From N. Ireland... Through Airports...To Australia

We had a great time in N. Ireland and then had to say some more goodbyes to loved ones......we got up early Saturday morning and headed to the airport.  God provided in many amazing ways for us as we flew over 21 hours and sat in airports for more than 15 hours from Belfast to London, Hong Kong, Melbourne and then to Cairns, Australia where we are now!  If you want to see more details about that, you can look on our ministry blog at http://ntm.org/benjamin_hatton or go to the link to the right of this post.  We arrived in Cairns almost two days ago and were able to stay up that first day until night time here.  We got a good night sleep and although we felt a little tipsy yesterday, we managed to keep ourselves on a normal schedule.  We slept again last night, but the jetlag is showing a little bit as all of us were wide awake around 3:30 this morning!  So, we finally got up an hour later and had breakfast.  The sun is coming up here now but I think we will all try to sleep again for a couple of hours!  When we wake up mid morning, many of you will be cleaning up after supper!  If we are calculating this right, we are 14 hours ahead of Eastern Standard time (home in Michigan).  Of course that will change as you 'fall back'.

We are in a tropical climate here in Cairns, which is strange, because when we flew here from Melbourne, which is a 3 hour flight south, the climate was very different.  It seems that Australia is much bigger than I thought!  It is spring time here right now and it reminds us a lot of Florida.  In the next day or so, we will post some pictures of Australia.  Thanks so much for thinking of us, praying for us and keeping in touch.  There is no turning back now, but we miss home and all of you very, very much!!