On the road

At about 12:30 PM on Thursday Nov. 8th, Nathan and I left Shreveport for Memphis, TN. It took us a little while to get going, including one false start and a whole cup of coffee in my lap two minutes out, but we were determined to get out as fast as we could. We had a deadline, sunset in Memphis. We needed to get there before the sun was down so that we could set up the two tents we would be staying in the upcoming weekend. Rus, Nick, Abe and Wacker would be meeting us later that night driving down from Indianapolis, and Tom was going to drive up the next morning with a truckload of stuff for the Indy duplex from Windows Doors and More. We got there after sunset unfortunately, but the headlights from the car were plenty sufficient to see everything we needed to set up the tents. The guys from up North got in at about 1 am.

The campsite we stayed at is about 20 mins from downtown Memphis and is right on the Mississippi River. There were numerous mornings of cowboy coffee and eggs over an open wood fire pit, prayer times in the woods, foraging for wild onions, a three mile hike and a lot of conversation. We had Lord's day on the beach of the Mississippi complete with Kvadrat (a russian four-square game), bonfire and a gorgeous sunset.
On Sunday morning we broke down camp and headed home. Nick, Rus, Wacker, Thomas, Abe and myself headed back to Indy while Nathan went home to Allendale.



We got into Indy just in time for the Sunday evening prayer meeting in the South Side. The meeting wrapped up, and we had a delicious soup made by Hannah for dinner. Shortly after dinner's conclusion Rus, Abe, Jon, Tom and I left to drive the 10 hours to Minneapolis through the night. We were on our way to the Gapp family's property in Walhalla, North Dakota. Jim Gapp owns land up there and lots of his family owns land directly adjacent to his. We were headed up there for a week of deer hunting. We arrived into the Twin Cities at about 8:30AM and had an hour and a half to gather up our hunting equipment from the various People of Praise members that were loaning it all to us. Our next deadline was brunch at the Olson family's house. We got to the Olson's and made up a stellar brunch. I was on bacon and sausage duty, Abe pulled scrambled egg duty, Luke Olson was on pancake duty and others took the rotating duty of keeping a steady flow of White Rock coffee available. After brunch we drove the next 7.5 hours to Walhalla. Walhalla is a total of 8 miles from the Canadian border. North Dakota is very flat and windy, that's about all there is to say about that drive. We got in late and had spaghetti waiting for us.



The hunting trip was awesome, a lot of great guys hanging out, doing target practice with rifles, hunting deer, fixing tree stands, taking walks, sitting absolutely still in 20 degree weather for 4 hours, lots of venison and late nights talking over kerosene lanterns and whatta ya know we even got a few deer. You'll have to look at the pictures on my flickr site to get the rest of the trip details.



We left there after about a week and drove to Minneapolis again and this time had lunch with the Gapp family. We made it to Indy late in the night. We all awoke to have breakfast with the Indy household, and then Tom and I headed back to Shreveport.
We got back two days before the South Bend grad students, a collection of Dinkytown people, and Indianapolis folks came into Shreveport for Thanksgiving.

This last week Jon, Rus, Nick and Abe stayed around to help us do a number of big renovation projects on 1430, one of our houses here on Yale. We finished all that we had to, and everyone else here managed an amazing overhaul of the common office in 1442. We built some custom desks out of doors and shelves out of doors and cinderblocks. Once again, check out my Flickr account for stuff on that soon.

The Indy guys left on Friday morning while Jon and I stayed on to finish the last details on the desks and shelves. We are leaving tomorrow morning for Indy with Hannah Brummer, who is due to get in late tonight from a friend's wedding in Georgia.

Which brings me right up to the present and into the future... I will be moving to Indianapolis for the next indefinite period of time to help with our mission work there. The Lord is really moving and keeping all of us on our toes.

Glory to God