ON THE ROAD AGAIN......

just can't wait to get on the road again!

One of my favorite songs and it really fits who I am right now.  I lived in KS all my life until 2006.  And since then I have lived in Utah, Missouri, Mississippi, California, Texas and Kentucky.  I just can't stay in one place for too long any more. I figured out there is a world outside of KS....and I love it!  I remember when I got engaged and my future husband & I talked about moving away from our hometowns of Pittsburg and Franklin.  How I wanted to get out of Kansas!   To see the world.  He said we would!  But it wasn't to be, at least not the way I had envisioned it.  After we were married, we moved to Frontenac!!  Argghhh!!!

Most of my travels are in my car.  I really like driving.  In 2007 I took a drive from MS to CA to UT to KS, back to MS to pick up passengers, then on to FL and back to MS.  And I've done most of it on my own. I've taken several mission trips.  Ukraine in 2004.  Christmas 2004 I spent in Mexico.  And in 2006 I was blessed to take a mission trip to Israel.  (I am ready to go back, thank you very  much!)  I went to Mississippi for six weeks one time and ended up staying for 14 months.  That was my first domestic mission trip and it ended up changing my life.  I would love to have that experience again.

Wow!  Who would have thought that this girl, who was scared to drive to the Kansas City airport by herself, would end up going to all these places and, in some cases, with people she had never met before!  When I went to Ukraine (not knowing anyone else on the trip) I was privileged to minister alongside two great people - Paige & Taffie - and I am still in touch with them.  A lifelong friendship, based on the love of Jesus Christ, was formed and I love both of them! And I laid in a pothole while there just so we could get a picture of how big they were!  And in Israel I sat in some kind of big round stone pot / planter that was in the square of the Old City.....just cuz.

A really amazing experience in Israel:  we had just landed, deciding to go the bathroom before picking up our luggage.  We didn't take that long....I promise!  But when we got to the luggage carousel, there was no luggage there but ours and it was surrounded by IDF....they wanted to know why no one had picked it up yet.  They had guns! We had to pee.....again!  When I went to Mexico (again, no one I knew was on the trip) I got to participate in handing out Christmas love packs to the poor.  I'll never forget the Precious Moments dolls that had been donated for the trip.  Or the day we were stopped by the Federales who had guns, really big guns.  We were eight hours south of the US border, in the middle of nowhere.  We had dolls.  They had guns.  The dolls won.

Do you know how fun this is?  To be free enough to go wherever you want?  There is nothing like it....absolutely nothing.  And I would highly recommend it to anyone. Are you sitting there thinking there's got to be more to life than those four walls?  There is!  There are bathrooms in Mexico that have hardly any water pressure.  There are bathrooms in Ukraine that don't have toilets in them.  (You have to ask for the toilet in order to get the toilet.)  And they have "squatty potties" in public places.  And yep, what you have pictured in your mind is just what they are!  And in Israel you can have either a small flush or a big flush....just pick the knob you need to get the job done.  I'm thinking this is something we in the US should really look at seriously.  And I'm wondering why I'm suddenly fixated on the facilities in foreign countries. 

All this to say........on the road again.  Just can't wait to get on the road again!  Which I will do on Friday morning.  Driving.  By myself.  And guess where I'm going?  Kansas!