Getting There

It is always surprising how much time and effort it takes when heading out on a short term mission trip, to merely pack a couple bags and prepare the house for temporary residents. For me it is a time when owning stuff becomes burdensome, even a laptop. Have you ever moved Microsoft Outlook from your home desktop to your traveling laptop? Well let me tell you, they don’t make it easy, especially when you have more than a few email accounts. And then there is figuring out what to do with the postal mail, the cats (they know we are leaving...), the lawn, the etc (repeat etc many times).

However, in addition, this last weekend home we had guests from Cameroon! The Wycliffe Associate “Volunteer Coordinators” were here to visit relatives, etc (lots of etc’s) and we had a marvelous time catching up with Mickey and Barbara. For years they have coordinated the stay for folks coming to Africa, about 42 so far this year.

We are wondering just how much southern drawl we’ll be pickin’ up while in North Carolina for six weeks. We were there for a year in 1974, courtesy of the USMC, but don’t recall hearing as much as the couple years we lived in Texas. On our way to NC we are visiting Penny’s great (8x) grandpa’s house and gravesite in Yorktown, VA - Thomas Nelson, Jr., a signer of the Declaration of Independence. This entire area including Williamsburg and Jamestown is a thriving metropolis of tourist/historical activities that is really quite amazing.

See ya'll later now, Gary