August found us in West Virginia. We met some wonderful people at the churches we attended and had meetings at. It is wonderful to meet brothers and sisters in Christ in every state we go to! And oh! How beautiful WV is! The mountains and the lakes...wow! We loved spending time there...God's creation is an awesome thing.
We started our new school year on August 1, and it has been....well, it's going. I knew it was going to be a challenge while traveling around and visiting with churches and friends, but it has surpassed even what I thought. Haha! We get it done when we can and the boys are learning.
We traveled over to Tennessee next, and stayed with some friends in their beautiful home. We so enjoyed spending time in fellowship with them and they spoiled us all while we were there! Again, I was in awe of our Creator while in TN. Couldn't get enough of drinking in the sight of those mountains. God blessed us with a great church to worship in and an unexpected meeting while there too!
We took a short trip back to Xenia, OH for a meeting, and had a wonderful time with friends for dinner when we got there. I'm so thankful for the people that God puts in our lives! We had a blessed meeting and just praise the Lord for what He's doing!
We had our longest travel day yet, when we left Xenia, OH, went back to TN where we picked up one of our vans that we had left for the weekend, and then drove over down to McDonough, GA. We were blessed with a mission home to stay in for a couple weeks. It was such a needed time of respite for our family, and a time to catch up on some things. We also celebrated our youngest son's (Jared) 11th birthday! And we had a good time trying to see the eclipse in our cereal boxes. We actually DID see it in the boxes, but didn't know it until later when I saw peoples' pictures on what it looked
like. 😂 We did get this really cool picture of a whole bunch of mini eclipses in the trees' shadows...but again, didn't know that's what it was until later. Elijah just thought it looked funny and I snapped a picture.
I was so super excited to visit with Victory Baptist Church in Loganville, GA. This is where my family went to church way back when I was in 8th grade. This is also the church that I was in when God saved me!!! My youth pastor from back then is now the pastor there and it was wonderful to see him and his family, as well as a few others that I remember. What a blessing to see them all faithfully serving the Lord!
Next, we traveled up to South Carolina, where we were in a 2 day mission conference. It was a church where, when you leave, you feel as if you are leaving family. We just had the best time getting to know the church family there, as well as other missionaries that were there!
So our next day was an adventure. We left South Carolina and was headed to our deputation home in Roanoke, AL. We stopped for some lunch, got back on the road, and was right in the middle of Augusta and Atlanta. I was driving along Interstate 20, when the van started decelerating. I had had it on cruise, so I canceled out and pressed the accelerator just to have it slow down even more. I told Joshua what was going on and we were able to get over to the side of the road. The van quit at that point and wouldn't start. It was a total of 5 or more hours before the tow truck finally got there, and we were able to get the van off the side of the interstate. No rental car agency, UBER, or LYFT would come to us, so we were stuck.
2 local pastors came and picked up me and 3 of the boys and brought us to the church. WHAT A BLESSING! Joshua and Elijah stayed with the van the remaining 1.5 hours until the truck came, and then got dropped off where the rest of us were. Another pastor drove 45 miles to pick up our family and some luggage and drive us to Decatur, GA where our vans (yep, plural...the other one was in the shop while we were in SC) were. And we were connected with him through a missionary friend in the D.R.! God is so good!!! The whole time we were on the side of the interstate, we had multiple friends trying to help us out and praying for us. It was incredible and encouraging to be lifted up by all of our loved ones! We spent a couple nights in Decatur, waiting on our van to be fixed up and then we were able to get to Roanoke. Through that whole day, it was amazing the peace that we had. And we realized how much worse it really could have been...God took care of us completely! And He answered prayer!
Please pray for Gene, a man we met in Decatur, GA. I believe he's homeless and He needs the Lord! Pray that his heart softens to the gospel and that God will send someone else to water the seeds that were planted.
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