Road Trip

This past weekend we experienced our first major road trip on this road we call deputation. I'm sure it will not be the last. Our desire is to raise support in churches no further west than Wisconsin and Illinois and no further east than New York and New Jersey. We'll see what the Lord has in mind!

Overall I would say the weekend went extremely well. It would have been nice to have another day to help spread out the travels a little bit, but with Jason still working that is just not possible. He already had to take three days off between last week and this week. Since he does not have paid vacation times and it affects future raises, we have to keep these days off to a minimum.

Friday night we stayed at the home of the boys' surrogate grandparents. We had a great time talking, eating pizza, and watching an old movie. The boys watched Bambi as they normally did when they would babysit for us. Saturday morning the baby and I went to the annual ladies' brunch at our previous church. The ladies were glad to have the chance to meet Dawson. It didn't give a lot of time for catching up, but it was good to see them even for a little while.

Saturday afternoon we headed north to the location of our meeting. Before going to the home where we were going to stay, we set up our display at the church. As we were doing it we discovered we had forgotten the main banner for our background. Oops! We draped the flag down the center rather than along the side to help fill up space.

We stayed with a very nice lady who made a great dinner that was dairy free. What a blessing! She made apple dumplings and we all got in on the action. She had an island in her kitchen and we were all gathered around it working on them. The boys especially enjoyed the chance to help. She and her husband live practically a stone's throw from Lake Michigan. All that separates them from it is the road and a thin strip of land. You could hear all the birds in the weeds and on the water.

Sunday we enjoyed a nice day at the church. Jason went on extension at this church during college and we had visited there once when Gavin was a baby, so many of the people were familiar (though more to him than me!). Jason spoke in S.S., the morning service, and the early evening service. On the 3rd Sunday of every month they have a lunch and an early evening service, so we got to be a part of that. We gave our testimony together during the morning service.

Sunday evening we drove back to the B----- and enjoyed some more time with them that night. In the morning the boys watched cartoons while she and I visited (Jason was having coffee with the new pastor). We made a quick visit to a lady from our former church who has cancer, then headed back home.

Our trip overall was uneventful until this point. After two hours we decided to stop for lunch and to feed the baby. I thought Jason had taken the keys inside, but they had fallen off the driver's seat onto the floor. I locked the doors and discovered as we were eating that we were locked out. We called AAA and they said it was going to be up to 45 min. before someone would be there. It did take quite a while and took a while longer for him to break into our van. I ran back in to go to the bathroom one last time while Jason was going to fill up the van. When I went out to the gas station, Jason was still in the van just sitting there. I waited and waited, but he still didn't come over. I finally walked across the parking lot (in the rain) to discover the van would not start! At first we thought it had locked down since it had been broken into. Jason called AAA back and they got us put through to a Toyota dealership. The man told Jason a bunch of steps to do to get it to "unlock". It didn't work and when we tried to unlock the doors they just clicked. They then told us they thought our battery was dead, but we hadn't left anything on while we were inside. We had to wait for another man to come look at it. When he opened the hood he discovered that the connection to the battery had come loose which is why we didn't have any power. A 30-40 minute stop become a nearly 3 hour stop. Not fun!

Because of that we didn't get home until 12:30. We had to unload the majority of the things since we're leaving for another trip tomorrow morning. I got to bed around 1:30. Thankfully all 3 boys slept in this morning so I still got a good amount of sleep. Today I did some unpacking, got caught up on the computer, did a load of laundry, made dinner, and of course took care of 3 children!

We'll be heading out around 9:00 tomorrow for a meeting at 7:00. We'll be meeting one of the pastors for dinner at 5:00. Please pray we make it on time and without any incidents! After the service we'll be packing up and driving back home since Jason needs to work on Thursday. It will be a late night so hopefully at least one of us will manage to stay awake to drive!

Please continue to pray for churches and individuals to take us on for support. Right now we need about $200 a month to break even with our current expenses.