2000 Miles and the Lessons We've Learned

We just returned from a big road trip. It was great fun! We covered many miles...and we learned many lessons! Here's a quick run-down:

Lesson #1: Ryan learned that it is not a good idea to run barefoot on a treadmill set at 140 m.p.h. (his own doing..."I can go really fast!"). He quickly realized that your feet start to burn at this speed. It's particularly bad when you forgot there's a stop button and you hang onto the sides of the treadmill and fall...letting your feet drag on the spinning treadmill. EEK! The result...Ryan learned...is lots of rug-burns. 10 to be exact - 5 big ones and 5 tiny ones on his toes. Here's are pictures of the ones on his feet. He's got a set to match on his knees. The worst part? Other more experienced people ran on the treadmill with shoes ON. Therefore, those rug burns needed a serious cleaning job before the bandaids and ointment could be put on them. Ouch!

Hopefully this was a lesson learned for us all!


Lesson #2: Chicago is a different world! What you see below is a ticket we found waiting for us in the mail when we returned. We had no idea that we ever did anything wrong! The ticket does have two photos of the back of our van. Apparently we did something wrong, but we don't know what. Maybe we weren't supposed to turn right on red? It didn't say "no turn on red" anywhere in the intersection. Who knows? But, we'll try to figure it out as there's a very disconcerting $100 fee attached to this ticket. I guess we'll pursue the "contest by mail" option now. Even worse...the ticket is issued to me (Jill) and Mark was driving the van!

Lesson learned...there's a set of eyes watching that we never knew was there!


Lesson # 3: the south is much warmer than the north! While the folks in Louisville, KY were apologizing for the cold temperatures (mid 50's), we were loving the warmth! Here's a photo of us with Mark's grandmother, Margaret. It was a joy to visit Margaret, and Mark's aunt Phoebe and his Uncle Nate over lunch one day while we were in their neck-of-the-woods.

Lesson #4: Climbing can lead to injury! Yes, our climber Todd got himself a real shiner (the photo below was taken Sunday morning...the morning after it happened). How?


He decided to climb this exercise bike. None of us saw him fall. We just heard a loud crash and a scream!


We also learned that it takes 2 days for the full extent of a black eye to show itself. Here's what Todd's eye looked like on Monday ... two days after the fall. I've never seen such a black eye before in my life. Poor guy!


Lesson #5: And the best of them all! God is so incredibly faithful! He is working in amazing ways to bring in our support. We get to enjoy the love and rich fellowship of close friends and to see how God loves to lavish His goodness on His people (not just us, but also the people we get to visit with). We are praising God that we are at 62% of the monthly support that we need to go to Paris, France. That means we've raised $5300 in monthly support and have $3300 left to go. HE IS GOOD, and we give Him all the praise!