Postscript

Today we saw the Washington Monument, the Pentagon and the Manhattan skyline from the road. It was so cool to see all of that in one day.

But, overall, today was rough. We started this morning more than half way to Rhode Island. We expected our drive to be about 11 hours. Instead it was more than 14! We started in North Carolina this morning, but from Richmond, Virginia to New London, Connecticut it was non-stop TRAFFIC! This part of I-95 is not fun. When we got to Philly we were completely stopped, so we looked at the map and decided to cross the river to get on the New Jersey Turnpike for a while. But, our delay in Philly meant that we were scheduled to arrive in NYC at around rush hour. We wanted to see the city, so we decided to go and ahead and drive through. Traffic was bad, and continued to be bad for a long time!

The roads were a little rougher all day today, so our poor truck was bouncing high every time we hit a bump. It felt like it was going to fall apart. We just gritted our teeth every time we hit a bump and prayed that the back end wouldn’t fall off!! We did make it, and we were able to unloaded our truck.

Tomorrow we leave for Indiana.

We left our house in Orlando by noon, but we had so many errands to run, it took us a couple of hours before we were able to actually get on the road. It’s strange to think that we may not ever go back to our house. I miss it already…

We stopped by our church in Orlando (Centerpointe Community Church) on the way out of town to drop off some things, and the staff prayed for us. That was a great send off, and we really appreciated their prayers for us.

We drove up I-95 and we’ll be on probably almost the entire way. Tonight we’re staying just south of the Virginia boarder. It’s been a nice ride today. Our truck is so loaded! The back end is hanging low. Only one more day of this, and we can unload our poor truck.

Tomorrow we travel the rest of the way to my parent’s house in Rhode Island.

Then Samuel took a stone and set it between Mizpah and Shen, and named it Ebenezer, saying, “Thus far the LORD has helped us.” I Samuel 7:12, NIV

We finished. We completed ICC, and we’ll be going home. This morning we took time to remember our experiences, remember what God had taught us, and look towards what God will be doing in our lives. We each brought a rock with us as a symbol of our experience, and presented it during our last meeting together. We also received a certificate for passing the course and a booked called Cross-Cultural Servanthood.

We’ve learned so much, but our journey is really only just beginning. We’ll miss everyone we’ve met, and we’ll miss North Carolina.

Jeff discovered an awesome place to go white water rafting not far from Waxhaw. The Charlotte area is home to the US National White Water Center. This is where the US Olympic white water rafting team practices, and it’s open to the public as well.

A group of us went and enjoyed time on levels 3, 4, 5 and 6 rapids. They have two courses, and we started going through forward. Then, our guide thought we should try it backwards. WOW! It was crazy and FUN!

See Aileen’s entry for more.

One of our assignments while we’ve been here was to complete a 3-hour personal retreat. Jeff already completed his retreat. I still had to do mine. Aileen invited me to do it today with her out at Crowder’s Mountain State Park about 45 minutes away from Waxhaw.

We climbed about half-way and stopped for a long break with our Bibles, retreat plans and notebooks. It was peaceful and relaxing at that point on the trail. After a couple of hours, we packed up to climb to the top of the mountain. It seemed like it would be easy; we were already about half-way there. But, there was more to go than we thought. We took so many breaks along the way, being passed by men, women and even children! Rather than being humiliated, I just laughed. It was getting quite comical to see how many people were passing by us on our frequent breaks. We kept going up little by little, and we finally made it to the top!

Read Aileen’s entry on our day.