John has completed his training with HTC in Elgin, IL....a very busy but an amazing season for our family. The last couple of weeks in Elgin flew by and I wasn't sure that I would ever get the apartment packed up to move back to Iowa however we did finish in time and well prepared to pick up the truck on Thursday morning....bright and early or should I say dark and early. We went to Home Depot to pick up the Penske truck at 6:15am.
After picking up the truck we were ready to work hard and fast with the time we had with John before he headed off to his last 1/2 of training. We were blessed with a couple of the guys from the training center to come for about an hour to help with some of the heavier things....we did get a lot accomplished in that first hour. Then they all headed off and the rest was left to the kids and myself. We began to work hard as a team and about 10 minutes went by and we were surprised by Dylan and April. They came up to help us pack up and travel back to Iowa. WOW, what a true blessing!! With the help of two wonderful friends we finished packing and the last miniute cleaning of the apartment by 10:00am.....we beat our deadline of Noon (which was the time John would be done for the day so we could get on the road). We turned in our keys, got one last "The Cheff" sandwich and some pizza from Rosati's.....and then it was time for the road.
Just before John was ready we found out that my cell phone was having some trouble....it was able to do everything, but if I made a call the person on the other end could not hear me at all. Made a quick call to Verizon and found out that I needed a new phone all together....Praise the Lord for warranty. I was able to have it overnighted to my parents house in Ankeny, IA. So funny, Nattalie said that her phone wasn't ever used that much in one day by her....thank you Nattalie for letting me use your phone as we traveled to Iowa. (By the way, I got the transfer to the new phone all taking care of this morning....wow having the iPhone made this easy! Didn't lose a single bit of data.)
Traveling went so smooth....no snow, no bad weather, no car trouble, no accidents.....NOTHING! Thank you, Lord! We decided to have a girls car (thank you April for doing the driving as I was a little tired and worried about how I was going to do with the that), then Dylan and Johnthan were in the Penske truck (thank you Dylan for driving that BIG truck), and John and Daniel followed us all in our car. We made is to my parents house by 6:30 that night....back in IOWA. We enjoyed a wonderful dinner prepared for by April and my mom...thank you for feeding our hungry and tired bodies!
Then Friday morning came quickly.....Dylan was helping up again as we headed up to Clear Lake to place all our belonging into the garage of our rental home. We left again "dark" and early. We made it to the house by 8:00. It took us about an hour to unload this load and then we headed to the storage unity to move the rest of our stuff to then rental house....this took a little longer since 2/3 of our stuff was in the storage unit. John, my dad, Dylan, Johnathan, Nattalie, Daniel and I worked hard to load the truck....WOW it was cold. I took time to run to Kum and Go for a Hot Chocolate run! By 11:00am we were headed back to house to unload this truck full....Larry Day ended up coming in right behind us and within minutes we had a wonderful addition of help as we unloaded. Thank you Larry Day, Larry Weakland, Scott Stauffacher, and Slim Meints.....it was a blessing to have your extra hands (and muscles) to help unload. Praise the Lord we were all done by 1:00pm. We took the truck back, ate lunch, returned to key to the storage, went to the post office.....all of to do list was completed for the move!
Enjoyed and evening of appetizers at Larry and Kay Day's house with other couples that are a part of the core group.....fantastic evening! We had laughter, we had serious moments, we had tears and then we had even more laughter. Thank you everyone for such a great evening!
Now, it's Christmas Eve and we are ready to relax and enjoy family. Thank you, Lord for the wonderful family that you have so graciously given to me (and to John). What a blessing to spend time together and enjoy this beautiful season of the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Next page....internship in Davenport for the month of January. John has his schedule and it will be a busy month, but an amazing opportunity as we work with Harvest Bible Chapel Davenport.
The page after that....move into our house in Clear Lake, IA and begin to work with our core group as we follow the Lord's leading in building His church......Harvest Bible Chapel Clear Lake. Pray with us as we follow the Lord's leading in our lives, our family and our community.
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