last roll of pictures from the Secret Sojourn.

Monday adventures: Elephant Seals, Henry Cowell State Park (Redwood Trees), Alan the barista, hanging out with Liam's parents (and dog we all want to steal), and Santa Cruz!








Our Secret Sojourn is coming to an end...in just about 18 hours from now. We are all sad but so glad too. We had an amazing trip and time with each other, we just need our time at home now. We have not had alone time in 9 days... literally, unless you are in the bathroom. BUT, we have loved our trip too...and have grown a LOT.

We talked about the fear of failure, the fear of the future, the fear of death, and the Fear of the Lord. ALL of our talks have been challenging but exciting.

Our main theme verse was Isaiah 41:10
"Do not fear for I am with you. Do not be dismayed for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."

Some of our other favorites include:
Deut 6:13; 10:12; 31:12
Psalm 19:9; 111:10
Proverbs 8:13; 9:10; 10:27; 14:27; 15:33; 16:6; 19:23; 31:30
Isaiah 11:3
I John 4:18

Thanks for praying for us during our trip! See you at home!

pictures from the weekend.

weekend update.

To recap the last few days when we have not had internet to keep you up to date on our lives…

Friday morning – we left SunRiver, OR and after an 8 hour drive south, we ended up near the Bay Area where we took a tour at the Jelly Belly Factory. We learned about the history and the development of the bean along with sampling many flavors. We ate a delicious dinner at Claim Jumper and retired for the night at the Concord Hilton. We had a great evening discussion about our fear of death and where our hope in eternal life and desires of leaving a legacy fits within that context.

Saturday – We drove to San Francisco in the morning after eating in the parking lot. We started off with checking out the Golden Gate Bridge where we walked across the bridge and got some sweet pictures together. We then headed down to Pier 39 with the rest of the tourists in San Francisco where we saw the seals, the cotton candy stands, and many over priced souvenir shops. We pretty much saw the whole city as we drove through many neighborhoods. We partnered with Miraloma Community Church to serve dinner to about 75 homeless friends. Passing out socks was really appreciated by the attendees. In order to not cause those at dinner to get angry about seconds, we had to make an ethical decision. Do we only give out an extra piece of pizza to the first 35 people who made it up to the serving table, do we just ignore that we don’t have enough seconds for everyone (and everyone wanted more pizza), do we order more pizza even though it would take about 40 minutes for it to arrive…I mean we all thought 35 pizzas would be enough… or our last choice, do we as the volunteers also eat some pizza so then we “run out” of pizza for those who had not eaten much food that day. The pastor at the church asked us all to eat some pizza so we could just say “oh Sorry, we ran out.” Our kids really had a hard time eating the pizza. They didn’t want to eat it. They didn’t want to take away from those who were truly hungry. It was a hard ethical decision that as a group, they had to deal with… and get through. We had Pakistani wraps for our own dinner, followed by a trip to Ghirardelli square and a look out from Coit tower. We slept at Miraloma Community Church.

Sunday – We got to experience a super multi-cultural worship service at Glide United Methodist Church that is located in the Tenderloin district in the heart of the city. People from ALL walks of life were there. They do an amazing job of loving their community they live in and the people that represent their neighborhood. Afterwards, we got to see the Diamondbacks destroy the San Francisco Giants. (Eatons, we thought you would enjoy that). We hit up Chinatown for dinner and it took us about an hour just to get out of traffic. Tonight we are Liam’s house that he grew up in near Santa Cruz.

Pictures up later tonight.

Secret Sojourn Day 4

Rafting Pictures from yesterday...since we don't have a scanner, this is the best we can do. You will also see our spelunking (cave dwelling) pictures along with our awesome backyard, our adopted deer, the driving range, adventures to the river, and good times by all.

Secret Sojourn Day 3

The clue that the kids got last night...
We went rafting this AM and it was super fun. We will have pictures from our trip tomorrow evening. Here are some other shots from this morning you might enjoy...