San Antonio Recap...

I love MY bed!!!!!! There is really no place like home!! Let's see....our trip went well over all. We have set a precedence for traveling though......somebody has to throw up, we were a few hours down the road and Mercy was the one! She had eaten two granola bars, so I do not know if that was too much or if it was related to car sickness. I was really wondering if we were in for it the whole way but after the little incident all smoothed out. About an hour away from San Antonio, the van started doing some unusual things, we pulled off and they looked at it and Terry thinks it could have been bad gas. We were praying we could at least get there and thankfully we did. The hotel we stayed in was very nice, three blocks away from the convention center, so we walked everywhere we went. Thursday and Friday was really nice weather but Saturday was very chilly, but we bundled up and walked very fast!! Starting on Friday we watched movies about non stop. Terry and I had Joshua, Jeremiah, Hosanna, Josiah and Mercy and all the others were together and Danielle and watched movies they wanted to. We watched many that the younger ones would like to try to keep them occupied. The feature films (the 2 hour ones) were better than the short films to me, but Jeremiah and the little ones would say the Lego movies and Sugar the dog was the best!! The feature films we saw were, Dad, the Hero, of the Wild West, this is one I would safely recommend, its funny and has a message of a dad being the hero to his family; The Secrets of Johnathan Sperry, this one was ok, the main character is a boy about 12, and he is interested in dating a young girl at a diner, it is set in the 70's, but it also has a message of discipling as an older widower takes him under his wing, another one was The Sound of a Dirt Road, this movie was two hours and we think it could have been reduced to an hour, they stayed on one shot for so long, my opinion was, this is boring, another one was The Widows Mite, this one won the $101,000, it was very good and would be one we would purchase, there is one song close to the front of the movie where the young lady is singing as the children are making a movie in the movie that we did not care for, we also went in on some of the Pendragon and it really was nice to see it on the big screen and the music sounded so good, (a little bias there) Pendragon did not win anything and all were very disappointed but Lord willing all those that labored so hard will not give up but press forward. Now some of the short films we saw were, Noah's Ark, Our Creation Cosmos, A Viking Worth Liking(Lego one) The Terri Schiavo Story, Bread Alone, Collection of Fortunate Happenings, Animals in the Bible, Sugar the Dog, Signals of Grace. That's about it for Terry and I, the older children saw some different ones than us, so I do not know about all those. It was also neat to meet a few folks that came up and introduced themselves to us as they had seen Joel's Journey and have followed our blog here or we have conversed through e-mail. I was blessed to know that others remember Joel. I know no other person in our family heard this but right after we walked in the convention center we walked over to the registration tables and got the passes and were handing them out to the children, I was standing there and I heard this lady call out to her son, he was 12- 14 yrs old I think, she said "Joel," and was asking her family if they could see him, like where was he, as he must have gotten separated from them. It just startled me and to hear his name brought a happiness and a sadness, it made me aware that he was missing and it brought a joy that I even had him. Many people always ask "how many children do you have?" I always answer with 13, yet it brings a sharp pain, that one is missing, Joel is with us in a sense wherever we go but his little body is missed so much!! So the days were spent watching movies, we carried sandwiches for lunch and the evening meal we grabbed something at the River walk area. It was late nights for the older children, Terry and I and the younger ones headed in earlier than they did. One night Micah and Jeremiah went swimming in the outdoor pool that was on top and outside of the 23 story hotel we stayed in. They had glass walls around the top but it was toooo scarry for me. Another night they swam in the indoor pool and that was more my height!! All in all the trip was good and the Lord brought us safely home.

Today we are getting things back in order, doing a lot of laundry, and we have to take Danielle back to the airport this afternoon. The guys are hitting it hard at work with the second phase on the house they framed up. I have some grocery shopping to do this week, so this week I might not get back in to the full swing of school work.

Just thinking about too, what we were doing this time two years ago, he did not not have long to live....I read a scripture this morning that Jesus told the impotent man by the pool of Bethesda, to "Rise, take up thy bed and walk", I guess that's what I am seeking to do in the midst of the memories, keep moving forward, walking on, not away from Joel, but to him and to Jesus!

Not much else, just trying to get re-organized around here. I know many of us are waiting to hear an up date from the Lockwood family, for sure keep them in your prayers and hope soon they can get on a computer and let us know how they are doing.

Cindy