1 down...6 to go

Although I had the best intentions of getting this written yesterday....as soon as I laid my head on the pillow last night, I was out cold - so I got up early to give the latest update!

Wow, we are already (what seems like) a long way from home in many ways.  We said all of our good byes to family and church friends on Sunday...it was so hard for us to see our parents and siblings drive away and for the first time in either one of our lives, not know when the next time we would see them was going to be.  I think that God was merciful to us in the fact that we still had packing and cleaning to do so we could not dwell on these difficult good byes.  Bright and early Monday morning we loaded up our mattress, suitcases of clothes for the week, and lastly our car.  Standing in the driveway looking back towards our empty house and forward to the 16' moving truck (that was not even full!!) with all of our earthly possessions pulling our one little car....kinda scary!  But as we were driving I told Colby that I thought it was sort of freeing knowing that we can still fit all our "stuff" in a small moving truck.

So, we headed out...Colby was really freaked out about driving the truck (again that contained everything we own!) but after a few minutes he got used to it and did awesome!  He still has not gotten the courage to face me  driving it!  Although today I am going to try it out (eeek!).  Bumping through all of the bridges and crappy roads in Alabama and Mississippi, we had a really great time laughing and acting crazy to the songs on the radio and (thanks to the Garmin!) avoided any arguments or disagreements!  Looking over from the passenger seat, I was amazed at how far God has brought us in the last four years.  Four years ago this week, Colby and I had just returned from our first trip to Africa and went to Olive Garden on our first "real date" (other than dish washing at camp in Swaziland!).  Now here we are driving across the country together to continue seeking the Lord: His ways are truly higher than our own!

We finally arrived in at our hotel in Memphis....it was super nice (thanks to the help that Darren gave us in finding and reserving it!).  We threw our stuff down and set out to find a good place to get some of Memphis' famous bbq and ribs.  We ended up at the Germantown Comissary...a local whole in the wall place that was jam packed....and delicious!  We are trying to take advantage of places that serve sweet tea while they still exist....so of course we had a glass, and topped it off with some homemade banana pudding (or bp as Colby likes to call it)!  Came home, went for a swim in the pool...and by this point we were pretty much dead!  

Colby is packing up the last of our stuff so that we can get an early start to Oklahoma City today...it is a longer drive than Memphis was, so I've gotta get going.  Today, I hope to download the pics we've taken so far and write another update.  Love you all and can feel the prayers keeping us brave and strong!

Grace and peace from the Father,

Ellen (and Colby)