Homeless in Portland

Well, it happened. Suzanne and I worked hard (she worked harder), and with the greatly appreciated help of our two sons, Steve and David (it wouldn't have happened without their help), we finished moving out of our home for the last 26 years and left Colbert for Portland. We're now staying with Suzanne's parents in Tigard, a suburb of Portland. We're due to leave for Asia in less than a week.

There is still a myriad of things that need to be done. Everyday a new item appears, or on old one that had been forgotten comes to mind. We've been working on banking issues and rediscovered the old adage, "If it can go wrong, it will." We've been blessed to have a very helpful contact at the bank in Greenwood assist us through the process of getting things squared away. We've just received a form that needs to be filled out by our doctors. We have to get them back to Spokane to be returned to the main office. That won't happen before we're supposed to leave.

On to fun stuff! Sunday morning we attended church at Trinity Evangelical with Suzanne's parents. (Many years ago, during the summer break between my junior and senior year of college, Suzanne convinced her father to hire me as a "gofer" during the construction of the church.) What a suprise when we discovered the Werner and Debbie Seibert were there! The Seiberts are moving to Colbert next week to take the reins as pastor. Trinity's pastor did a good job of sensing that God had something in mind for the service. Attending that day were Trinity's former pastor, present pastor, Colbert's former pastor and new pastor. The way various components of the serivce fell into place, or related to other things that occurred, gave a clear impression that God was communicating to us and that this wasn't a chance encounter. For my own part, there were two passages of scripture that connected. The first was Isaiah 55 that Suzanne and I had looked at that morning. The second was from Matthew 19 and the "Rich Young Man." One point was that he had "great wealth." Other readings use "many possessions." That is something that we found as we were moving out of the parsonage. We had "many possessions," or one could say, a lot of stuff. The second point was that we are leaving the things that Jesus was talking about.

We've known for several months now that God has a plan for us, and we're discovering that he's continuing to confirm his direction to us. It is an amazing thing that the God of the universe would take notice of us. What an honor to be part of his plan.

We're waiting for the return of our passports. They were submitted to the embassy for visas for this trip. We'll need to receive them in order to board he plane for Asia. We were told that we're scheduled to receive them Friday. That's cutting it close, but we're confident that Father knows all about it and has it under control.