Wonderful Times, Wonderful Friends

What a weekend we have had! Rob and Josh have birthdays that are only 6 days apart, so we usually have their birthday party together. We had a party for them on Saturday. Some friends from Yale, Washington drove down for the party. We have heard that there are those that think they are crazy, but we really enjoyed having them down. They have 4 boys, which our boys love to play with, and had a great time while they were here. They even caught a brown toad while playing outside on the playground by our house. But Mom eventually made them let the toad go...

The party went really well. They also had a few friends from the church come. One girl, and the rest boys. It was quite a party. Jeremy took them over to the church to play games. We had planned to have the games outside, but, as so often is the case with well intentioned plans, it was raining cats and dogs. As for gifts, the boys were added a lot of cash to their savings - they are each trying to save for a hamster, so they were thrilled. Our friends from Washington left Sunday afternoon. Jeremy left for the church to work on his Sunday evening lesson, while the boys and I cleaned house for another carful of company Sunday night. Our friends from The Dalles, Oregon, arrived shortly after evening service started. Today, we took them out to see some of the California Redwoods. If you have never seen them, they are awesome to see. Huge, huge trees! However, it was still pouring down rain today. But we drove through them, anyways, and even stopped at one spot to get out of the van and take pictures next to the Immortal Tree. It is a tree that has survived a fire, two floods, and an axe, and is still growing. Colossal tree. Tried to take a picture, but couldn't even get all of it. Other than the rain, we had a pretty good time. We took all the kids to McDonald's for lunch (and met another homeschool family with a son with Silas' name - first and middle!), stopped for a while and let them play at the playground in the mall in Eureka, and even went to Costco for dinner. We spent less than $20 for dinner for 3 adults and 9 kids (okay, only 8 of them can actually eat, but I still think that was impressive!).

Jeremy finally got his laptop today. Hooray!! Now I get to keep the old one. It will be so nice for him to have his new one for preaching and study. The old one has shut down on him a few times on Sunday mornings - not a good thing. And tonight, I ordered a new set of encyclopedias online at e-bay. I got a 2005 set for $335 with free shipping. It will replace the set we had to leave behind in Galena. God is helping us replace the things that we left in Galena, and teaching us to live with things we didn't need.

The church is staying pretty steady at 80 in attendance. Some weeks we have more, and some less. We are discovering that larger churches are much busier - which is a good thing, but is a new learning curve for us. Galena was a very slow pace of life, which we grew to love while we were there. Now we are learning a more hurried pace, but praying that the Lord will help us not to get too hurried. Pioneer Club is over for the school year. They will have an end of year bowling trip next week. The teacher plans to have a summer service group for the kids. They will serve the elderly in our community with whatever they need to have done. I think it will be good for them to help meet the needs of others.

We went to the beach in Trinidad a couple of weeks ago. The weather was beautiful - a bit breezy, but walking in the hot sand was wonderful. We even got to see a star fish that someone had found - the boys held it a little, and then it was thrown back into the ocean. Such fun. I will try to post some pictures, also.

I don't know how many of you keep up with Village Missions, but they have recently lost $40,000 of monthly support. We have heard of a grass roots idea started by members in two different VM churches. If everyone being served by a VM church/pastor commited to $20 a month support to Village Missions, they would be able to more than make up the $40,000 a month that they have lost. If anyone is interested in becoming a part of that, please contact Village Missions - www.villagemissions.org.