missionary visitors

Last week we had the privilege of hosting a missionary family from Switzerland for five nights.  They are in the US enjoying some vacation time, and will also be attending the Grace Community Church Missionary Conference next week.  They wanted to come visit Faith Bible Church too, as Martin knows our pastor, Chris Mueller.  Martin has been teaching at the TMAI Bible school in Germany, so Nige had met Martin a couple of times at the TMAI symposiums.

All their cups lined up on the kitchen counter - Martin, Gabi, Joelle, Lois, Joshua, Timon, Sylvan and Noe.

Their shoes by the front door . . . and a couple pairs of ours too!

While they were in town we were able to head down to San Diego to visit Sea World for the day - just an hour's drive from Murrieta.  My last visit to Sea World was in 2001 when friends from Rotorua came to visit us, when we were still living in Los Angeles, and Nige's last visit was probably in 2000 when his family visited us for his graduation from TMS.  So, it had been a while!  It was fun to go back.

I was fortunate to be underground right when it was feeding time, and got this cool shot of the polar bear coming underwater to catch the fish that was tossed to him.  He was very fun to watch!

And here he is swimming around.

These are Beluga Whales. They seemed to like swimming upside down.  Our pastor's wife, Jean, has swum with these whales, here at Sea World, and she says their skin feels like the white of a hard boiled egg.

 Cool turtles.

There are some rides to do too, and most of our group did this one, called Journey to Atlantis.

Nige, Joelle, Lois and Timon are in the two front rows.

The Manten family.  They all got very wet, which I think they all enjoyed as it was a hot day.  I didn't go on the ride, but I stood in the splash zone to catch a bit of spray from a couple of boats that came down . . . and then all of a sudden I got doused!  So I got cooled off too, which was SO nice!

They have some pools where you can reach in and touch the sea creatures.  So, I got to touch this Starfish . . .

. . . and Nige got to touch a Stingray!

Another highlight was seeing the killer whales.  In this picture the whale is splashing the crowd.  Or should I say, soaking the crowd!

Two of the whales doing flips.  A total of four whales came out during the show.  They were amazing!
It was a fun day with the Manten family and the other two families from FBC who came too.