This morning marks the end of a fantastic week in Le Mars, Iowa.\u00a0 Melissa has already informed me that she will cry when we leave.\u00a0 Last night as I helped put the kids to bed, I noticed that Ida (age 8) was looking a bit depressed and on the verge of tears.\u00a0 “What’s the matter?” I asked.”I don’t want to leave,” he replied, fighting back tears.”Why not?”\u00a0 (I will admit: I could see it coming and I was fishing for it.)”Because #1 – school will be starting again.\u00a0 And #2 – I want to stay here.””Why do you want to stay here?”\u00a0 I fished further.”I want to stay here with Bill and Jodee.”Bill and Jodee Jackes have been so good to us this week.\u00a0 They opened their house up to the six of us and, more than that, they cooked for us, played cards with the kids,\u00a0took us to an amazing pizza buffet, helped round up possible ministry partners for us and … made us a part of their family.\u00a0 Which I am happy to claim.I will have to post more details later – including some pictures – because we have to get moving here.\u00a0 Still coming up today is breakfast at McDonald’s with Calvin and Dixie, saying goodbyes here, and then a three hour drive to Grundy Center, Iowa to see Rev. Phil and Connie Dicks.I get to preach at Phil’s church tomorrow morning before we head back to Indiana.\u00a0 Should be a great ending to our trip – I mean being with Phil and Connie, not my preaching.\u00a0 A week and a half ago, I asked some friends to pray for our trip.\u00a0 Melissa and I were both stressed out and, even though I was looking forward to seeing some old friends, neither of us had the energy to get too excited.\u00a0 Plus, Melissa had passed through Le Mars once before about 9 years ago, but didn’t really know the people or the area – she only anticipated a week where she would be meeting a bunch of folks from a part of my life predating our own relationship.\u00a0 (Maybe like going with your spouse to a week long high school reunion where you know nobody.\u00a0 Not exactly something most people would look forward to.)\u00a0 Anyway, my praying friends must have sent up some effective prayers because this week – for every single member of our family – FAR surpassed anything we could have hoped for.\u00a0 We are leaving refreshed and encouraged.\u00a0 And the best part is, we plan to be returning on a regular basis, God willing.\u00a0 Le Mars will definitely be a required stop any time we are back in the States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This morning marks the end of a fantastic week in Le Mars, Iowa.\u00a0 Melissa has already informed me that she will cry when we leave.\u00a0 Last night as I helped put the kids to bed, I noticed that Ida (age 8) was looking a bit depressed and on the verge of tears.\u00a0 “What’s the matter?” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8379"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8380,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8379\/revisions\/8380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}