Trip to Florida

We took a trip to Florida in December. If you are wondering why we seem to go to Florida so much lately, here's the story. We went on an official family vacation in August of 2007 -- the first time since before we had children. We visited a congregation in the Destin area near where we were staying, got to know some of the people, and they invited us to come back for a week meeting. It was April 2008 when we went down for that. Then John was asked to be involved with a project they are working on for evangelism, and for that there have been two trips so far -- a brief stint for which John flew in July I think it was, and the December trip. They are thinking that the rest of the project can be finished without another trip but we do hope we can go back sometime anyway to visit b/c we enjoy the people there. Oh, and the weather and the Gulf Coast are a definite plus too. I don't know how much I should say about the project -- don't think there are any secrets really, but it's not my project, so if you want to know more about it you can ask John, or someone from the congregation.

I think I managed to make the trip we took in April look like a vacation, so this time I'm actually going to post something about the congregation first. I've meant to post something about them before.

This is most of the congregation of the group at South Walton. The man in the very back (Marc) is standing on the fireplace, so he's not really as tall as he looks. The man on the very left, however (Ivan), is about 6'8". He's actually from Pensacola but was visiting on this occasion, and is related to some of the members.


Here's a more casual shot. That's Pat waving. He and his wife, Heather, have five children.


Peter looks like he could just fit right in with these other blondes, doesn't he? They are David and Heather C (Yes, there are two Heathers). They have two little girls, around the ages of our youngest two.

Bethany with Kaylynn and Tirzah (I'm not sure what that face T is making is about).
Tirzah w/two of her friends -- Maggie and Ellie. Tirzah now will talk about "Maggie an' Dosie an' Betnee an' Peter an' Zinon an' Butter an'..." and then she'll add, "I member dat" ("I remember that"), I guess b/c I asked her the first time if she remembered playing with Maggie and Josie when she mentioned them. Too cute.

Okay, I think most of the rest of my pictures from this trip look like vacation again, so I'll save them for another post. I'll leave you with a couple pictures of the building which we took on our first visit (with our video camera, so they aren't as good quality).