Patty and I understand something of what Paul the Missionary meant when he said he had "no certain dwelling place." We are currently homeless, staying in a Ramada Inn in Murfreesboro, TN. Our furlough replacement missionaries just returned from the field a few weeks early so they did not have to pay an outrageous price for plane tickets, since August is vacation time in Japan. But I have to admit, this Ramada Inn is much more luxurious than anything Paul ever stayed in, though it is a little run down.
Next week will be better, since we will be enjoying Family Week at the Bill Rice Ranch, thanks to the kind invitation of my Mother's cousin, Bill Rice III. This will be the first time in many years we've stayed a whole Week at the Ranch, though we stop in every furlough to visit the Memorial Garden where many relatives, including my parents and grandparents, are buried. I grew up going to the BRR. It will be interesting to see how it has changed.
So I probably won't be posting for a week. In the meantime, I've been wanting to share our plague story with you.
We have some wonderful friends in Illinois. Deb is a nurse practitioner, Patty's dear friend who visits her in Japan every year. Her husband Randy is a state's attorney (DA), and a very interesting guy to be around. Earlier in the year we visited them and unfortunately, all four of us had a vicious 24 hour flu bug, one right after the other. I won't share the gross details, but you can imagine.
Well, recently we visited them again for the express purpose of going to a Cubs game together. Randy's a Cubs fan and I love baseball, so we drove down into Chicago where we had a fun time at Wrigley. That's a great stadium, let me tell you! We had wonderful seats, and Randy was particularly happy since the Cubs won, and he got to see that "W" for "win" flag go up. To add to the fun, someone committed a murder in his town, so he had to be on the phone a few times directing the investigation. Afterwards we ate at a great Italian restaurant, then went home happy.
The next morning we got to take a ride in Randy's Model A, of which he is only the second owner, having bought it when he was just a teen from an old German man. Randy has several more pre-WW2 cars he's rebuilding, so it's always fun to see what he's done lately.
Later that day, we had just set out to drive to our next furlough meeting when Patty hollered, "John, look at our windshield!" Something had cracked it badly! Furthermore, there were dents all over the car! We correctly surmised that there had been a hail storm, which was later confirmed by our insurance people. (I highly recommend State Farm.) The hailstones were actually baseball sized!
So here we are at the end of our furlough, having to get the car repaired from a plague. Hmm. Maybe we should avoid Randy and Deb's house. Seems like we get hit by a plague every time we go there! Well, Deb is planning a trip to Japan next Feb., so we'll try to avoid Japanese plagues for her sake.
raying: