$7.33 gas and currency robberies

There is much to like and love about Western Europe. Gas prices aren’t one of them. This morning I filled up the rental car at a Shell station to the tune of $7.33 a gallon for the very cheapest unleaded gasoline. That sticker shock is bad enough but following our $61.32 splurge at the ice cream shop last night, the gas was anti-climatic. I could go on and on for pages about how expensive Europe is compared to North America, but I won’t. The bottom line of what these numbers mean above is the devaluation of the US dollar. You don’t want to know what attending my son’s graduation in Germany actually costs. Of course he was worth every euro :-) Yet it was an obscene amount of money in the end.

This blurb is being written at 34,000 feet in the air in a tin sardine-can commonly called an airplane. We are about half way across the Atlantic ocean and as Aderholdt traveling adventures go, this one has been terrifyingly amazingly flawless. Up at 5:30 this morning to shower and shave, final packing in the room, re-packing of the car, breakfast with Frau Shulberger, getting Jake, then picking up Helen, driving to Zurich, stopping at the Petrol station to top off that embarrassingly expensive gas, missing the rental car return - with Jake finally figuring out how to actually do it, getting all our car bags to the check-in, Jake and I then going to get the remaining bags that Brenda and I had left in storage when we came through Zurich on Wednesday evening, then checking in at United, paying the $193.00 for having one too many bags, breakfast at Burger King (Jake’s choice!) which cost an astounding $43 for burgers and fries and ketchup, meandering to our gate, going through security where Jake was flagged and searched because of the breathtaking number of electronic gadgets in his backpack, boarding the plane with me pushing in front as much as possible in order to find a relatively safe place for the guitar to make our trans-continental journey, to this moment where I am logging my thoughts onto my computer. Believe it or not, the plane is actually supposed to arrive an hour early in Washington! As I said . . . terrifyingly amazingly flawless.

Frankly it is a fitting end to a long and productive term. Four years of our lives poured out into the soils of Macedonia, Germany and the USA. Five Aderholdts working, stretching, changing, and getting it done. Heidi graduates with honors from High School and goes off to college, where she works two jobs, and continues to make the Dean’s list semester after semester. Jake has a great four years of high school where the boy became a man. Everyone looks up to Jake, and not just because he is 6 feet tall either. He is a voice of reason and wisdom everywhere he goes and he enables others along the way so that they shine. Helen traversed the pain of Middle School, two different dorms as well as a year with mom and dad, completing an amazing run at her first year of high school under the most challenging circumstances. Brenda has trained more women leaders in Macedonia than any other women in recent history. Churches will never be the same, women have evolved into powerful sisters dispensing God’s grace and mercy in their cities, and lives have been forever changed. Not to mention years of teaching English in multiple cities and settings and making a way for people to read God’s Word for the first time in their lives (and I could go on and on). David finished his doctorate, began teaching in regional seminaries immediately, and along the way planted the International Church of Skopje. And these are just the highlights of all that happened. There were disasters along the way too . . . I think I may save those for another day . . . today is for marking the progress we each made these long four years.

Interestingly enough, this day marks the first time in four years that the five of us will actually all be living together once again. We are all eager for that closeness again. Too, you would think that after a slam-dunk term of work behind us, that life would be stable and predictable. Nothing could possibly be further from the truth. We have never faced more ambiguity about our future than we do today. Perhaps in a couple of weeks I will be free to share more about that . . . perhaps not. The point of today’s blog is that life is amazingly expensive, in terms of what it costs and demands from us. If we knew the final tally ahead of time, few would willingly pay it I think. But I think the real question here is this, is it worth what it costs?