with her. She enjoyed the day to day life of a large family, seeing her siblings, hanging out with us all, and especially me! Hehe! And then I headed to Chicago on a train to see her life at school. I stayed with her for four nights in her dorm room, and went to her classes with her. It was really fun. I am so glad I got to do that. Josh joined us with the kids, driving our newly rented van. We all enjoyed seeing Abi, and Andrew got to attend Experience Moody, an event designed for prospective students. There was a missionary housing place we were able to stay at about and hour from Abi’s school, and she joined us there for the weekend.

Abi really wanted us to experience a little bit of Chicago life, as well as Moody life, so she made sure to take us out for pizza (she had won a $100 gift card!) and to the free city zoo. Asiel really liked all the animals. She was so cute as she exclaimed after every single one. (Since we have been home she has asked to go see the monkeys repeatedly.)

On Sunday we attended church with Abi before heading back to Portage. She goes to a Chinese church in China town, and it was so fun to see all her church family, people who love on her, pray for her, and are happy to see her every Sunday. It was a wonderful service! The music was particularly awesome.

On our way back to Portage, we swung by the house of very dear friends. They are actually the first couple we traveled to see and share about our Wycliffe ministry with, when we first joined Wycliffe in 2018, nearly 8 years ago now! It is really hard to believe it has been that long!

And lastly, a day later we headed to Webb City, MO to see Josh’s family. It was an 11 hour drive, but since we had a van finally, we booked it down there to see everyone. It was a sweet reunion. Josh’s mother had not seen three of the kids in five years! And she also met Asiel for the first time. Asiel warmed up to her and her big cat right away. It was a wonderful week! We plan to stop in and see her several times, breaking up our visits with here over the year we are in the USA.

There ya have it! Two months of Goshert Shenanigans! We are now back in Portage, MI. Since arriving back in the USA we have also been trying to get as many medical appointments in as we can. In addition to that, Asiel had a severe allergic reaction to something we are not 100% sure what, and we had to take her to urgent care. Thankfully her breathing was never affected, but her face swelled really bad. Due to this, we have started a special diet called GAPS diet, and we are working on repairing damage done to our guts while in the Solomon Islands. We are hopeful that once Asiel’s gut is healed from the damage done to it by drinking baby formula, and having taken antibiotics, her body will stop reacting to so many things. Please pray for us. We are all doing the diet. Anna has a severe fungal ear infection that we have been trying to heal for months (in the Solomons as well as here), and it is not improving. Hopefully this diet (which eliminates sugar from our diets) will help her ear situation as well. Josh got bit by a spier while helping my mother clean out her garage, and it became quite infected, and he ended up at urgent car as well, with a big dose of strong antibiotics to help heal his finger that had swollen to nearly double the size. Thank you for following along with us and praying for us!