Stauffer Camping - part two; Goodbye, Miki and Ingo

I ran out of time the other morning to post the rest of my pictures from our Stauffer camping weekend.  So here we go.  

One cool thing that happened on Saturday was when our niece Krista brought someone to the campsite to see Dick and me.  Barbara (Lechner) Weaver was a teenager when her family came to Grace Community Fellowship in the late 80's/early 90's.  Our families spent a lot of fun times together, and we were on the worship team together, thus a deep bond was created.  We have not seen them for YEARS!!  Now Barbara's husband is a pastor at our niece Krista's church.  She's also mom to SIX children!  We had the greatest time catching up.

As always, eating all together at the big, long table is a tradition, no matter how much extra work it takes.  On the morning of my breakfast, I suggested that the children eat first, since making and keeping warm so many pancakes is quite a challenge.   But I discovered that the parents preferred eating all together, rather than needing to keep track of where their kids were while they themselves ate.  Makes sense!  The tarp was up, but we had no rain the entire weekend!

On Sunday morning we had worship around the fire.  We sang a few with guitar, but I always enjoy when we do what we do best - four part a cappella.  I wish I had a video of our rendition of Great God of Wonders with its rolling bass line.  But this one, made by Anthony standing on a chair, is good too.  The ever inspiring It Is Well with My Soul.  

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How many Stauffers does it take to collapse a tent???

Years ago we used to hang around all of Sunday afternoon, going to the pool, taking our good old time cleaning up.  Then one year we found out, when a bunch of cars pulled up and the occupants sat  watching us and waiting for us to clear out, that we actually were supposed to be out of there by 2:00.  So that always crimps our style.   It takes so long to clean up, but there's always a lot of help.  

So after everything is cleaned up and all the picnic tables are carried back to their respective sites, we stand around for some last conversations.  

This year there was an important goodbye to be made.  

Miki's son Bjorn was leaving camp with Ray, who was taking him to his lifting session with the Manheim Central football team that evening.  Miki and Ingo were coming to State College, because that's where they would be catching the Megabus to NYC the next day.  There were tears all around.   

We all totally enjoyed having Bjorn with us for the weekend.  He is a really cool guy!!  A great sense of humor, in a dry kind of way.  He also holds very intelligent conversations.  I love listening to him and especially his accent.   I think Ray was eager to be the one to take him to his lifting session, since Ray also played football for Manheim Central.  Later that evening Ray texted me, "I think he made himself some friends."   We're very excited to see what this football season holds for him.  I see a lot of Friday evening trips to Lancaster County in our near future!

When we arrived home my very first lily was there to greet me!

We cleaned out the car and truck, put the necessary things away, then we needed naps.  All but Ingo, the cleaning guy.  While we were napping he was giving the interior of my car a thorough vacuuming!

In the evening we met up with Anthony, Lori, and Austin at Sweet Frog for our "last supper."  

After we left there we stopped at Walmart.  Ingo has discovered his soulmate here in the United States - Duck Dynasty, hahahaha!!  He bought almost every Duck Dynasty tee shirt in his size!  Could there be a more perfect model for these shirts???  

Monday was leaving day for Miki and Ingo.  Another eventful trip by Megabus and taxi to JFK.  Again, the taxi part of it was a last-ditch effort to make it on time, through no fault of their own.

We got to the Walmart parking lot LONG ahead of the scheduled leaving time of 1:30.  We wanted to make sure they could be first in line to get good seats.  1:30 came and went.  A New York-bound Megabus did pull in shortly after 1:30, but alas, it was not the one they had reservations for!  Someone else called customer service and found out that the bus had had a breakdown, but was on the way with an expected arrival time of 2:26.  

When it finally arrived the poor driver could hardly fit everyone's luggage into the already-full compartment.   He was a frustrated man.  With a lot of pushing and shoving, he did get everything in, and was yelling to everyone to get in the bus.  So we said our last goodbyes.

As I was trying to see where they were sitting (found them) and we were waving at each other, the bus door opened.  A very confused-looking woman unboarded.  Had she been sleeping and unaware that she was at her destination?  Who knows?  The driver got out and talked with her, then of all things, had to find her bags under all that luggage he had just stuffed into the compartment!!!  There is a stronger word than frustrated that I will not write here to describe how he felt by that time!  Bless his heart!  He kept moving things and asking her to look if she recognized her bags.  Finally she did, he got them out, talked with her some more, and then they were on their way at last.  Whew!!

As I thought about their flight's 9:30 departure time and the amount of time it would take for them to get there even on time, less yet early, like you need to do to get through security, I had great misgivings.  I was not at all surprised when I got her text message at 9:00, "At JFK. Taxi!!"  I texted back, "Just get on that plane so I can start breathing again."  After a while she texted that their flight was delayed until 11:00.  So it was a hurry up and wait situation!

Tuesday morning when I woke up I saw that I had gotten a text at midnight that they had boarded and would soon take off.  Shortly after 8 am there was another text that they had landed in Stockholm, with another short flight yet to Umea where they live.  Around 11 am I got the text that they were home.  Ahhh.  

And my busy, crazy, fun June is over.  I made it!!  I thought I could, I thought I could, I thought I could…..

I've been working like crazy to catch up with EVERYTHING this week.  Dick is having his last of four treatments yesterday and today.  Please pray for him.  Each treatment is causing him increasingly more fatigue.  And he has a dry cough that is most likely a side effect of the one chemo drug.  We PRAY that these treatments are having the desired effect on the lymphoma and that he can then recover from the side effects.  

There's more fun coming up this weekend.  So stay tuned!