On the road again

We are on our (hopefully) last support raising trip. We left on 30 May and won't return to Colorado until 25 June. We are going from Colorado to the Chicago area to New England to Washington DC to North Carolina and back home via Kentucky, Kansas, and Oklahoma!

The beauty of these trips is truly reconnecting with old friends and family. With our goal of moving in August, these visits are more precious. We realize it will be a long time before we see many of these folks again. We must admit the time in the car does get old very fast. Yet, our visits have been very amazing!

Here Lou is with our old friend Garret Maki. Garret and his wife, Min-Yi, live in Minneapolis - at least for now. They are moving to Houston in the next few weeks. It was great seeing Garret and catching up on life.

We also enjoyed seeing Elena Schlueter in Crown Point, Indiana. Elena is very special to us. She is the first born child of my cousin Debie and her husband Anthony. We prayed and prayed for her and she is a true blessing! Elena is investingating the fun behind watering flowers.

Our next visit came in Boonville, NY. I (Cathy) have a dear friend that lives there. It is a small town near Syracuse, NY. We had a great visit with Nancy and we saw our first woodchuck. The joys of living near woods. :-)

We have managed to enjoy a night at the ball field. As most of you know, Lou is an avid baseball fan! We had a night off and went to the Baltimore game. It was "floppy hat" night at Campden Yards. I'm not sure this is the best look for me, but we had a fun and relaxing night at the ball field.

Next stop....Washington DC. We will enjoy five days in the DC area visiting with friends and family. We are amazed how many people have entered our lives over the years and we cherish these relationships. With our move to Germany just around the corner, we are enjoying this opportunity to see folks before we head overseas.

May was a blur!

We can't believe it has been a month since we have journaled. The entire month of May has been a blur. We returned from Germany and hit the ground running: meeting with more people, starting to pack for our move overseas, graduations, graduations and more graduations!

We have gone to three graduations. Andrew Hess graduated from Denver Seminary. Sue Smith graduated from UCCS with her nursing degree. Mike Laney graduated from the Air Force Academy. He will be reporting for pilot training in Mississippi later this summer.

When you attend three commencements and hear three speeches, you begin to reflect on life pursuits, dreams, goals and life in general. We began refleciting on our own life pursuits and dreams. When you graduate from high school (for us it will be 30 years this June), you have all these ideas of what you want to achieve, the person you desire to become, how life is going to play out.

When 30 years go by, you realize that the journey usually turns out very different. For us, we didn't think we would be about to embark on full-time ministry, moving overseas or spending a year preparing for this next adventure. But, here we are. Getting ready to move to Germany. It is exciting and scary! We are still amazed at God's goodness to us. We know that He will move and by His grace use us, despite our short comings. We are grateful, thankful and blessed! To be continued!