The L-O-N-G Journey

To be real honest, life has been crazy for various members of our household. Though I must not use that as an excuse to neglect our faithful readers. The Lord has been blessing our garden efforts which has been an encouragement. We have had an abundant amount of corn, green beans, okra, zucchini, yellow squash, tomatoes and just now the watermelons and cantelope are coming in...yay!

Here's a quick "rundown" of the latest ~

One evening two weeks ago, most of us were sitting in the office doing various things when Katherine announced that Josh Erber had just informed her on chat that he had some extra tickets to the Jamestown 400 event hosted by Vision Forum in Virginia. Sounded great but it was one out of many things that would have to work out in order for any of us to attend. The expense of such an adventure seemed impossible at the time so we didn't really consider the offer until a snowball of blessings started to form. One thing after another fell into place and Katherine and I found ourselves on the road to VA with a means to get there, a place to stay, passes to everywhere we needed to go, countless meals provided, concert tickets...the list is enormous! A complete miracle, I couldn't have even dreamed it up if I wanted to! The fellowship was so refreshing as we spent time with some of our dearest friends from Illinois, Saint Louis and Texas. Katherine and I felt refreshed and enjoyed the time together. Countless memories were made with the Spradling family on the long road trip (details further down) and the Clark family kept us in stitches just about every single moment we spent with them :) The Zes family was so encouraging and all our "old friends" from Illinois were...a blast like always. This post would turn out to be an epistle if I were to write about everyone and everything we did from tours, delicious food, lobby games, volleyball (on the hotel tennis court), reenactments, concert, plays...

So, I'll just stop right there and save the rest of this post for a detailed account of the most adventurous part of our trip...the infamous ride home! If you haven't heard about it, here it goes...

Monday we were going to leave from Williamsburg around noon but as shopping has a tendency to delay the tourist...we were not going to be the exception. Our vehicle departed at around 3:00 p.m. and the travelers eagerly anticipated the end of the 26+ hours when we would once again be home! For an entire 2 1/2 hours all went well and we were making good headway when a car driving past pointed to the top of our car as they drove by. What in the world? A strap must be coming loose...better check it out to make sure we don't lose any luggage :) All the resting passengers woke up to the sound of us pulling over on the shoulder and Mr. Spradling popped out to see what was wrong. The news report was that a bag was missing. Haha, funny joke we all thought, but no, this was the real deal. Mandi's bag with practically her entire wardrobe was somewhere in highway oblivion! The schedule for the next four hours was a hot pursuit of the missing bag. Our eyes were glued to the road, the ditches, ravines and shoulder for a 25 mile length of road...back and forth...and back and forth. Though the odds were against us, God saw fit to restore the missing piece of luggage by means of a police officer who used his search light to look in the ditches on the side of the road. We celebrated the find with a late night dinner and found ourselves back on the road at around 11:00 p.m. Everyone was wiped after the stress so we changed drivers several times throughout the night. We were pulled over for a speed warning at about 3 a.m. and thought that would be enough adventure for one trip but for some reason, that was not to be the case.

Tuesday...oh my! We heard a noise and being in a rather "panicked mood" about losing luggage, we asked the current driver to pull over and check things out. We were relieved to see all the luggage safely in tact, however when we endeavored to drive on, we couldn't. The car wouldn't drive forward or backwards for more that a few feet! We were stuck! The decision was finally made to call a tow truck and while we waited, jokes were being made about how interesting a ride on the back of a tow truck would be...it turned out not to be a joke. Katherine and I were in hysterics laughing so hard as our vehicle was hauled up, up, up and latched onto the back of the truck. The ride to the truck stop was way too much fun :) Once there, the mechanics on call weren't interested in messing with a problem no one could figure out so we were stuck somewhere in "no man's land" Louisiana for the night. The Lord provided a means for transportation and we finally arrived at a hotel wet, cold and hungry. A little walk across the road to fill our stomachs and another trek to a nearby Wal-mart for sweaters and we were set! A good night sleep...well, a deflating air mattress isn't ideal for comfort but who wants to look for the hole in the middle of the night?

Around noon on Wednesday we were on our way once again...this time we were going to make it home. At around 9:30 p.m. Katherine and I made it back to Floresville and were met by sweet smiles and loving hugs! How wonderful it was to be back home :)

We went to Virginia to learn about God's providence in history and ended up learning it first hand during the car ride home! His protection over us was truly amazing and we were touched by all the prayers from friends and family back home. What would life be like without adventure? It's a good reminder to find the wonderful in today even when "today" isn't what we might have planned.