We're in San Jose

The day we arrived in Sacramento at Amy's house, the kids had a lemonade stand. It was cute and they made a great sign for it. When the sale was done, they had raised $10.00. Amy blessed us by telling us that they raised it for us. What a blessing they were to us.


We had a wonderful time with Amy and Kyle and their family. We were so blessed by their hospitality. Amy cooked delicious meals for us and we are so thankful. Here are a couple of pictures.

Amy and Gail


Avery and Adison


Adia and Erin


We are staying in a hotel this week that we have been blessed with. It has been paid in full. What a blessing it is. The kids wanted to go swimming so we went when we got back from a late dinner. It was almost 9:00 but they enjoyed the swim anyway.



Our itinerary for this week:
Sunday, April 19 - We will be going to church at South Hills. It is the church we went to when we lived here.

Tuesday, April 21 - Dinner at a friends house in the evening.

Friday, April 24 - Farewell Dinner by Adrian, Jim's boss of almost 29 years. The staff where Jim worked will be attending and also some of our friends.

Saturday, April 25 - leave for LA where we will stay the night at our friend's the Bubnas.

I am sure there will be more things we will do this week and I will post as we do things. We have more friends that we are trying to catch up with, some of which we will see tomorrow at church.

Giving Devotions to a Home School Co-op

We were invited to share the devotions at the Middleton's home school co-op group. We had a great time teaching on "Mission Impossible." Jim shared about everyone having a mission, from the body of Christ as a whole, to the church, to the individual person. We talked about Jesus sending out the disciples with the power of the Holy Spirit. We asked how many of them had little brothers or sisters and of course many of them did. We shared with them that they could be witnesses to their brothers and sisters in sharing the gospel to them. Everything went wonderful and we had so much fun.


After that, we were invited to share in a Spanish class where Jim lead in the game - "Simon dice..." or "Simon Says." The kids had a great time. After that, we were able to share about where we are going and the kids all had really great questions. It was a great experience.


Erin went to both of her friend's classes and had a great time. The first class was a basketball class that Amy taught and then she sat in on a science class called Creation Science with Jonathan Park.


Tomorrow we will be traveling to San Jose where we will be meeting up with friends that we knew when we lived there. We will also be spending time with Adrian, Jim's boss of almost 29 years. We look forward to the time there.

We're in the Sacramento Area

This morning we left Shasta at 6:30AM so we could arrive in El Dorado Hills by 10:30AM. Our friends, Kyle and Amy Middleton, have invited our family to stay with them for a couple of days. They home school their kids also and they were attending an art class that was being taught by an very good artist. Jonathan was not interested in painting but Erin thought it was great.

In the process of this class, we discovered we have another budding artist among our family. James has always been considered quite the artist, but Erin seems to have some talent also. Below are pictures of her first painting after some short instruction by the teacher. The teacher helped many of the kids in the class but Erin did this one on her own.




After the art class, Jim and I went to William Jessup University to see the president, Bryce Jessup. William Jessup University was formerly San Jose Bible College where Jim attended from 1979-1982. It is where Jim first received a call on his life to serve the Lord full time. That call was put on the back burner until recently when God called us to full time service in Mexico. Bryce was the pastor of the church we went to when we first got married. He is also the pastor who officiated the ceremony at our wedding. We had a wonderful visit with him and it was great to catch up.


This evening, Kyle and Amy gave a dinner for us with their mission team from their church. It was a wonderful evening of sharing our hearts and sharing with others with like mindedness of spreading the gospel to the nations.



Tomorrow morning we will be giving a devotional at Amy's homeschool co-op group. We then will be helping out in the Spanish class at the co-op. It sounds like an exciting opportunity.

And We're Off....

We came into Redding today and found a place with free Wi-Fi so I am sending the blog I wrote yesterday.

Monday, April 13, 2009

What a job it is to take everything that will fit into a van and head down the road to begin a journey to live in a foreign land. Over the last few years we have continually downsized our things to the point that we now have the things we really need packing into our van. I wonder what Abraham thought when God told him to take his family and go to a land that He would show them. At least we know where God has told us to go, I feel a great advantage in that. Also, with today’s technology, we are only a phone call or e-mail away from loved ones. We do realize that there will be sometimes while in a foreign country that today’s technology will not work as well as we would like, but it is there.
Saying good-bye to our daughter, son-in-law and four grandchildren was hard. Kristen and I had a deal that if I didn’t cry, she wouldn’t cry. Well, as you can imagine, all bets were off when we actually said good-bye. Neither of us made it.

Pictures of our loaded down car.



It took several attempts to get the back door closed.



Later…
The emotions have leveled out and we are now traveling along I-5 going south. We have come 125 miles now and only have 2,825 more to go to Puebla, más o menos (more or less). It has been a stormy day and with the cargo carrier on the top, the van rocks a lot. I have noticed a few people looking at our packed out van. Unless they really look hard though, it is hard to see in the back because of the tinted windows so I don’t expect to get a lot of those looks. I wonder what they are thinking.
Evening…
We had a hard time believing that it was snowing at Mount Ashland as we were driving this evening. The funniest thing was that it started right after Jim read a sign that mentioned chains. He said we weren’t carrying chains and asked if we needed them, then we saw the snow. As we crossed the California border it immediately stopped snowing. Too funny!
After eight hours of very cramped quarters, we arrived at the house in Lakehead. The kids are now in bed and Jim and I are going to bed also. We’re looking forward to a quieter day tomorrow.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Morning…
We are up and about and ready to start the day. The sun is shining and the lake is much fuller than last summer when we were here. It is a beautiful day!

We Leave Today

It is hard to believe that the day has arrived when we will begin our journey of moving to Mexico. For years this has been our plan and now it is upon us. Yesterday was Easter and we enjoyed a lovely day with family. My mother-in-law outdid herself with a wonderful spread of delicious food. After eating, the good-byes came. Those were hard. It was hard to say good-bye to extended family but saying good-bye to our 22 year old son was beyond words. We don't see him that often but we know the option is there. Well, after mom and son hugged, cried, hugged, cried, and hugged and cried some more, he drove away. He says he might stop procrastinating now and finally get that passport. I sure hope so, because we would love to have him come see us. We were able to get one family picture in with all of our children and grandchildren.


I have many more pictures but I will have to show those a little later. Right now it is time to start the day and finish packing the car. Now that will be a picture when we get that done! Oh yeah, and we're going to Kristen's for breakfast burritos! Yummmmm!! I'm hungry!

Our itinerary through the end of the week:
Monday, April 13 - depart Portland and arrive in Lakehead, California. (Lake Shasta)
Tuesday thru Thursday AM, April 14-16 - we will be taking a couple of days of downtown at Lake Shasta. We will have no Internet there so unless we go into Redding, there will be no updates until Thursday.
Thursday PM, April 16 - travel to Sacramento, CA. We have an appointment to visit with the pastor who married us. He is now the President of William Jessup University in the Sacramento area. In the evening we will be sharing dinner with the missions group at some friend's house, Kyle and Amy Middleton. We will be sharing about Esperanza Viva and our time there. They will be praying over us also. Boy I love all this prayer coverage. I'm not sure we could do it without it.
Friday, April 17 - In the morning we will be giving the devotional for our Amy's home school co-op. She said there are 30-40 families there. Then we will participate in their Spanish class. Hmmm... sounds like practice for me! :o)
At this time I do not know if we will travel to San Jose on Friday, or stay another night and go down on Saturday. I will update our itinerary once we know how the next week will look,

That's all for now. Thank you for all of your prayers, we are feeling them. We'll try to update soon.