So, this is some from Ann Marie's house Thursday night..

(David, Ann Marie, Alex, me, Robin)
David was being silly with Kilaine's backpack.


So, we got up at 3am to get to the airport Friday morning. We had a layover in Dallas for a couple of hours.

So, we rode around for a while on the Sky Line people mover thingamajig. That was fun
Kathryn, Cole's mom, picked us up from the airport and let us stay the night at her house. We had some really awesome pie from Julian at "Mom's."
It was interesting to see the effects from the fires in California 3 years ago. Many of the trees are still dead and burned looking. There were a lot of houses burned during that fire.

some pics in Mexico

We're home!! (for a few days anyway)

Last Saturday, we went to the Mule Day parade with Brian and Tara. It was fun.

There was a shepherd there. It was cool to see the dog get control of the sheep. They obeyed the shepherd just by his wistle. It made me think of the Lord and how the sheep (us) know His voice. He is the Good Shepherd

The kids cuddled in by the building. It was cold and rainy.

They have the craziest dogs! One of them sits on top of the other one all the time. So funny.

On Sunday, we shared at Calvary Chapel Brentwood. Robin did the whole teaching. It was great to be there. My first trip to Peru was with a team of people from my church in Boynton, and this church in Brentwood. It was good to see everyone again.

Thank you Brian and Tara for all your hospitality (and home cooked bread! Yum!)

Sunday at about 5:30 we headed back to Florida.

We made it home Monday night at about 6:30.

On Wednesday we went to our home church for the service. During the worship when we were singing "Glory, glory, Halelujah..." the sun started shining through the cross beautifully. It's amazing to worship Him.

We met up with David Caplivski at church. He came up to visit with us. He just came back from Peru a few weeks ago. He was serving there with the church for the last 2 years. It has been great to see him again. He is staying with us (at Greg and Ann Marie's house --thank you) until tomorrow morning. He's going to drive us to the airport. We have to be there at 4 am. We are flying to Mexico for Shepherd's Staff's missions training school. We will be there for 3 weeks. I don't know if we'll have internet access or not, so you may not see any new postings for a while. But, we'll be back.

Almost the end...

We left last Sunday from Indiana and headed to Paducah, Kentucky to stay with Robin's brother and his family for 2 nights. Then, on Tuesday we left bright and early and came to Tennessee in the Nashville area. We had a meeting with the pastor at Calvary Chapel Rivergate first.

It was great getting to know Pastor Jerry. They have a great property where their church is. My mind was imagining all the great ministry that goes on there. They have a house back behind the church that is their youth room. It's painted really crazy inside. They call it their Bonzai House. And they have a lot of land where they could do camping retreats and things like that. What a blessing.

After our meeting, we headed to our friends' house, Brian and Tara Thacker. Brian went on my first missions trip to Peru. It was a joint team from Calvary Boynton in FL and Calvary Brentwood in TN. We've been here for a few days now. It's been good getting to see Brian again and really getting to know his family. They have 5 kids. I love being around big families. There's just something really special about it.

Liam and Daniel hanging out together.

Yes. This is the Mystery Machine. We saw it driving around in Brian and Tara's neighborhood. Crazy, I know.

Last night, we went to Calvary Murfreesboro. I got to help out a little bit with the worship. And of course, I got to do a spanish song, too.

Pastor Phillip let Robin teach, which was a blessing. He told us after the service that the church had been praying for years for God to send them a missionary to support. They had already been supporting some missionary organizations, like Gospel For Asia, but they were wanting to get behind a real live person, a face that they could see, someone being sent out from Calvary. It was really cool to realize that we were the answer to that prayer. God is good.

Today we visited with Brent and Danielle Campe. They had moved up here from Boynton a year ago. It was good seeing them. And, today is Liam's birthday! Since we already did cake, we stuck some candles in a cookie and sang to him. It was really cute.

On Sunday we will be sharing at Calvary Chapel Brentwood, and then later on Sunday, we will start heading home to South Florida for a few days. Next Friday, we fly to Mexico for an intensive missionary training school in Mexico. Shepherd's Staff does the training school. It will be 3 weeks long. More on that later.

Thank you to everyone for all your prayers, emails, and comments on the blog. It is good to know that people are thinking of us. We are getting really excited about going to Peru. It's going to come quickly.

Wisdom from our journey

Here's some wisdom we've learned from our journey on the road. I thought I would share some of it with you.

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The apparent need does not always constitute the ministry.

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Being in the world, not of the world... it's like a ship on the sea. It's beautiful, but when the sea gets in the ship, it gets real bad real quick.

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If you can't stand the smell of sheep, don't be a shepherd.

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If the blind leads the blind, both will fall into a ditch.

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It's interesting, Peter was the first to preach the gospel, and he was the first to introduce the gentiles to the gospel. Jesus said He gave him, "the keys of the kingdom of heaven." The keys is the gospel.

