Getting Out the Door

I can't believe that we have now been on the road for a week! The original plan was to leave in time to get to Atlanta by Joseph's Birthday on the 11th but, of course, the best laid plans ... Instead, we spent his birthday mostly on the road with a stop in Deming, New Mexico, the birthplace of his maternal grandfather, and Van Horn, Texas, where we got some authentic Tex Mex in a little hole in the wall joint just outside of El Paso. While we got out later than we had planned, there is no doubt that God's timing was/is perfect. We started getting down to serious packing last Saturday and got most everything boxed and ready to go in our trailer by Sunday morning. Joseph stayed up all night on Sunday trying to get the trailer loaded before the first wave of rain storms rolled in to Southern California. My amazing husband and our dear friend Kas re-packed our trailer three times before they got it balanced and road-ready. Some residents and retired missionaries at Casa Robles where we live saw that we were struggling to get on the road and graciously offered their hospitality. It started with inviting us over for dinner and then breakfast and then lunch and eventually ended in them giving us a key and letting us stay the night in their guest room. I was blessed by spending time in their home and hearing their stories about being in the missionary field in Bolivia and South Africa. No doubt, spending time with them bolstered my faith in the middle of a very frustrating start to our trip.
After multiple repacking attempts and a few trailer hiccups, we finally got on the road at 5 pm on Tuesday night! Though we knew we couldn't get very far, we were thankful to be out of our apartment and finally started towards Atlanta. Another blessing which seemed to come out of our late departure was that Joseph's parents, Jerry and Olivia, were in Arizona and drove up to meet us in Indio. At one point, we had all talked about driving to Atlanta together. Now, here we are on Sunday morning in Abilene, Texas and they are still on the road with us and are planning to go all the way to Atlanta. Praise God! As well, since they have their RV, they took over hauling the trailer which is a great relief to our little 1987 Volvo. We have now traveled with them for 5 days and have enjoyed great visiting time.
Mercy is a great little traveler and is doing so well! We are hoping to get to Atlanta by Tuesday. We'll try to keep up with blogging as we go!