Sunday Morning (before church service) Update!

Hello everyone!  The first two days of our trip were long but good (long because we were all tired going in).  On the first day, we headed out at 7:00 am and drove to Tucumcari, New Mexico, where we slept at a local church.  The drive was good--we had good conversations and a fair bit of sleep; we stopped in Dalhart, Texas, to eat at Hoadies (a local barbecue joint--it's a tradition), but we discovered that it was closed for the 4th of July!  After some discussion, we tried Dairy Queen and got a kick out of the fact that Texas Dairy Queen has some very different foods--including tacos and Jalitos (delicous little fried jalapenos).  After eating, we made Tucumcari at about 4pm to meet the custodian, who let us into the church.  We spent some time exploring the local town--including visiting a Route 66 sign and gift shop (sign photo below)--and then we ate and sat down to prepare materials for our lessons in Mexico.  Unfortunately, we had some stomach upset among those on the trip (and all of us were extremely tired), so we purchased some stomach medicine to try and help one member out, and we all agreed that we'd be better off to sleep and do final preparation in the car the next morning.

The next morning we ate and drove to Santa Rosa, where we fueled up (and experienced some humor--feel free to ask us about it), and then we drove all the way to El Paso with just one stop.  Thankfully, everyone was feeling better, and the drive went pretty smoothly.  For the first few hours of the car trip, we fleshed out the lessons that we will eventually teach the kids and finished putting together our purchase list for El Paso.  We also had some good discussion about life, faith, and old memories from past trips.  Outside of Alamogordo, we stopped in at Pistachio Land (another tradition) and bought some items to munch on for the return trip.  We took a photo at the giant Pistachio, and we had the humor value of a little girl joining us for one of our photos, because she wanted to take photos with everyone near the pistachio! ;) (photos below).

After that stop, we pulled into a local coffee shop in El Paso that had Internet so that we could make sure we hadn't received any additional purchase requests from Emmanuel Ministries via email or facebook, and then we hit Wal-Mart to purchase some of the last materials that we'd need for our lessons (many of which wouldn't have fit easily into our vehicle for the long car trip we had out of Hays).  After that, we met at Wendy's house (she does the books for the home) and left my personal car there.  We finally crossed the border and arrived at Emanuel Ministries (short video of that below--longer one to follow)!

Once we arrived, we had a delicious supper and met with Becky to discuss what all we had planned for the week.  We also met (and re-met) many of the Lopez family and others who work at the home.  It was a very pleasant evening, and it ended with us all sleeping VERY hard!

Now, this morning, we are chilling and preparing for the day (several of them just tested out beauty products that they will be using for the 'spa day' this afternoon with the girls and workers of the home), and we are also preparing for church service, which begins here at noon.  Do please keep us in your prayers, and thanks for joining us here to check out more about our trip as it progresses!