Thursday, June 29, 2006

Heading North To Go South

Our first stop on our trip from Texas to Guatemala is Alaska. No, really. More on this in a minute.

Heidi's graduation was last Saturday night. It was fantastic. Her parents, her aunt and a family friend, and her in-laws were all there. She was awarded the "Outstanding Chief Resident" award, making it the 3rd year out of 4 that she was recognized as the outstanding resident at her level. (Can you tell that Matt is writing this part?)

The night before was a going away party we threw for ourselves with the help of our friend Liz. Matt's band was able to get together one last time to play. Heidi's family had never seen Matt play and they were all able to be there, thanks to some last minute work by God (cancelled flights, closed airports, weather delays - all overcome by the creator of the universe).

This past Sunday, some friends came to relieve our apartment of all its furniture, dishes, kitchen utensils, towels, sheets, televisions, lights, and basically anything we can't take to Guatemala. It looked like an explosion in a mattress factory here!

Two days of cleaning, sorting, "letting go", moving, and packing, and we're staged for the next three weeks. All of our "going to Guatemala" stuff is at Roy's office, to be sent down with the next two mission teams. All of our "going to Alaska" stuff is in our room, packed in suitcases. Most of our "being stored in Michigan or North Carolina" stuff is in the trunk of our car and UPS has the rest. And all of our important business stuff is at Ray's house/office.

Oh, and somewhere in there, Heidi took her board exams and Matt closed on our house. It's been a long two weeks!

So today we fly to Alaska for 8 days of R&R with Matt's family. (There is a whole "wing" of the family living there.) Then we fly back to Houston and drive to Michigan and Ohio for four or five days with more of Matt's family. Then we drive to North Carolina for four or five days with Heidi's family. Then we drive back to Texas and fly out to Guatemala on July 22.

Thanks for keeping up with us. We appreciate your interest and your prayers. Please keep us on your prayer list. Ask God to help us unwind over the next few weeks and charge our batteries for our new adventure. It's almost here!!!!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Natalie and I went to the Packing Party for the next missions team going to Guatemala this weekend. The good news is that we were able to send down about 5 Action packers of medical supplies. The bad news is that only one Action packer of your personal items made it on the luggage pile. (By the way it was the one with your clothes). Your other belongings are now in the hands of Roy Simmons and his next missions team.

Anonymous said...

Correction, we were able to get 2 Action Packers of your belongings down. Also, you might be interested to hear that Bethany and the gang found a restaurant in Antigua owned by a Houstonian transplant that has "Texan" fare.

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