14 visits to churches in the PNW & Canada
9 dinner-dates with friends
6 lunch-dates with friends
5 other visits with friends
11 miles hiked in state parks
4 visits to the library
5 Kilometers run in a race
48 Kilometers run around the neighborhood (that would be two more than I planned since I got lost one day...oops!)
1 visit to the Kroc Center
and 1 visit to the Ocean.
I think we pretty much squeezed every possible minute out of our stay here. It's been a busy time, but a beautiful time. We have been given so much grace! We are so thankful to our Oregon friends who so warmly welcomed us and who took such good care of us while we were there. We were also so grateful for fellow believers who moved their whole vacation so that we could have their house to stay in while we were in Salem. What generosity! Such a huge blessing! Here is a *few* photos from our time there.
A rare quiet evening with Daddy reading.
Playing the game "Pie Face" with friends.
We spent one beautiful day on the coast. There aren't very many other coast lines that compare in beauty to Oregon's. I may be biased though. Just a little.
We spent a few days at the library. Salem's library is particularly impressive, but all the more so to my international children who have never seen a library. When we walked in, they immediately asked, "How much does it cost to take a book?" When I told them it was free, their eyes got huge.
We left with 43 books that day. :-)
A few of the kids and I spent a day hiking at Silver Creek Falls. We thought the hike would be about 7 miles and it would have been except that we took a few detours to see a few more falls and the total ended up being about 9 miles. We kept this kid going by feeding him Nutter Butters. haha...whenever he started to complain, we just gave him another pack and he just munched his way along.
We visited a lot of friends. What a blessing to rekindle these friendships. This particular picture is taken at a friends dairy.
Another family had something like 25 puppies..."enough hound to go all around" as the Madeline story goes... More than enough for each kid to have one to hold. And dress up.
I also had the opportunity to run a 5K trail race in Oregon. One thing that I dearly miss while we are in Uganda is well organized races. This particular race was so much fun...okay, maybe not the first half that was mostly up hill, but the second have was a blast.
After the race, we went to the Lava Tubes near Mount Saint Helen.
And hiked around the area, including this crazy suspension bridge. I'm a wimp. I couldn't look down.
More hiking...can't you tell my kids love it when I stop to take pictures? haha!
We left Oregon with full hearts and many tears and looking forward all the more eagerly to heaven and no more goodbyes.
Wonderful! Thank you all for the "14 visits", putting faces and handshakes with names was a blessing for me (us).
ReplyDeleteAwesome! I was eating breakfast at a Waffle house near my hotel when I saw your post, and then I wished that I had people to do life with like this. I was volunteering with a secular disaster relief organization, but sometime after the first week, there came a time when I felt pressure beyond my ability to handle. It was a communal living situation. A volunteer suggested that I volunteer with Samaritan's Purse, and so I thought about it, and then went ahead and applied to work on rebuilding houses with them. A couple volunteers confided in me about upsetting dreams they had. When I talked about God, one person suggested that God is my higher self or conscience. By the end of my stay there, I was only able to tell about the fall of man and the salvation of Jesus to one man. I was only able to give one tract away to a lady that I had been hanging out with. Something kept telling me that I had done what I had come there to do, and that it was time for me to leave. I called my mom, and she agreed that I should stick with my commitment. However; during my last night there, I was tossing and turning, and something told me that it was time for me to go. I got a hotel, did my exit survey, and left that morning. One thing that I regret about doing things like this alone is that when God shows up, I usually end up having to keep it to myself even though everything inside of me wants to shout about it from the mountain tops. I tell people about what's happened, and I get blank stares. This is the benefit of having other believers surrounding you. I'm not ignorant to spiritual warfare though. I know that there will be spiritual warfare amongst believers too. Heaven isn't here yet. It's just nice to have the confirmation from other believers, and to be able to rejoice with them. Even so, even when I feel like I'm alone, something inside of me says to me that it's not true. I may not have anyone physically present with me, but I'm definitely not alone. Some cool stuff that has happened: On the plane ride from Texas to Louisiana, I was called up for a last minute seat change, and it turned out that I was placed between two believers. The lady on my right said she was terrified of flying and that she prayed that God would put someone she can talk to next to her. Her two adopted girls were seated on the other side of the istle from her. The man to the left of me seemed encouraged to be next to two believers, and was texting about it to someone on his phone. We shared testimonies, and then after hearing about what I was doing in Louisiana, the man gave me $100 to help. Things have happened even in the hotel I'm staying at too. When I was in the lobby talking to someone about God, an older lady joined the conversation, and then started to confide in me. She said that her husband was in the hospital when their house flooded, and then he died of a heart attack. She told me that he was one of our soldiers who went in to deal with the Nazis at the end of the war, and that he used to share his story at war museums because of the people who tried to deny that the holocaust ever happened. The one thing the holocaust victims would ask her husband to do is to remind people that the holocaust DID happen, and so she plans to continue to share his story with people. She'll be in the hotel until January while she gets a copy of her husband's social security card, waits for work to be completed on her house, and for appliances to be delivered there. So many things have happened that I can't write about them all.. I, too, can't wait for heaven. Keep having fun!
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