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If money could talk, all it would ever say is goodbye!

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Hollywood has nothing to say, but says it really well and really loud. We have everything to say, but don't know how to say it at all.

Hello snow!!!

It's snowed!!! Yippie! But, not for long. We ran outside and ran around like silly little children jumping up and down saying, "It's snowing! It's snowing!" It didn't stay on the ground, but it was still a delight.

Today we went to the park and fed the ducks in about 25 degree weather. This goose kept trying to bite Robin's legs. It was really funny.

Every year, we have gone to our friend's parents house down in Weston, south Florida, and decorated eggs, and had some wonderful fellowship at Easter time. This is our first time to not be with them for several years. So, we decorated here in Indiana. We had a lot of fun and would always vote on our favorite egg. So, here they are, you can vote for your favorite one. It's all just for fun. The real celebration is Christ, of course.

We miss everyone back home!!

still going...

Driving through Kentucky was pretty fun. Horses everywhere... The barns are all painted black and some of them have these really cool quilt patterns painted on them. I have no idea why...

So, last Friday we met with Matt Rapach, the brother of a guy Robin used to work with, and his wife, Sarah for dinner. It was a great time of getting to know them and having some fellowship with some fellow believers.

This shiny horse was on the way to dinner with the Rapach's. Ooh, shiny...

I had a lot in common with Sarah, she also went to school for music. Our whole purpose for meeting with them was to deliver the skate park measurements (the ones we got in Lexington SC). They also want to start a skate park outreach. Skate parks for Jesus!


This is a picture from Daniel's back yard in Georgetown KY. His neighbor has a prayer rock out in the yard. There's a big circle thing around it. It seems sort of like an idol to me. It's crazy the things that can distract people from the Lord.

We had fun with the family.

They taught us a great new game called The Settlers. I won!!! HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!

(i'm only a little bit competitive...)

Sunday we shared in the worship and did the slideshow at Daniel's church, Cane Run Baptist Church. Robin got to share about us for a couple of minutes, too. We were well received by the people.

Daniel and Robin

Sunday afternoon, we went and got to have lunch with Robin's family.

Beautiful Kentucky.
There are these stone fences everywhere. They were built by the slaves. It's amazing to see a piece of history. The workmanship is really good. It reminds me of the hard times they went through.


Monday morning we went to Jeffersonville KY, to see Robin's sister for 2 days. When we got there, no one was there. I looked out the back window and said, "oh look, they have a big black dog." and Robin replied, "uh, no, try a cow." They have a cow. I knew we really were in the hills of Kentucky at that point. =). It got out, and I was sort of cautiously trying to get it back in the cage when everyone got home. They came out laughing at me. Good times.

Robin got the cow back in. Yay

Birthday cake for Liam. He really hasn't had his birthday yet, but, that's ok.

Tuesday we went on a hike to see Natural Bridge. That was fun.


This is "fat man squeeze."

The kids love seeing their cousins.

Would you believe it? That night a tornado was coming through! The neighbors that lived in trailers all came over. There was about 19 people in the house. I don't think there was any damage anywhere. After an hour or two, everybody went home.

So much excitement for one 6 week trip!

On Wednesday we drove to Washington Indiana, my home town. After about 4 1/2 hours, we got to my grandma's house. That night we drove 1 1/2 hours to visit Calvary Chapel in Terre Haute. We shared the slideshow and fellowshiped for a while after the service.

In our table display, we have a goat toe shaker from Peru. Everyone always gets a kick out of that thing. They are always wanting to know what it is and everything. Well it just so happens that the pastor and his wife have about 25 goats! So, they knew exactly what it was made of. It was pretty interesting getting to know them. It made me think of the Peruvian people outside of the city. Many of them probably live the farming life. It's good to learn about all kinds of people. Christ calls us to love them all.

This morning, we met with the pastor at Antioch Christian Church. We wanted to get to know him, and he wanted to get to know us. We felt a quick connection with him. Perhaps the Lord will use us, and will use Peru to help this church catch an excitement for missions. We aren't going to be able to share with the church this time, maybe next time. We left him with Brian VanderKodde's dvd so they can get a better taste of the work that's going on there.

It's gotten pretty cold since yesterday. It got down to 30 degrees last night. (That's about 0 celsius for you guys in Peru). Brrr! Today when I was getting in the car, a semi drove by and I saw something flaky and white pass before my eyes. I thought maybe some ash or something flew off the truck. Then I saw it again, and I looked up to see if something fell off the light pole nearby. Then I realized... it was snow! I really did see it, honest I did. There hasn't been anymore, yet.

The rest of our time here, will be visiting family. Then on Monday, we head to Tennessee for a week. Then we return home!!! Yay!!! I really miss our home church. There's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like home...