Medford
At long last, I’m here in Medford, Oregon, where I will be planting a church under the supervision of Reformation Covenant Church in Oregon City.
Ever since I accepted this call, Moriah and I have been packing (and Aletheia has been trying to unpack!), but if you’ve ever packed up a house, you know that it always seems to take longer than you thought it would. Last Tuesday, we stayed up until 5:00 AM and got the job almost finished. On Wednesday morning, we got up at 7:00 and I took Moriah and Aletheia to the airport. They spent the day on the plane or in various airports, finally arriving here in Medford in the evening.
Meanwhile, I stayed in Grande Prairie. The movers arrived around 8:00 and began an inventory prior to loading the truck. My guess is that the loading itself started around 9:00. I had the cats in a kennel and took them down to Air Canada’s live animal cargo, where they flew out of Grande Prairie around 12:30. They stayed in Vancouver overnight and then travelled to Portland, where Moriah picked them up.
The movers finished loading the truck around 6:00 PM on Wednesday. I had supper with our neighbour across the street, where I was staying that night, and then went back to the house and cleaned it from top to bottom, which took me until 12:50 in the morning.
I left Grande Prairie Thursday, just after noon, and drove to Kamloops, BC, where I spent the night. Along the way, I spotted deer three times, passed a herd of mountain goats, and saw three large herds of elk. I also noted with some puzzlement that there’s a town near Jasper called Pocahontas, even though the historical Pocahontas lived nowhere near Alberta. (Interestingly enough, shortly before I passed that town, I had been listening to Neil Young’s song “Pocahontas.” Life is full of these little coincidences!)
On Thursday night, I stayed at the Riverland Hotel and had a wonderful supper of cashew pecan chicken with rice and vegetables at Storm’s Restaurant, next door to the hotel. Thanks to the chef who kept his kitchen open for me, even though I arrived late.
I crossed the border on Friday afternoon and had the easiest and smoothest crossing of my life. In Bellingham, I met Chip Lind and had a good visit with him before leaving for Medford on Saturday morning. Well, I would have left in the morning except that the weld on the bridge of my glasses broke. The optometrist couldn’t weld the bridge and so I had to get a new set of frames and have him trim the lenses to fit.
After an uneventful day of driving through Seattle and Portland, past Salem, and on to the south, I arrived at about 9:30 in the evening at my in-laws’ place near Medford. We’ll be staying with them for a little while until the renovations on our house are complete.
The Lord blessed all of us with safe trips and we’re glad to be here. Now we’re looking for a building in which the church can meet.