Travels in Texas

The immensity of Texas hit us the minute we crossed into the state. The first exit off of I-10 was numbered 880! We have many great memories from the Lone Star State. We got to visit with some old friends and make many new friends. The pictures below should give you a glimpse of some of our experiences. By the time we passed by Exit 0 and crossed into New Mexico on the western end of I-10 I felt we had fully acclimated to the Texan spirit: our children were chanting “Don’t mess with Texas!”

Reuniting with Friends in the West

One thing that has been especially fun about our travels is the opportunity they sometimes provide to pop in on friends who were formerly from our neck of the woods who have since moved to new locations. Thus far on this trip we have had the special privilege to visit with two young couples who were once a part of our lives at CPBC in Spartanburg.

First, we thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to visit with Josh and Amy Jensen. You may remember that Tim officiated at their wedding just last June. Josh and Amy now live in Arlington, Texas, where Josh is working on a degree in linguistics at UTA in hopes of one day using the knowledge he is gaining now in some sort of Bible translation work on the mission field. It was exciting to be some of their first (and due to their location--probably some of their few) friends from back home to see their little apartment and new situation. Amy, who has always had a special relationship with our children, told us that she wanted to keep our kids for the day while we did some sight-seeing. (We appreciated her thoughtfulness!) The kids had a royal time with “Miss Amy”, making brownies and I’m not quite sure what all else, and then we all enjoyed an evening of delightful fellowship, sharing some of the blessings and trials of the present duties to which the Lord has called us. We ended the evening with a precious time of prayer together, endeavoring to “commit our ways unto the Lord” as Ps. 37:5 admonishes us.

One week later the deputation trail has led us to Tucson, Arizona, where we have had the privilege of spending the last several days in the home of Seth and Autumn Clark. Autumn (formerly Kirkham) was a member of CPBC for more than two years during her college days, and Seth attended for a time as well. We were able to attend their wedding in Florence, SC, back in July 2006 shortly before they moved out here for Seth to become an assistant pastor at Bethel Baptist Church of Tucson. It’s been great to become reacquainted with them and to see how the Lord has been at work in their lives over the past two years. They have gone out of their way to make us feel perfectly at home, and Autumn gave us her entire day yesterday to take us up the 9,000 and some odd feet of Mount Lemmon to its peak. What a view! Autumn and I are both fall-lovers, and so it was a special treat to feel the cooler-than-typical-for-Arizona-weather at the top of the mountain and to see some yellowing Aspen fall colors. For those of you who may never have been out here, hardly anything with more height than a shrub will grow in the lower levels of Arizona (except for the Sahuaro cactus, and it doesn’t change colors in the fall! ;-), but somehow the tall evergreens and a few other types of deciduous trees do grow in the extreme altitudes. We’re grateful to be able to travel all around this huge country of ours and discover friends at nearly every corner! I'll close this post by sharing with you the gorgeous view of the area of Tucson we enjoyed from atop the mountain.

We've made it to Arizona!

Stay tuned. We hope to post pictures of our two weeks in Texas very soon. But for now, we just wanted to let you know that we made the long trek across I-10 and are in Tucson, Arizona!

Early Fall in Florida

Here are a few pics of our week and half in Florida. We had a great time getting to know believers from three different churches. We are now Texas-bound.