Dear Friends,

We’re traveling through West Virginia on the way home. Hopefully we’ll make it home tonight — probably in the wee hours — unless we are too tired to keep going.

We had a wonderful stopover in Minnesota Tuesday night. We spoke at a church in South Haven, in the middle of nowhere, and had tons of people show up! It was a great lot of fun to meet the Gunn family, who have followed us for a long time and were extremely gracious hosts …

Our drive across Wisconsin the next day was incredibly gorgeous. The little farms you play with as a child looked nothing like the farms in the Carolinas,. Well, now we know what they designed them after! We saw lovely white farmhouses, big red barns with barn quilts painted on them and tall white silos. Lovely country! Wednesday night we spoke at a high school in Shawano, Wisconsin for a support group there. It felt a little weird to say the things we do in a public high school building, but we had a good turn out – some from quite a ways away – and good sales, too. We stayed with the Bergmann family and had great fellowship!

Thursday morning, we made a trip to Lambeau Field, home of the Green Bay Packers (Matt’s a fan) and ate the celebratory meal of the trip at Krolls West. We greatly enjoyed booyah (which is similar to Brunswick Stew), fried cheese curds and bratwurst. So yummy!

Thursday night we stayed with cousins, a young homeschool family, outside of Chicago and greatly enjoyed our marketing discussions (Melanie’s cousin is a marketing director at a Christian publisher). Last night we stayed with the Back family, old friends in Ohio. Today we made our last stop at United Dairy Farmer’s – a wonderful store with not only milk at $2.50 a gallon, but what they call “Seriously Chocolate” milk. It’s the best chocolate milk ever – like drinking chocolate pudding!

It was a great trip, full of ministry, fun and new sights!