Dear Friends

During August we took a bit of a marathon travel adventure. Here was the logistics:

Akron, Ohio to Winston-Salem, North Carolina

7 hour trip

Stayed the night with Dan's brother, sister-in-law and family then left the next afternoon to drive through the night to...

...to Lake Wales, Florida

11 hour trip

We stayed with Dan's parents for 4 days and enjoyed Tractor Rides, orange grove picking, mosquito swarms. Unfortunately, we don't have any picture of this. Our camera got lost (or maybe stolen...) on the next stage of our journey

...to Lecanto, Florida

2.5 hours

This is the place we called home for 5 years. Not just the place where our mail went, but the place we love and the community we still feel deeply grafted to. We stayed for a week with our dear friends the De Beers. They have 3 wonderful kiddos of similar ages and it was a treat to do life with them. A testament to their grace and generosity... after a week of us living with them, they asked if we would stay with them the next time we visited as well. Now THAT'S love and grace!

Dan was able to help lead worship at Seven Rivers Presbyterian Church (our previous home church). It was a joy to be able for him to minister after we've felt SO ministered to by them.

While there, we got to see many friends. There was (honestly) not enough time to see everyone we wanted to see. It was a beautiful reminder to me that in the Kingdom we'll have enough time. We felt love poured out on us and our kids. Just overflowing. How blessed we are.

One night our old small group got together for an evening of fellowship. It was wonderful to see all the kids swimming and playing together like no time had passed at all.

After Lecanto, we went back up to

...Winston-Salem, North Carolina

11 hour trip

Now this time we got to spend 4-5 days with Dan's brother and sister-in-law. Dan was able to lead worship at his brother's church, Redeemer Presbyterian. It's so funny because we've come to have some treasured relationships from this church. Do you remember our American friends that lived in Vienna for a semester while we were there? Well, they're from Redeemer. So we got to spend some lovely time with them and a student in their program that we came to adore as well.

The Giles are on the left

These are all our kiddos. You can probably pick out the Beilman's and by default the other three are the Giles' kiddos :)

And this was one of the Wake Forrest Students - Tiffany.
What a treasure to see her!

We also got to have some wonderful cousin/niece/nephew time. We're so blessed to have Wonderful Family! Our kids get along GREAT and it was such a joy to see them play so well together.

William adored playing with "Little Charlotte" (as he calls her)

...Beech Mountain, North Carolina

2.5 hour trip (1 week)

This needs to be it's own post I think. So I'll pick this one up later :) This was VACATION!

To...

...Akron, Ohio

8 hour trip

Ahh - at our temporary Farmhouse home... 3 1/2 weeks later. Home is an illusive word.