Sunday, August 21, 2016

All Settled In and Getting Very Busy

Our dear family and friends,

We have officially been Washington residents for four months now.  So much has happened.  We had a shed build on the property to house all the rest of our stuff and all of our bicycles.  We also had a huge carport built that covers our trailer.


The first week here I contacted the City recreation director to get on a softball team.  He gave me all the team captain's phone numbers and the first captain that I called was the captain of the Coast Guard team and he was happy to have me.  Both my grandson Asher and myself joined the team.  We had a great time and our team took second place for the whole season.

I began teaching Autumn how to play the guitar and with the help of You Tube she is becoming quite the guitar player.

I also was able to find and train a mountain bicycle riding partner--Aiden, my 13 year old grandson.  He is a natural bike rider.  We are already up to riding the entire Olympic Discovery Adventure Trail.  The ODAT is 25.5 miles of a single track mountain trail which is quite challenging and affords many breath taking views of the Strait of Juan De Fuca and Canada.

Perhaps the most exciting thing was that we found a church that we really love and feel at home in.  Strait View Baptist Church is a fairly new church plant (4 years old) and is going through some growing pains.  We love the pastor and his family as well as all the people there.  As time goes on we hope to be able to teach, disciple, and maybe even pulpit fill once in a while.

We have been asked to teach in the Home School CoOp called "Aletheia."  I will be teaching the Bible class for the junior and senior high students and Dayle will be teaching Bible to the younger students.  This will start the end of September.  I am really excited to be teaching once again.  I truly miss the regular preaching and teaching and this will help with that.

Four weeks ago we drove down to Grants Pass to spend a couple of days with Mel, Annie and the boys and to retrieve the rest of our storage unit.  We took Aiden with us so he could spend some time with his cousins.  We all had a great time and we even took a rafting trip down the Rogue River.  Upon returning to Port Angeles we unloaded the truck and went through the remainder of our stuff.  A few weeks ago we had a yard sale and got rid of the rest of it. So now all we have left in our shed is memorabilia including pictures and a few things that are of a family historical nature.

All in all we are really enjoying living here on the property with Jason, Shelli and the kids.  We have missed so much of their lives and now we are with them every day. What a blessing!

On August 29th we will be driving south to Grants Pass to take Annie and Mel out to dinner to celebrate Annie's 36th birthday and then on Sacramento to spend some time with Stephen,  Neeley and the kids.  Stephen and Neeley will be going away for a few days and then Neeley will be having surgery and will need her mommy to take care of her and the kids for 5 weeks.  I will be driving back towards the end of September, Dayle will stay a couple of weeks longer until Neeley is back to normal.

So now you know what has been going on in our lives as we have settled down a bit. We still look forward to attending the NICE conferences and we remain available for short term pulpit supply.

Please pray that the Lord will continue to use us here in Port Angeles. We don't to ever want to retire from the Lord's work.

Love to all......Shelley and Dayle