Oh Canada!

For our third full week back we got in the car and started the (long) drive to Chester, Nova Scotia, Canada. We left New Hampshire around 1pm and drove as far as Woodstock, New Brunswick. There we stayed overnight at the house of the parents of one of Joy's college friends.

We arrived around 6:30pm (eastern time, 7:30 atlantic). The girls played a bit and Marjorie's parents prepared a little bite to eat for us. It was a good time and we all slept well. The next morning we got away around 10:30 and continued the drive to Chester.

We arrived at Chester around 6:15pm. Everyone was excited to see everyone (goes without saying, really). We had a bite to eat and relaxed for the night.

Tuesday we did some shopping in Bridgewater. Wednesday we had a huge turkey dinner (my mother must love us a lot to cook in that heat). Thursday we stayed close to home recovering from our tryptophan hangovers. Friday we went to the Atlantic Playground and enjoyed water slides and kid rides pretty much all day. Saturday we went to a local island beach where the kids (old and young) got to explore the water and rocks -- finding star fish, periwinkles, and crabs. Sunday we worshiped and spoke at Chester United Baptist Church and then enjoyed a youth sponsored BBQ. Seriously we packed a lot into that week and the goodbyes were difficult for all of us.

We left Chester early Sunday afternoon and stayed the night at the Best Western of Woodstock -- where we found out that we had forgotten Joy's purse back in Chester. That seemed to be the only thing that really went wrong for the trip so we can't complain at all.

On to the final leg of our furlough.

-knme

US Visit #1

Wow. We've had a fast-paced stay in New Hampshire (first go-around). We spent the first week frantically packing to get our shipment boxes ready. This entailed going through all our State-side stuff and deciding what goes, what gets kept, and what gets eliminated. Of course this week was one of the hotest I can recall. The garage was registering between 95 to 104F for most of the week.

Once we had finished with the boxes and they were (manually) loaded onto the truck (Thursday) we finished prepping for our yard sale (Saturday). Of course on that day New Hampshire tried to remind us of Guatemala when it had a deluge of rain which flooded Meridian Drive. Ed and Ruth both commented that they've never seen anything like that there before.

Both our first Sunday and second Sunday back we worshiped at Dover Baptist Church. It was great to be there to reconnect with friends and family.

Our second full week back was Vacation Bible School. The kids had a great time. I believe the program had a record turn out of kids. Much hard work was done by many volunteers and we give them thanks.

Our third Sunday we split up -- sending Abigail and Emma to DBC while Joy and I worshiped and spoke at Exeter Community Church. We had a good time there. Immediately following the service we met up with the girls and headed to Canada.

(PS - Pictures will be posted later)

-knme