Last day in the States!

It's crazy how busy things get right at the time of a big event.  I've had months of planning and packing but everything feels like it explodes right when you think you have it all planned out.  I'm mostly talking about my packing.  At the in-laws everything showed the allowed weight, 50 pounds.  I use my sisters scale and everything shows 55 pounds.  That would mean $200.00 each for overweight luggage. I take things out and the scale goes down, put it right back on and it's goes up 3 pounds.  God has been so incredible with this whole journey (selling house, garage sale, family excited for us) that this is my last thing to stress about and I should just trust God that it will be okay.   

On another note, I was talking to my sister about how everything has shown us this is the path that God is leading us down and she mentioned the lady at our church that just showed up and now we will be working with her and her church to help out a village in Senegal.  And I realized I never even put that in the blog!  It was at the end of June, me and the kids were in California and Mike was back in Omaha.  He had been going to different churches that we are connected to to raise money but that Sunday he went back to our church.  I guess as Mike walked in our Pastor Chris jumped up and ran over to him and said Mike had to meet the lady he was talking to. now we hadn't been able to attend this church for over a month and Mike was not expected to be there that day.  But as it turns out there was a lady there from Springfield Mo. visiting and as she was talking to our pastor she just happens to mention her church sponsors a village in Senegal!  What are the chances of that happening?  Only one=God!  We are now in the planning stage of helping their church and since they only get out there twice a year Mike is planning on going around once a month and speaking with them, thru an interpreter, and giving a sermon.  That is just one more assurance we are doing Gods work.

And remember the girl that Mike and I were going to talk to that just got back from DA?  She was absolutely adorable and answered all (yes ALL) my questions. Her name is Lauren.   Poor girl I didn't give her time to eat I kept asking more and more questions, and when I took a breath Mike dove in with his own ?'s.   She absolutely loved her time over there.    She had us even more excited about going.
One last thing about this.  I know, I know enough of all the "signs". But Mike is back in Omaha for his Doctorates residential program where everyone in the program had to be there for a week and it was made known to people that Mike is about to go off to Senegal.  A guy came up to him and gave him his Business card and said his best friend, an ex marine, is in charge of the security there at the US Embassy in Dakar and absolutely loves it!  That made us excited because when we go to Dakar we want to make sure we get out into the town a lot and experience Senegal as a whole and not just what is around the Academy.  So that's nice to know we have one more connection there.

We have had such an amazing time here in California.


Carter got to help out at his Grandparents Church doing the food pantry all summer long!  He really liked working with Ray and everyone there, he'll miss you guys!

The cousins got so close they call themselves "sisouns" half sister/half cousin

The girls even tried on Grandma James' wedding dress.