Almost Heaven.................

We are in WV today.......get it..........John Denver..............."Almost heaven, West Virginia!" Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River."

Anyway...........we are on our way to Addyston, OH, a suburb of Cincinnati, where DH is preaching the homecoming services at the Addyston Baptist Church where we started "our" ministry of service to our LORD 27 years ago this past June.....1983 to be exact. There is no good way to get there from our home in NC, so we decided to break the trip up by driving half way and spending the night with our daughter here in WV. She and her family will be going with us tomorrow. We will all spend the night in a hotel in northern KY tomorrow night and then head to Addyston, OH on Sunday morning (it is right across the Ohio river from where we will be spending the night in Hebron, KY.

Hebron was our home before we started our ministry service. It is also where I "grew up" and attended Jr. high and High school. I'm thinking I started 7th grade at Conner Jr. High. Tim and his family moved down the street from us (as "fate" would have it) when we were in 10th grade. He had come from New Jersey. It is wonderful to think about how the LORD brought us together! Ours was a match made in heaven, for sure! But, that's another story for another day!

I am so thankful for the years we spent at the Addyston Baptist Church. We were there 9 years total. We served there from 1983 - 1988. In 1988, Tim was called to be the pastor in a very small country church in Milan, Indiana. We had just bought a house in Addyston, too! We commuted to Milan from Addyston for the 5 years that we served there. Since we still lived in Addyston, the logical thing for us to do was to begin attending the services at the Addyston Baptist Church again. We attended 4 more years before the LORD took us to Buffalo, WV in 1997. It was harder on Jessica and Michael to leave the youth group and their friends at school than it was for Nathanael and Elisabeth. For one thing, Jessica was going to be a Senior when she started school in WV and Michael was going to be a Junior. Jessica had already bought her class ring for graduating from Landmark Christian School, too! But, the LORD helped them and they never did really seem to mind it. The LORD our God is an AWESOME God, isn't He?!!! And the SS teachers and youth leaders at ABC really had a good influence on our kids. I am so thankful they are serving the LORD today! So, even though lots of the older folks at ABC are long gone, it will be wonderful to see everyone that is still there and have been faithful all these years! And I am so glad that the girls and their families have the opportunity to be there with us!

OK, now to deal with my post from yesterday. However, I do not have the picture to post like I said I would because it is in the house and I am in the camper and I've already made about 3 trips back into the house retrieving stuff I forgot! So, I'll have to post the picture tomorrow! And, I'm going to keep you guessing a bit longer on the 2nd picture from yesterday.

OK, before my battery dies, I'm closing for the evening!