Getting serious

I feel like we're finally getting down to business as missionaries. The roller coaster is sitting at the top of the hill! We are up here at Pearl River, NY after several hours of flying today. The kids did great, and we are so thankful for portable dvd players. They make the world a happier place. :)

One of our pieces of luggage weighed 81 pounds! So we had to pay double for it. Joel looked at me as we were checking it in curbside in Dallas (at 7:15 this morning) and asked if I knew of anything that could come out of it. I gave him the famous "are you crazy?!" look and said we would just have to pay it. Thankfully they didn't charge us for our duffles being over 50 pounds. But when we got here to Pearl River, the man in charge of luggage (I am quite positive that is not his title) said that we'd have to lighten the load. Our choices were to do it here or at the airport.

So...we spent a good bit of time doing just that. It's amazing what you can do when the motivation is strong enough. We weaned a lot - an entire piece of luggage (the 81 pounder) will be shipped back to Arlington tomorrow (I'll try to weigh it before it goes and let you know how much it is - our international weight limit is 70 pounds).

We also thinned out the kid's backpacks which almost toppled them over today. They'll be pleasantly (?) surprised when they feel them in a couple of days (hopefully they'll understand when not all of their toys and books made the cut).

The other neat, God thing was this: Joel was trying to make sure we had all batteries charged and asked me to get the camera battery charging. When he reminded me the second time, I actually did it. Low and behold! The charger wasn't there...the battery wasn't either! I had the same plan as Joel, but charged the battery back at his parent's house. And, sure enough, the battery was still charging there tonight when I called. :) Thankfully UPS is super fast and I am confident that we can get it here before we leave on Friday. I'm so glad he wanted to charge batteries tonight vs. tomorrow night when it would be too late. God really does take good care of us.

Well, I'm off to bed - thank you for all your prayers. Dade only coughed once and didn't have any problems flying. I'm the one whose ear has not been right since we made our initial decent into Charlotte (where we had a 40 minute layover). Please pray my sinuses clear up before we leave and the kids do well tomorrow while we are busy with meetings. Thanks again!