the worst week of my life, and the one that preceeded it.

Well, here we are in Winona Lake, IN (indiana), and the weather is beautiful outside today. I am so glad we are here… we finished up the majority of orientation, and all that newbie college student drab that get’s shoveled at all the transfers and freshmen…. it was not all bad, though. Refreshing, and affirmative of the drastic change of pace about to ensue.
We want to thank all of you who are helping us out with prayer… we needed it this last tough week, and i think we got it… because here we are, alive, and provided for. Thank you all so very much.
The majority of our thank you/update letters have been sent, look for yours in the mail, and let us know what you think of what we are doing, and how we are doing it…. life is about being able to do that with your friends.

So, many of you have heard, and many of you have prayed over… our week from hell. yes, this last week. our week from hell. I will tell the story here, only after i let you all know what preceeded it- i’ll lay it out for you chronoligically.

August 6th, 2006. On our first Anniversary, my Great Grandmother Jeanne Harper passed on to be with God. We mourn her loss, and pray for our Family. We were planning on leaving Wednesday, August 9, however… the plans for the funeral caused us to adjust our schedule a bit.

August 9th, 2006. 4.30pm pacific time My brother Kyle, My mom and dad, and wife all left for Chino Hills, CA From Livermore, and made it to our hotel rooms by 11.00pm.

August 10th, 2006. 11.30am, We enjoyed the company of family at my Great Grandmother’s memorial service. Click here to view the pictures of the funeral.

Proceeding the funeral, we all shared a meal together, and Evelyn and I inherited our current vehicle, in which we packed our things, and headed to Las Vegas for the evening. A lack of much to do in vegas without money confined us to our wonderful new vehicle, in which we slept that night, in the parking lot of a 24-hour Starbucks parking lot, however, we did affor ourselves $ 3.00 worth of slotmachine gambling pleasure. click here to see the wonderful pictures of that glorious event.

August 11th, 2006. We Left Vegas in search of Centerville, Utah… which we found easily enough, and 8 hours later, and proceeded to thoroughly enjoy the company of the last remaining named seed of the Jensen Clan- The Nordic Vikings of Norwalk CA. Having not seen crazy Uncle Jeff and Aunt Sandi and my amzing cousin Melissa in quite some time, we have come to the logical and certain conclusion that The Jensens are kicking major booty in the 21st Century, and living life, and loving people, and providing very stimulating caffienated conversation for those interested in such things. We greatly enjoyed seeing this family, and wil frequent Centerville Utah as often as possible because of the amazing family we know we have there. Click here to see the pictures of our disappointingly short stop in Utah.

August 12th 2006. Back on the road… through corn and flat land… Wyoming and Nebraska were earnedly reduced to 12 hours of boredom, and a gas station somewhere in Nebraska was made our lodging.

August 13th 2006. Last day of travel… all systems were operating to capacity, and We made it to the Household of a teacher and friend… Special thanks goes out to the McKays for harbouring us wanderers, and taking such amazing care of us for our week from hell.

So that beautifully conludes the week before the worst one ever.. and in fact, the worst one ever was quite a blur.

It started with finding an apartment. we tried for a couple days, and couldn’t really find anything that was small enough or cheap enough, and so we finally did locate an apartment (the second story of a house in Warsaw, IN)… which was just big enough, and so we put a deposit on it, and moved in as soon as possible. By this time it was Thursday, and we emptied our little storage bin into this new place that smelled like dead, and rotten od meat. Yes. It really smelled just like that. I would send you a plug-in of that awful stench, just to sample, but you would never forgive me for it. We figured enough bleach could kill any smell… and we tried to kill it, but it wouldn’t die. After we finally got nearly all of our earthly posessions under this roof, we had our bed left to get up the stairs, but nothing would get it up the narrow steep staircase. We called the would-be landlord for our money back, and she reluctantly acquiesced my request, and after hours of waiting, and phone calls… we decided to send our amazing pet rats (Tinkerbell, Lola, and Big Mama) to Boarding School, with some friends who could take them (Amanda and Jamie Towle) under their wing for a year. We then managed to score Seminary housing through the school (they don’t allow pets of ANY kind) and so we moved all of our things there… where hopefully they will stay for at least the duration of the year.

Whew.

So now that it’s over… we are settling in… and i am working on the next post… a video tour of our new home.

Over and out.