We are in Texas!

We made it to Texas! We were planning on driving our car down here but the day we were leaving we realized that our car could not successfully pull a loaded U-Haul all the way to Texas. In fact, we weren't sure it would have even made it out of NY! The car's bumper was all the way down and we had not even finished loading up the trailer! So thankfully a family from our church offered to let us use their truck to drive all the way to Texas!!! We are so grateful for their generosity. We were able to sell our car quickly to someone in NY and now we are learning to live without a car to drive whenever we want to.

We made it to Texas two weeks ago and have been pretty busy here at the Mercy Ships International Operations Center (IOC). We have class almost every day and sometimes evenings too. We also have a weekly Wal-Mart run where we can sign up to go to Wal-Mart and shop. My niece Jennaea has been a great help to us by watching the girls for us when we are in class. There are also many wonderful people down here who are helping us by taking the girls to the library and berry picking and to the movies. Jennaea and the girls go swimming almost every day which is wonderful when the temperatures are in the mid to high 90s!

And lest you think we have no time for fun, a bunch of us signed up to go to the Mesquite Rodeo last night! This was my first time going to a Rodeo, in fact I think it was the first time for all of us except for the Mercy Ships couple who were driving us there. Ray and I were on the "Kiss Cam" which meant the man with the camera zoomed in on us and we were supposed to kiss! I wasn't sure Ray would cooperate but he did. The bull riding was a bit intense for me but it appeared that no one was hurt enough to go to the hospital so that was good I guess. At least now we can all say we've been to a rodeo!

I have really been enjoying getting to know our classmates (from Germany, the Netherlands, Ecuador, and Washington, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and New York States). Our classes really make us think but I could definitely do without the homework, ha ha. We have one more week of classroom instruction and then a week of Basic Safety Training and then off to Benin for our Field Service! We should arrive on the M/V Africa Mercy July 30th and the girls should start school on August 2nd!

We are currently at 85% monthly support and we are so thankful for all of our supporters. We appreciate your prayers more than you can know. Thank you.