On the Road Again

Friday, June 22 we bid farewell to our time in North Carolina with Cristy's family. While it was hard to say goodbye to her parents, we look forward to seeing them again at the airport on July 17th and 18th when we leave. But we did have to say goodbye to Grandpa for a while, since he won't be making the trip down to Atlanta with them.

We pulled out of Graham about 8:45AM headed for Rutherfordton, North Carolina over on the western half of the state. We arrived about 12:15 and had lunch with my uncle Larry and his family, we visited with them until about 4:30 and then headed over to visit with my uncle Hilmon and family. We ate out that evening and some of our cousins joined us. It was a very good day.

Our next destination would be St. Louis, where we have family and where my grandmother currently stays with my aunt and uncle. Prior to our leaving Graham we had decided that we would drive through the night on Friday to St. Louis (about 11 hours away). We did this for a number of reasons. First of all, we're a little crazy, which pretty much covers it. But we also knew that Isaiah would be a lot better rested. We also knew that we had limited time in St. Louis also, and why waste all that time sleeping when there's family to see right? So we left the restaurant at about 8:45 in the evening, filled up the tank with gas and headed down the road by 9:05.

It was a very peaceful drive. We passed through Ashville, North Carolina, wound (literally) our way through the mountains on in to Knoxville, Tennessee. We then made it on over to Nashville, Isaiah sleeping soundly the whole time. Around Paducah, Kentucky at 4:30AM central time I finally had to get Cristy to drive for about an hour as the two double-shot Starbucks espressos with cream just weren't cutting it any more.

I did sleep for about an hour, and somewhere around the middle-of-nowhere Illinois I took over the wheel again. We rolled into St. Louis and into my aunt's house around 7:30AM central time. Isaiah slept the whole night!

While I wouldn't recommend such insanity for everyone, it really was good for us in our case. Isaiah had never met my grandmother nor my aunt and uncle, and we wanted him to have good quality time with them, so traveling while he slept was a good idea. I nabbed about 4 hours of sleep on Saturday, and did pretty well,

Today we went to church at Ballwin Baptist where my aunt and uncle attend. My aunt was kind enough to put me in touch with one of the pastors ahead of time, and I was able to give a brief spiel about our ministry and mission work, and give our some prayer cards. If any of you good folks from Ballwin are reading this, many thanks for your kind reception this morning!

After the morning service a Russian speaking congregation meets there at the church. We also stayed for that, and I was able to give a short talk (in Tarzan-like Russian) to the very gracious and patient congregation about our plans for moving to St. Petersburg. Though I may have butchered the Tsar's Russian when I spoke it was still a tremendous experience getting to worship with these folks. It excited us tremendously for what lies ahead. My parents and aunt also stayed, which was exciting too. Figuring that they may never get to visit us in church over in St. Petersburg, it was fun to share with them what a real Russian church service is like.

This evening we visited with the cousins, and my parents headed on back to Baton Rouge. Tomorrow morning we'll be leaving bright and early to travel back down that way.

-Thomas