A Wild & Wonderful Deputation

It's fall now! That of course means that summer is over. It also means I haven't posted something on my blog for a long time. So hopefully my sharing my summer experiences will make up for it.

Well, our family headed out on deputation on July 18th. I drove a good part of the first part of the trip and several hours later on during the trip. I still have more fun riding in the back with Tasha than driving. :D

The first state we visited was Indiana. There we got to spend 2 days with my best friend Luke and his family. The Friday we were there, all of our families went to an awesome place called Conner's Prairie. It's and interactive park that lets you live history and have a lot of hands-on fun. Check out their website to find out more about it.

Here's some pictures of our visit:

The Forsee and Peachey families

Watering the gardens

Me showing off my tomahawk skills (or lack thereof)

The barn

After leaving Indiana to go to West Virginia, we stopped at Jungle Jim's International Market in Ohio. Whew! Grocery shopping there would be ten times better than going to get them at Walmart!

Dad and Ashley shopping

In Point Pleasant, West Virginia, my old home town, we had a lot of good times with family and our old friends. It was great to re-kindle old friendships.

After leaving WV, we went to Pennsylvania. There we had a Peachey family reunion with many of our Amish relatives. We ate lots of good food and played Dutch Blitz and UNO! 

Another fun thing that happened in PA was that, for the first time, both sets of my grandparents were together in the same place.

After a couple of weeks in Pennsylvania, we left for Tennessee to see some more family. There we visited my Aunt Rhonda and Uncle Daniel and their family. We also had a going-away-to-school party for my cousin Jessica and an early birthday party.

Jessica and her cake

Well, on August 21 after church, we packed up and headed home. We made good time and made it to Arkansas around 7:00 in the morning. But then the van started to act up. We pulled over into an Advance Auto Parts store. To make a long story short, we tried for hours to find a tool to fix the van, didn't work, found out the transmission was broken, limped our way to Oklahoma and stayed at a Love's truck stop.
   
We have family in OK so my uncle came and picked us up and hauled the van to his house. We realized that we couldn't fix the transmission and replacing it would be very expensive. Plus our van was worth less than a new transmission. So we needed a new vehicle to get us home.

We prayed and asked around to find something else. God led us to buy a 2003 Chrysler van from someone who really helped us with the price. We also got the money to buy the van in one payment. That in itself was a huge blessing! So on Thursday, we packed up our new van and headed home: finally! We made it home without any problems. We were never so happy to be home!

So our summer was full of good times, sadness, uncertainty, and full of blessings! God really answered our prayers about our vehicle, but not quite the way we expected. But I came through knowing that God works everything out for the best, no matter what happens to us.