Crating and Ending

Well, there you go. This is the essence of crating (for us).

The first picture just shows you what a 200 cubic foot crate looks like on the inside.










The second is us fully packed after 7 hours of figuring how it all fits.

The third is what it looks like before it is caulked, sealed, stenciled, and put on a boat.

The guys at Central Transportation Systems in San Antonio were great! They've helped lots of missionaries before, and it was evident they were experts at what they were doing. Here's hoping the boat arrives...

We haven't seen pictures of our house yet, but I've been told it's fixed up, painted, and ready to go. If the house isn't big enough to hold our stuff, I guess we can have a "garage sale" in Africa.

We also found out that we will not be going to our home to drop off our bags before going to Kenya for a home school conference. They will be left some place "safe" in the capital of Kampala while we make the trip.

That means, when we get to Africa, we will need to go through 13 of our 15 bags to find what we need to take to Kenya. We only packed little carry-ons for a couple of nights in Kampala. We would go through our bags now, but they are weighed and packed to the pound, and it would take A LOT of shifting and re-organizing to do it here.

I also just found out, we will be in Nairobi longer than we thought. We won't arrive in our town of Arua or at our new home until January 20th, so it will be awhile before I have pictures for you.

I read someone's blog who summarized their year in a series of numbers. I don't have the year down, but here are some stats:

4 moves this year (Yoakum to Katy to Yoakum to Virginia to Yoakum)
5 states in 2 months (Colorado, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Virginia)
about 320 hours of class in Virginia
42 shots for the family (Doug 11, Kat 7, Kylie 7, Karis 8, Caleb 9)
15 suitcases weighing 50 pounds (that's 750 pounds!)
10 carry-ons
3 car seats
and one family ready to go

Please pray for my dad as he is working to sell our two vehicles. (Does anyone need a 2000 Honda Odyssey or a 2000 VW Bug - Silver?)

Please pray for our flight over to be a "quick" 24 hours, for connections to be made, and for us to walk in the Spirit as we go.

Please pray for our unsettled first month to be a good time of transition.

Please pray for encounters we have every day that could be life changing.

If I don't write again, I'll catch up with you in Africa!

More Craziness, but not about running

We arrived at my parent's house on Friday, December 11, and unpacked all 8 suitcases before going to bed. In addition, we RE-packed three of them, so that certain "Africa" stuff could be out of the way.

My sister and her three boys came to visit us for Christmas, so we have limited room for all our junk to be spread out. We had planned to take 5 suitcases, 5 rolling duffels, and 5 Action Packer trunks to Africa with us when we go to Uganda, but I'm hoping we can get away with a lot less. I'll know after we crate.

We were supposed to crate yesterday (Tuesday), but last Friday when we arrived, we changed our crating date.

After a phone call, we realized our batteries and inverter for our solar power and our fridge and freezer had not been delivered to our storage shed while we were gone. We really needed those things BEFORE we crated, seeing as how they need to go in the box to Africa, too.

We changed our crating date to this Friday, the 18th, the last possible date the company had. Praise God they had one!

Our batteries came in yesterday, but nothing else.

Tomorrow morning, the crating company is coming in the morning to pick up all our belongings and take them to San Antonio. We will drive there early Friday to watch/help them pack our 700 cubic feet of space.

This afternoon, Doug was on the phone with lots of people. He was so kind and didn't act frustrated at all (I'm glad he was the one making the calls), and the companies, which have had the order for some time, are going to re-route our belongings directly to San Antonio. They are supposed to make it in time. I'll let you know.

Doug and I spent Sunday in Houston buying all the last minute things we needed. We waited until this late in the game so the expiration dates would be later. Not that it really matters. I'm still going to eat out of a jar of peanut butter from the United States, even if the expiration date has come and gone. And that goes for the brownie mixes and chocolate chips I bought too. When it comes to stuff like that, I'll listen to my stomach over the FDA any day.

We spent the afternoon today in our storage shed, one last time, cramming things into boxes. When Friday comes, and if it doesn't all fit, we'll have to decide what to leave in the States, but I'm guessing it won't be the peanut butter. Jif, anyone?

Scrambled Eggs for Brains

Karis wanted Doug and I to eat lunch with her today at school, so after working in the storage shed all morning, we got cleaned up, ate some yummy cafeteria food, and now we're at the library again.

We are checking the girls out in an hour to go to Victoria to a Walgreens and try to get flu shots for the girls. All three towns closer to us were out yesterday when I called. I'm hoping Walgreens can also help with our fluoride prescription. The pharmacy here can't get what we need, and I need a 3 years supply of fluoride tablets for the kids before we go.

These "drugs" are taking up a lot of space in our crate. I hope they don't push out my dishes or peanut butter. Monday, we bought 18 bottles of Flintstones, and 17 bottles of Vitamin C. Rather than count them off the shelf in Sam's, we just took the whole box. Nice.

On top of that, we got mulit-vitamins for Doug and I, and Super B Complex and odorless garlic to help fend off mosquitos. 480 bandaids, 26 tubes of toothpaste for all 5 of us, 5 bottles of hair de-tangler for the girls, 6 bottles of sunscreen, 52 razors, LOTS of batteries (for our cool headlamps and a few toys), and then smaller amounts of every kind of medicine you might need on a yearly basis...in Africa.

My mom suggested I take pictures of our haul from Sam's so it would help people get their heads around it. When I went to do it, we had already taken every tube and bottle out of each box, but I'll try to download the pictures to my computer soon.

Packing is getting crazy. What goes to Virginia? What goes to Africa in a crate? What goes to Africa in one of our 15+ suitcases? What goes to Virginia and then Africa? What goes to Virgina for the cold weather, and then goes back to storage? Better get back to work...

If brains can look like scrambled eggs, then I'm there.

5 States in a month

We have unpacked our suitcases, and we will only pack them two more times this year. Granted, the number of suitcases we will pack the next couple of times is exponentially increasing.

From Colorado to Florida, and then driving around Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, I feel so drained, but it's a good drained.

We saw so many people we love and who loved on us. It was so nice to be encouraged! The body of Christ is an AMAZING thing.

I'm sending out "Christmas" letters with prayer cards this week to all the people we didn't get to see on our journey, because we leave next Tuesday and won't be back in Yoakum until December 11th.

I hope to update more often while we are in Virginia and stuff is actually going on.

For example, would you want to hear that we got our International Drivers' Licenses yesterday, and are now qualified to drive like James Bond...in Uganda...on dirt, pot-hole-filled roads.

We also spent about $1400 buying vitamins and a few other knick knacks like seasonings, trash bags, and zip locks at Sam's yesterday. The only good news about that, is that there should be no out-of-pocket expense for vitamins (and other things) for the next 3 1/2 years. Nope. The thought didn't make me feel any better either.

We bought new wedding rings because we didn't want to wear our gold and diamonds in Uganda. Maybe I should take one of those cute wedding-type photos of our hands together, so you can see the new rings...Nah!

Today, we worked in our storage unboxing all the toothpaste and medications we are taking with us. The extra air in the boxes is just too precious when it comes to crating.

We are still working on purchasing all the "things" we need for solar power. The process has been slow since we have been driving around and not always near internet access.

Which leads me to now. It is 10 minutes until 6pm, and the library is getting ready to close. My parents lost internet a week and a half ago when God answered all our prayers and sent rain to this area of Texas. Doug and I now have to come to the library to get work done. So, I'm being kicked out. Gotta go. Write more later.