Journaling Furlough- Sept. 16

Journaling Furlough-  September 16, 2011

We love Texas! :)  What a fun state!  And everyone is so friendly :)  It reminds me a bit of Mexico in that as I walk around our hotel or go into a store , the people I pass greet me.  “Good morning!”  “Hi!  How are you doing?”  I love it! :)

Yesterday was such a special day.  We got to meet the 3 dear ladies that work at Central Missionary Clearinghouse.  For about 8 years now, they have received and then given us our support each month. They do this for about 450 missionaries.  I can’t imagine all the work that is involved, and we are just so very grateful for their labor of love for the Lord and those He’s called to serve Him.  They were just as sweet in person as they are on the phone/email.  We just loved being with them!

They took us all to lunch and we had such a wonderful time visiting with them and seeing the little office where they work each day.   The office is in the parking lot of their church.  What a love for missions their church has, too!  We were able to attend the service there Wednesday night and meet Pastor Maddox who is the overseer of Central Missionary Clearinghouse as well.  We thank the Lord for CMC as they have been such a blessing to our family/ministry for so many years!

After meeting the ladies for lunch, we had a fun family day yesterday.  Going from house to house is so much fun, and we LOVE to visit.  But sometimes we just need to have some time alone as a family.  We took the children to a big sporting goods store per the boys request to look around.  They had all sorts of animals and fish there.  And a huge aquarium with big fish! :)  They boys loved it!  Okay, the girls did too :)  And it was nice and air conditioned inside.

After that, we went to a hotel and had the entire swimming pool to ourselves!  The children got to swim for over 2 hours!  Eliseo is a little fish himself!  He has no fear and will get in over his head w/o any floaties and bob up and down laughing all the time.  About gave me some grey hair watching him!  But the big kids were great at taking turns staying with the 2 little ones.  We had races across the pool and back and I taught them how to play Marco Polo. ;)  What a fun night!  We ended with dinner and then family singing/Bible time.  Everyone got to bed early.  Well, the children did.  Mommy and Daddy had a paperwork/email/laundry party.  Daniel bought us a couple of milkshakes for the party :). 

Today, once everyone gets up (I think they are catching up on sleep a bit!), we will get ready and head to some dear friend’s home whom we’ve never met in person before!! They have lots of kiddos too and we can’t wait!

Oh, Wednesday afternoon, we were in San Antonio and took the children to see the Alamo!  My boys love Davy Crockett and what a great history lesson this was!  We are learning so much on this trip! 

Getting out of the car one night after a long day of travel just to let the kids run :)