Coming Your Way

During the winter of 2004, Loreen and I emptied our savings account at the Investment Foundation and bought an RV consisting of a truck and a fifth wheel trailer. We believed that God was calling us into a ministry of encouragement among Grace Brethren pastors and their wives. Since then, we have traveled 19,600 miles across 23 states to do what we believed God wanted us to do. That accounts only for truck and trailer travel, not what we do through the air.

In January and February, we traveled to the Southwest Focus Retreat in California and the South Focus Retreat in Florida. In April, we traveled to Winona Lake, Indiana and Lititz, Pennsylvania. The Indiana trip was mostly business – though it did provide an opportunity to visit my 91-year-old mother. She was a pastor’s wife for ten years until my father went to be with the Lord in 1963.

The Pennsylvania trip was mostly for fun and family, though I did have an opportunity to preach at Grace Church and visit the ministry staff. To be honest, the real reason for the trip was to visit our children and grandchildren.

By the time you read this page, we will be well on our way into another summer of travel. We traveled from Tucson through Albuquerque and Taos. We also visited Colorado Springs and Denver before turning east through Nebraska and Iowa. We haven’t seen pastors and their wives in these near and mid-western states since 2004.

If our plan holds, we should travel through Indiana the third week of June, Ohio the fourth week of June, and Pennsylvania the first week of July.

The fourth week of July will find us traveling back to Winona Lake for AGBM meetings and Equip07. It is our habit to park the trailer at the back of the old missions building – which now belongs to the Grace Brethren Investment Foundation. After conference is completed, we will drive back to Pennsylvania for one last visit with our family. It will be “the last hurrah” with our grandchildren before school starts. Sometime toward the end of August, we begin the long trip back to Tucson.

I usually send e-mail messages ahead wherever we go. If you should find a message in your box entitled “coming your way,” you will know what it means. Sometimes our schedules mesh, and we have an opportunity for fellowship. If it’s a weekend, I may even visit your worship service and hear you preach. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.