What we've been doing in the US

So what have we been up to this past month and a half? Well, first we visited our families. Then we returned to Doug's parent's home in West Virginia only to be "blessed" with ALL 4 generations in the house getting the flu. Yes, that included Doug's 93 year old grandfather. On January 8th Doug and I made a QUICK trip to Washington DC to begin our visa process. Then on January 10th Doug's dad drove us out to Ohio. We've been here for about 2 1/2 weeks and will be leaving on Saturday January 31st. Here are some of the pictures of some of our Ohio adventures.

We wanted to see as many people as we could while here, and of course since we are only here for 3 weeks I really didn't want to plan too many meals, so we were in various friends' homes just about EVERY night for dinner and sometimes in 2 different homes in one day for lunch and dinner.

The kids have truly enjoyed getting to see their friends!

We also needed to weed through some of our belongings from our storage unit. Praise God that we have someone in our church who owns a storage unit facility and allowed us to store our things for the past year for FREE!

But I have to say the weather has sometimes been a challenge!!!
But after weeding through things, yesterday we finally loaded the truck with LOTS of help from our church family.

Doug and Brian, a wonderful friend from our Sunday School class, left this morning EARLY to drive the truck to South Carolina where they dropped off everything that was loaded on the truck, returned the truck, and rented a car to begin driving back. They are driving back in the middle of this icy/snowy wintery mix as I write this. A local church down there has a ministry that ships containers for missionaries. They pack and ship about 20 containers a year for missionaries like us. http://www.hamptonpark.org/mfm.htm It REALLY is a COOL ministry!!

While Doug was gone today, one of my friends came over with her 2 kids to play video games. Here's a video of my friend's 3 1/2 year old son bowling. He is just SOOO cute!!!

For the next few days we'll finish up visiting friends, pack up our belongings, I will go to a ladies' retreat and then we'll leave to return to West Virginia on Saturday. Once returning to West Virginia things don't slow down. We'll be visiting 3-5 of our supporting churches, getting our West Virginia driver's licenses, taking a family trip to Washington DC to get our visas, and of course packing to leave for Chile on February 17th for 3 years. Praise God the BIG packing is done. God is good all the time and we're relying on Him to continue to keep us grounded in Him even when we're "flying" through SO many experiences.