On the Road to Warm Sunshine!

What fun it is to return to our blog. Many of you have asked if we’d be posting again, so here we go!

Having relished Christmas with all four of our kids and their beloveds, we put away all our decorations on the 25th of December, then prepared our home for renters on the 26th. We embarked on the morning of the 27th for our trip to the southeast, grateful beyond measure for Skip’s restoration after his journey with cancer this fall.

We left Minnesota on dry roads and experienced fair weather through most of the 1600 miles of our journey. After the first five days on the road, we crossed the Florida state line on New Years Day. What a great start to 2024! We began meandering along the panhandle coast on our way to our first SOWER project in Tampa. Seeing the Gulf just outside our truck windows melted away the road weariness. Thankfully, our trip was rather uneventful.

We moved from campground to campground each night as well as experiencing a couple of Harvest Hosts. One very modest campground in Perry, Florida, provided a bit of humor. A cow from a neighboring ranch made her escape and sauntered into our campground. While eating breakfast, I looked out to see her grazing just outside our camper. Skip helped the campground owner to wrangle the cow back to her home.

Then, when I went for a morning walk around the campground, the free range chickens decided to accompany me, likely believing I had some chicken feed to share. When I made my second loop, none followed. They’d realized I had no food to offer.

Our first SOWER project is on the northwest side of Tampa. Hope Children’s Home has a beautiful mission of rescuing children from situations of abuse, neglect, or family crisis. The children live in homes with house parents and other kids as siblings, and attend the Hope school here on the campus of 50 acres. Children’s ages range from months old to late teens. Helping children to grow in faith is central to this ministry. We’re looking forward to learning more about this marvelous mission as we serve here for the next three weeks with five other SOWER couples.

Blog posts will be few for January through late March while we focus on serving with SOWERs. We’ll begin our adventure travels at the end of March, roaming through the Carolinas, Virginia and Tennessee on our way back to Minnesota by mid-May. We’ll have lots more to share and many beautiful pictures to post during those weeks. Hope you’ll come along for the ride!