Hey everyone, it’s been a while since I posted so I guess I’m due.
On June 1st, I flew home from Saipan to help my parents with the long awaited
and much dreaded move from my childhood home to the forests of Arkansas. Being
home has been a great time but I strangely found myself wanting to go back to
what I now call home. I thought I was home, but as it turns out my brain seems
to think that Saipan is my home now. Strange… Anyways the move was filled with
many fun things, some not so fun things, lots of Taco Bell (yes, it is much
better in the states) and God answering our prayers even though I had less than
perfect faith. So, I will start with Wednesday when the move officially
started. Or at least when it was supposed to start...
Wednesday
Wednesday the 13th of whatever month this is, (who keeps track on
vacation) was the day we were to pick up our moving truck, a 26’ Budget truck.
We dropped my dad off to pick it up and went to cancel our internet (may she
rest in peace, yes, the internet is a girl). When we finally heard back from my
dad, he informed us that they didn’t have our truck. Now this is a reservation
that was made 2 months ago, and they didn’t have our truck. Unbelievable! So
that night while we were supposed to be packing up our truck, we visited with
some of our neighbors telling them the story of the evil Budget Rental Truck
Company losing our reservation. We later learned that they didn’t lose it as
much as they overbooked and we were the unlucky ones that got the short end of
the stick.
Thursday
By the grace of God, and a little help from our friends (thanks
Rika), we were able to get a truck Thursday afternoon and thanks to all the
people who came to help us load up the truck we were able to take off that
night. They were all a big help and we got the truck loaded pretty fast… A
little too fast, hmmm maybe they were trying to rush us out sooner…
Anyways, we got on the road and Taco Bell wanted to say goodbye to
me, at least, I assume it did, So, we went to the close Taco Bell in Windsor, but
it had a long line so I waved goodbye and we moved on to the one in Santa Rosa.
I don’t know why Santa Rosa TB wanted to take so long to say goodbye but we
were in the drive thru for 30 minutes. I thought this was supposed to be fast
food!? We drove for a few hours, and got a nice hotel in Modesto around
midnight.
Friday
I had a great night sleep, or at least I WAS having a great
night's sleep but my parents wanted to hit the road early so we took off. Not
long into the trip I was forced to get some much-needed sleep (guys need their
beauty rest too) and after some sleep, I awoke to find the engine of the truck
whining and my dad talking on the radio to my mom saying something about the
transmission having trouble, I asked my dad what was going on in my sleepiest
voice making sure he knew I was displeased with being awoken at such an
inconvenient time. I was then informed that our transmission was slipping.
Thanks Ford. And Budget. We were on the grade of one of the steepest parts
of I-99 and the truck was having some issue making it over the hills. There is
a small chance we were two and a half tons over the recommended weight of the
truck but since no one can prove that I’m going with it being Budget's fault
for giving us a faulty truck. We got over the hill and into Tehachapi and tried
to figure out what to do. While we were deciding we went into a Del Taco (not
nearly as good as I remember). After ordering I pulled out my phone and I had a
Bible verse of the day notification, Jeremiah 32:17 “Ah Lord God, behold you
have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and outstretched arm.
There is nothing too hard for You.” Even though I was still a little
discouraged reading that verse did give me some hope. It was a real wow moment
and a reminder that God could help our truck. We had decided to call the
wonderful Budget and see what they thought. They wanted to send out a mechanic
but after unhooking the trailer that we had behind the moving truck, we noticed
that the truck was working okay so we canceled the mechanic and decided to move
forward and see what happened. God is good! And He was good to our truck that
day, the next and the two days after that. We made it the whole rest of the way
with very little trouble. We got to our hotel about 7 hours later than we had
planned but we made it, and we went straight to bed because the next day we
were going to the Grand Canyon.
