Virginia

We are in Virginia! We've been here for over 3 weeks now and we love it. It is such a beautiful part of the country.
The house we are renting is very nice. It has 2 bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs where we stay. The man we are living with, Meno, stays in the master bedroom downstairs. Things have been pretty smooth so far although I smell trouble brewing. Its really hard living with someone you don't know. It makes it a lot harder when you have to do a lot for him. He cannot drive and I have to shuttle him around to dr. appointments and things like that. He sends us out to the store at least 3-4 times a week. He is very high maintenance and its starting to wear on all of us. The reason I said trouble is brewing is because we are about to have a house meeting. Meno has gone back on some of the things that were discussed before we moved in, so we are having to counter that with some changes of our own. We'll see how it goes.

We have found a wonderful church up here. Darrell attended this church before we moved over here and the people have welcomed us with open arms. Liberty leaves every church service with a handful of candy from various people. In the three weeks that we've been here we've been treated out to ice cream and been invited to dinner at 2 families houses. Saturday we went to a couple's house. They live in the national forest and their house is on top of the hill with panoramic mountain views. They have horses, goats, a pig, llamas, dogs and cats. We swam in their pool that overlooked the most incredible views I've ever seen. I CANNOT believe I forgot my camera. I've learned my lesson to just take my camera with me wherever I go.

Darrell is still looking for another job. This job ends in October and he is trying very hard to look for a new one. He is really wanting something that is more like a career. He is applying for police positions among other things he thinks will be long lasting. He is such a hard worker and I just know that God has something amazing in store for him. Please pray with us that God is going to do big things for us. Darrell is considering taking a second job so we can make ends meet. Please pray that this won't be necessary.

And since I've had to answer this question on more than one occasion, I'll just go ahead and address it again. Darrell feels firmly about working 2 jobs so that I may be home with Liberty. Nothing is ever permanent so we know it wouldn't be forever, but we believe my job is to raise (and teach) Liberty. Unless things got desperate I will not be looking for work outside of our home.

Our house is still on hold so there is no new news there. We are heading there Saturday to work around the property and spend some time there. Its about an hour drive from here to our property.

Sometimes we sit and talk about the craziness of just up and moving. We had no friends, connections or family but we just felt drawn here. We know that God will have to provide a miracle for us to finish our house this year. Financially and timewise. We are growing so much in our faith through this whole ordeal. Again we just feel that God has big plans for us in the coming years. We have no idea what that means but it is just building our trust and faith.

We hope you all are doing well. I wish we had room in the house to invite up company. But we can't at the moment. We'd love to see yall, so if you can find some lodging come on up.

For the time being enjoy these pictures of the area. These are really bad because I took them from the car. This is what we see on our drive to church.


Here is our church

And these are from our property about 3 weeks ago when Liberty and I drove down to see it.


This is the beginning of our driveway
When we clear out those trees we will have a great view of some rolling hillsides
This is looking down the driveway to the road
Liberty standing in front of the foundation. Again, we will clear those trees to see the view and have a big deck off that far side of the house.
If you look really close you can see our small creek running. This Saturday we will spend a lot of time cutting back some of that growth.


Here is the view I saw on the move up here. This was right at the beginning of the trip I think. By the time we made it I was so sick of looking at that truck. Liberty rode with Darrell the whole way up because my car was packed out. They did get a blowout on the interstate. Thankfully they were able to pull right over without a mishap. Extra points to anyone who can guess what in the world is shoved up in there with the ramp. Any guesses? Its Darrell's tree stand. But right before we pulled out he thought he was going to have to leave it behind. but he got this great idea of sliding it up in there and it worked. He was happy. I was nervous thinking that thing was going to fly into my windshield at any moment. I told him he needed to write "I love you" on that wood. At least it would have made the trip more enjoyable.