Back Home Now...

After being away from home for about a month, it was great to pull into our driveway last monday afternoon. On the drive back we took the opportunity to see some of the US Southwests coolest sights. The first day was the Petrified Forest. This place was the biggest hit by far as we roamed around some desert badlands, not unlike Drumheller, AB but on a HUGE Scale, looking at logs that, for the most part, looked like regular logs, but were actually Petrified pieces of Rock in an area with virtually no standing trees for miles and miles around!

Shar and Elijjah beside a huge petrified log... the other two boys ran ahead as our "recon" team to let us know where the coolest logs were!

Shar and the boys in front of the "panited desert" an area with incredible colours in the Drumheller-like land formations...

This was one of the petrogliphs from a Hopi Indian site that dates back to 1200-1450AD. They had excavated lots of part-buildings as well around these rocks.

The boys in a forest of petrified wood...

The boys and I on a petrified log....

The boys getting sworn in for the first time as official "Junior Rangers" of the US Parks system. After promising to do whatever they can to take care of parks wherever they are in the US, one of the boys pops up "and in Canada too" and another "in Mexico too, because we live there". The Park Ranger agreed and so our boys may be the first to be junior park rangers sworn in to protect parks in the entire continent of North America. They seem to be handling the pressure well. And, they got cool little badges to boot. One of which was made by the same company that makes missiles and Rockets. A fact that easily impressed my boys...

The next day we hit the Grand canyon as it was basically on our way. Shar and I went there for an hour or so when we drove down to Chihuahua with our church and were amazed at it's vastness. The second time was still pretty cool and the boys liked it too, but after 3 hours of touring, it was time to go to the motel for a swim!

This is the Desert Outlook Tower in the far Eastern Part of the Grand Canyon. The tower itself was impressive and the high view of the canyon was pretty cool too.

This is the grand Canyon.... pretty Grand, eh?

The second last day we went to a ghost town outside of Barstow CA and while it wasn't what we'd expected (we were expecting more informative, less touristy) it was pretty interesting and we got to have sasparilla soda and the boys panned for "gold".
Calico Ghost town... the last person to live here left in 1967 and Knott's Berry Farm bought the land and turned it into a tourist trap type place...

They had gunfighters there putting on a show- Here's Caleb and Jacob getting their pic taken with them.

Here are the boys panning for gold... they were happy with the days haul...

Here we are having some genuine sarsparilla root beer, just like the old west guys drank...

Shar told the boys that this is the only time we're helping them get out of jail... if they ever find themselves in this kinda trouble again, they are on their own...

When we got back we went right to our favourite taco stand and found Rick and Collete there too (the folks who were watching our house)!! They were on the way to one last day at the beach and looked pretty sad to be going home the next day. It was a blessing to have them here! Our house was in great shape when we got back- even a little better than when we left it!! What a contrast from the last time we left for an extended trip!! THANKS BROWNINGS!!!

Now that we're back, we're back into the swing of things, getting ready to get going full steam ahead in the coming days! I'll be starting classes with the pastors up pretty soon- this next session is on teaching and preaching and the ministry of pastoring. We're hoping to have them all out to our house sometime soon for a BBQ and beach day.

Thanks for praying for us!! It was a fruitful and profitable time for language training and we hope to see the benefits of it grow even more in the coming days and weeks! Praise God for His provision of our needs for this time!

God bless!!