Sabbath
Sabbath morning arrived and for some reason I was awaken at 5am, I
wondered why my parents had woken up so early, but I figured they must just be
excited to see the Grand Canyon. I was able to go back to sleep and wake up at
a respectful hour. We ate a quick breakfast in the room, loaded the car, and
headed to the Grand Canyon, I had been several times before but was still amazed
at the size of this thing. It is beyond massive. Incredibly deep. I added a
link at the end of this paragraph with a few pictures but the good ones will be
in a later post. Unfortunately, a rain storm cut our visit short so we started
to head East again. Now we didn’t want to buy gas on the Sabbath so we were
praying that our gas would hold out and we would make it to a gas station after
the sun set. We were hoping we would not have to wait around or worse get
stranded. God was looking out for us and the truck made it quite a bit farther
than it should have with the amount of gas we had left. God was watching out
for us in so many ways on this trip. We got a little farther down the road and
got a hotel for the night. Here is a link to the pictures of the Grand
Canyon Click Here
Sunday
Sunday, we awoke early… AGAIN… Now I had always thought that 5 am
was something that happens only a few times a year, early flights, Black
Friday, and of Course Christmas morning when you are 6. I had no idea that 5 am
happened every day! But my parents did, and they, for whatever reason did not
want to miss whatever glorious thing happened at that unholy hour (still can’t
figure out what the amazing this is). Thankfully, they usually dragged me out
of bed closer to 6 (bless their hearts). We got going early and tried our best
to make it to Oklahoma City. Most of the day went off without a hitch, but my
dad wanted /needed to take a nap, so my mom and I moved on ahead in the car
with hopes that he would catch up later. Well he never did. We got to the hotel
and waited around for almost two hours for him to catch up. I guess he needed
more than one nap… Also, his phone was dead so we couldn’t contact him.
Thankfully he had the address of the hotel and knew the area to go. While we
were waiting on him I decided to hop in the car and drive up the freeway a ways
to see if I could see him. It's a lucky thing I did because once he got off the
freeway I followed him and he passed the hotel, so we had to loop around again.
We finally got settled everyone safe and sound. We drifted off to sleep so we
could get, you guessed it, another early start.
Monday - Wednesday
Monday was a good day we didn’t have to travel very far and we
just went to Hot Springs where my Grandmother lives. We went out for Mexican
food, much better in the south. It was amazing! We stayed at my Grandmas house
that night and got yep, an early start the next morning. Tuesday, we drove
another hour and made it to my parent’s new home, at Ouachita Hills. The house
they got is brand new and very, very nice. Some of the summer worker kids came
to help us unload and they were a big help, It was a little embarrassing to
have several tons of stuff that will never be used but they assured us the
there were others who had much more than us so we didn’t feel so bad. After
unloading, we drove back to Hot Springs to get some food and other needed
items. I tried to buy something at Best Buy and was told by the manager that
“The system will not let me go any lower than xx.xx$ REALLY? You are the
manager and you can’t honor the price your store advertised it at?! Anyway,
we went back home to go to bed and discovered that our air conditioner did not
work……
Wednesday morning my parents we extra nice and I got to sleep in
until 9am. It was heavenly!! We did some more unpacking and then headed into
town to drop off the truck, meet with my sister and do some more shopping. It
was a great day of shopping and exploring the city of Hot Springs. We got back
and went to bed.
Thursday (Today)
Since we have no internet at my
parent’s new house, and At&t does not work very well out there, my parents
switched to Verizon. I was going to get myself a temporary plan, but decided
not to when I realized I would have to buy a new phone in addition to the plan.
I am very glad I didn’t because we found out that while Verizon works up there,
it doesn’t work very well. And I found out that I can get At&t to work in
certain locations. One place it works is up on a hill behind my parents’ house.
I wanted it to work down next to the house too so I took the 3ABN Satellite
dish my parents had and aimed at the direction I was getting signal and down
slightly toward the house and believe it or not I get decent reception down
next to the house now. The dish falls, I lose internet put it up again and its
back. Now I just need to figure out how to make it stay up. We came into a
small town earlier and that is where I am now, writing this from a library with
the fastest internet I have seen since leaving California. 5mbps…. Still enough
to do what I need to. We will be going out to eat soon, So I better wrap this
up.
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