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Finally home... long trip!

Great-grandbabies all in a row!
Gracie actually watched a few minutes of TV and stayed interested in a program about Africa!
Ana is ready to go - babies in her backpack!
Ana loved the "sleepover" with Gracie who enjoyed it decidely less! ;-P

We finished our long trip with a canceled flight but God graciously provided flights home for us to still get home late Monday night and Gracie got to go to her last day of school and horse therapy yesterday as scheduled.

We had such an encouraging time on our trip, sharing about our heart for missions. We had the privilege of speaking to so many people about missions, God's glory and the gospel, and our specific calling to missions. We are officially raising support to go to northern Uganda now and we are so excited about that! More on that journey later!

After Philly, we headed to Louisville where the kids and I camped out in the extended stay hotel for 5 days while Josh took an excellent course on Baptist History - a course that we thought would be boring and dry but in fact helped Josh a lot with missions! He's so excited about the course. Unfortunately, it came with a semester's load of work which was not finishable by Josh is the time allotted given his slow reading and homework skills so his assignment will be turned in late. :(

We left Louisville in our rental car and drove up to IL just in time for our cousin's wedding for which my sister-in-law and I were doing ALL the music! Despite the stress of last minute preparations, a sore wrist, a sore throat, and not playing my own violin (mine was stolen from church recently), it was a lot of fun to get to play violin all day again, with Jessi, and sing several fun songs for the beautiful wedding! It was especially fun to have all the relatives together from Josh's side of the family!

After we presented in church on Sunday, I spent the next week in bed, struck by strep throat... ugh!

We then got to fly up to MN to visit our dear friends, the Ruhls. What an encouraging visit! We had the privilege of a lunch meeting with the missions' board at their church and were so encouraged by their heart for missions! And time with the Ruhls is always a blessing - there are few people that I feel SO comfortable with - they were my youth leaders in highschool and our friendship has continued for 15+ years! We had a chance to briefly talk to their church as an update on To The Nations (which is paying off my medical school loans to allow us to get overseas as soon as possible).

On one of our airport layovers, we were eating dinner in an airport restaurant and someone annonymously paid for our dinner!! They told the waiter that they were so impressed with how we handled our family!!! wow! that was a unique experience! :)

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