This was Parents’ Weekend here at Teen Challenge, and all but 5 of the 30 or so 2nd platoon (they are the ones that have been in the program the longest) had parents come. Although ALL of the boys that didn’t have parent visits were pretty sad, these 5 seemed especially pitiful (:-) ), so Gary and I took them on a little road trip to Dothan. Whooeee!!! After about the 3rd stop (yes, we were running errands!), we had pity on them and took them to the movies. Now since we are mostly out of the loop on what would be a good movie to see (let alone what official guidelines there might be from TC), we decided to play it safe and saw College Road Trip – rated G. Okay, so there weren’t alot of teenage boys in the theatre, but it actually was a pretty funny movie (in a classic Disney sort of way), and there was obviously noth objectionable about it. It’s funny how when you are incharge of 5 boys who come from very different (and often very dysfunctional) families, you suddenly listen to all of the jokes and dialogue through different filters. Of course it had a happy Disney ending – Dad came around to understand Child, and Child came around to understand Dad. Oh, if life could just be that simple (and wrapped up so tidy) for these boys!

After the movies we headed off to CiCi’s – an all you can eat PIZZA BUFFET! Can’t beat that plan!
Here’s the whole gang of them – pretty good looking crew, eh?

We saved our last errand – Sam’s Club – for the final stop of the day. They had a good time checking out all the TV’s, computers and other electronics – and even managed to find the one food sample table (after all that pizza! GAH!). And we had a good time picking up over $200. worth of breakfast bars, oatmeal, jumbo-sized spices and various odds and ends for the kitchen. We had the boys back to the barracks only an hour after curfew (oops!), but nobody got into trouble! It was a fun day, and a good chance to get to know these young men on a different level.

The kitchen adventure continues – the assistant kitchen manager just had to quit due to continued severe allergic reactions to (of all things) potatoes and celery! That leaves Miss Betty (kitchen manager extraordinaire) and……..the Conrads? Fortunately we are blessed with wonderfully talented SOWER ladies who have stepped up to the plate with willing hands. This weekend is another Parents’ Visitation Weekend, so I guess we’ll all be stepping up to that plate (and hopefully there will be food on it! ).

Otherwise, though, we’ve had a good week. Yesterday we did a quick trip into Dothan for a doctor’s visit for Gary. Just a routine check-up, and pending any unforeseen blood test results, all is well. The whole (consistant) healthcare issue is a little tricky in our life on the road, but we have been blessed with being able to find good doctors when we need them, and generally not needing them too often. Since we’ll be here for a couple of months yet, I’ll probably take care of some annual girl stuff too!

But enough about our blah, blah, blah routine. Here are some fun things that are on our horizon…..
March 22 - I leave for 5 days in California with Lara!!!! Gary is staying behind, and I’m really looking forward to a good visit with The Daughter. We had originally hoped that all the girls could come (Abigail and Tammy (and Maddie) ), but that didn’t work out. So it’s just me. I hope Lara isn’t too terrified!

April and May - right now it looks like we’ll be staying put here in Bonifay. Gary expects the equipment to be here sometime in the next week or so, so he’ll be BUSY, BUSY, BUSY. And I imagine that boys will still need to be fed!

June - Gary is doing a Carpenter’s for Christ project in Memphis Tennessee from June 4-14. A group of about 150 men come together and construct a church in that amount of time. He’s never done anything like this before, and he’s really looking forward to it. While he’s in Memphis, I’ll be flying to PA – for some home time with friends and family. (Anybody have a spare car they’d like to loan me for a week or so?). We’ll probably be leaving the RV here at Teen Challenge since they supply housing with the Memphis project, and then when that’s complete, Gary will drive up and join me in Doylestown. From there we hope to jaunt up to VT for a couple of days, and then we’ll head out to Marysville, OH for some time with T&T and the girls. This will be our first month “off” since August 2006, so it will be fun to get to see folks (and mooch off of said friends and family!).

We’ll head back to Bonifay by July 1 – and if Gary feels that his HVAC work here is at a good stopping place, we’ll pack up and head west. We were thinking about maybe heading out to Colorado for a July project, but according to our calculations it’s about 1500 miles – and would cost close to $800. in gas. Yikes! (And that’s today – when diesel is ONLY 3.69/gal.. Who knows what it will be by then!). So, we may have to take it in smaller steps, but Lord willing, we will be heading west of the Mississippi by middle/end of the summer, be somewhere in the Southwest for the winter, and then in the Northwest by spring. I know, I know, you’ve heard it before. Like I said, Lord willing……… We are still hopeful to be driving to Alaska in May 2009. All contributions welcome!

But for right now, we are content to be here at Teen Challenge. We have seen God move mightily in the lives of these young men, and are privileged to serve Christ at this place. How very blessed we are!

Have a good weekend, ya’ll! We’re fixin’ to have one here!