Marble Falls, Texas January 2009

Happy New Year to all of you who have been able to access our blog!!!

We enjoyed our month of December back at home, despite the extreme cold temperatures which arrived there when we did… Shari and the crew at home were happy to have us back for a while, and it was great to spend some time with the kids. We took in a Christmas concert, visited some friends and just enjoyed being home. There was only about 4 inches of snow all the time we were there – it snowed an extra 3 inches or so shortly before we left.

We flew back to Austin January 2nd and had good flights. Jake and Verna Martens also flew from Winnipeg to Austin that day, so we waited the extra hour for their flight to arrive and gave them a ride back to the camp.

We were happy to see that Keith and Carol Workman had not left yet, and Marvin and Henrietta Giesbrecht were on the site as well.

Saturday morning, we all headed for the Blue Bonnet for breakfast. Changed the oil in the truck and shopped for groceries. In the afternoon, the rest of the volunteers arrived and our crew is complete. Keith and Carol and Marvin and Henrietta went on their merry way after breakfast and we the rest of us came back to the camp and had a lovely visit in the sunshine.

Unfortunately, John realized when we got back here that his CANADA winter jacket did not appear to have arrived with us. Near as we can ascertain, he removed it leaving the airport and it was left in the cab. Although it was a pretty nice jacket, we weren’t really that concerned about getting it back until we realized his passport was in the inside pocket. So we have made some inquiries and certainly hope we can get it back. It may be that he will have to report his passport missing to the immigration authorities. Thankfully he had put his driver’s license back into his wallet and puts his wallet in his back pocket, not in his jacket!!

Then we had a bit of excitement at our camp after dark on Saturday. All of a sudden, a helicopter was landing in the clearing beside our campers. John went out shortly after it landed, and a fireman told him to get back in the camper. It wasn’t long before other of our volunteers were standing outside watching and John went back out. It appears that there had been a car accident on the hill coming down to the camp sites and there was a severely injured man who had to be airlifted out to a hospital. It’s quite a steep hill on a sharp curve and they don’t know whether the driver was going too fast or if he was trying to avoid a deer (there had been some seen there earlier). There were firetrucks, an ambulance and police vehicles in the vicinity. Hope the guy will be okay.

Sunday we went to the First Baptist Church where we had attended in November. It was an excellent New Years message giving us the guidelines to have the best year ever. I was wishing our son Darren could have been there to hear it, as right about now for him it is seeming like the worst year ever – his employer gave him a pink slip the first day back in the New Year – with the reason he hadn’t matched their expectations – he had worked there 8 months. It was totally out of the blue and was a terrible blow for him. We are praying he can find something else fairly quickly.

We had our weekly outing at the Francesco Italian Restaurant after church, and then went back to the site. We were tickled pink to have Lloyd and Bev Glass from Prince Albert appear at our door shortly after we returned to the site. They are on their way to south Texas and had told us they’d tried to stop in. We had a wonderful visit and we invited them for supper.

The weather has been very beautiful – mid eighties most days. The forecast is for cool and rainy for the next few days.