Virginia

We have arrived in Virginia.

The trip was fairly uneventful. Well except for the stop at the chocolate factory that we found:) It was chocolate and it was on sale... need I say more!?!

Anyways, we are here in our long stay apartment, which is great. We have a kitchen and lots of room for the girls to get out their toys and play.

So we wait... hopefully the wait will only be about 2 weeks. We heard today that over 90 people got sick... we're glad to have missed that bug! And we will wait as long as it takes for them to get the center cleaned good:)

If we can figure out a good car rental situation we are going to take some day trips and make some fun visits to friends and family.

While we were sitting in the car for 2 days I thought of several great post to tell my friends how much I love them and miss them so much already! Now all my tired brain can think of is... Friends... I love you and miss you!

Oh, and Tirzy girl decided to finish off potty training on the trip, hooorrrayyyy!!!

That's right, no accidents the whole way here, NONE!

I'm off to eat some chocolate, yummy:)

Crazy Days!

Okay, I am way behind on all that has happened this week...
So for now I'll quickly update you and do pictures and full stories later:)
Thursday- awesome dinner with the Smiths (provided by Nanny and Pops)
Friday- Not quite a Surprise Goodbye party with our precious friends!!! (Lots of pics from this wonderful night to follow, someday)
Saturday- Found out that the orientation that we are supose to start on Monday is postponed due to a massive viral outbreak... so the whole evening was spent rethinking the next two weeks and making new plans.
Sunday- An amazing last service at Northbrook- they let us share, surprised us by having Kara and David skype in from India, a special prayer time for us as they send us out. This was very emotional for me... we have a wonderful church family. They have loved us and supported us, been an incredible encouragement to us in the process of Going. The morning finished off by my sweet friend, Jill (Ann & William too) singing Rescue the Perishing. I love this song, it really touches my soul, it's why we are passionate about going, we must people are dying without knowing Jesus.
And all afternoon and evening friends have been stopping by to say goodbye. It is so hard to say goodbye to these friends, that really are family. We love them, they love us:) It has been extremely difficult to say goodbye! I have cried many tears and there will be many more as we miss our precious Jackson family!
Tomarrow we are getting a rental car and driving to Virginia. Basically we will figure the rest out when we get there. We think the delay will be about 2 weeks before training gets started. We hope to visit some family and friends and relax a little- we'll try to keep everyone updated as we know.

Pics of the Crate

So I realized that just telling you about the crate didn't do the event justice... So here are pics of the big day and the big wood box!This is the stuff all ready to go, almost, before we took it to the shipping place.
Here's the crate, all packed up. Yes, that is my sewing machine sitting down on the bottom all ready to go to Lisbon.This is after I went and bought pillows to stuff in the cracks. I put a couple pillow around my sewing machine to keep it from moving on the long ride.

Here's Mark by the crate so you get an idea of the real size of the crate... it's 100 cubic feet!

Crate Day

The Crate is packed, done! Yeah!!!

We got everything in except for my Germany bench. For those of you who live near me you know what bench I am talking about. For others maybe I'll take a picture tomarrow but tonight I am too tired. It was a little sad but I knew it was a good possibility it wasn't gonna make the cut so I was prepared.

I know everyone is wondering what will happen to my special bench, well right now I have no idea... I'll let you know the fate of the bench when I know.

But really it did go well, it is packed and ready to be closed tomarrow. We ran out at the last minute and bought some spices to finish off the last box and some pillows to stuff in the holes between boxes and stuff. And it's another big thing off my list, hurray!

And in normal Bustrum life, just a quick update...

Sahara lost another tooth,

Bria finally weighs 40 pounds (she has been trying to hit the 40 on our bathroom scales for a long time now)

Tirza is wearing panties!!!

Two Down

The yard sale is over, hurray!

We got rid of everything we were hoping to pawn off on the yard sale junkies:) We sold several big things like our couch and the big girls bed, so our house is looking a little bare tonight. It's great, for some reason this felt like a big day- a big clearing out day. The best part was that about noon a guy came and offered us $10 to take everything we had left and we gave it to him! There were no big things left just some clothes and odds n ends... so it took us about 5 minutes to load everything up, the guy drove away and our driveway looked as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened this morning. Nothing came back in the house and no trips to goodwill, the stuff was gone! You would never know that at the ridiculous hour of 6am not only was I awake, but I was outside in the freezing cold, bargaining quarters for my stuff!

Two down, next up... crating!

One down

We have one pile from the packing room gone today, 3 more to go...
If you recall, when this whole sorting and packing business started, I had 4 choices.
1. Crate to Portugal
2. Take with us on the plane
3. Yard Sale
4. Storage to Washington
This morning Mark, my Mom, Chris, Ryan, Jason and I (with a little help from Mari who made my 3 very anxious little girls disappear) made option #4 go away:) We took our stuff, and by OUR I mean- mine, Delaughter's, Letha's, Heidi's and a little of Mom and Dad's, to the shipping place, got it stacked on pallets and watched them bind and shrink wrap all our most sentimental belonging:)
So tomarrow we drag out everything in option #3 and get it ready for the final yard sale on Saturday morning. After that we finish up the last few boxes for the crate, which we will pack Monday. And then we are down to getting everything into the suitcases and getting on a plane on the 28th!

It's Official

Here we are all official...name tags and all!

Here we are at our appointment service... our big moment to share how God called us to mission service. We only had 65 words, together, it took Mark and I a significant amount of time to narrow down all we wanted to say to 65 words.

We only messed up a few words:) but I think you get the gist of what we wanted to say... Do notice Mark leaving me behind at the end... we were suppose to wait until after the light went off to walk away... Mark said what he had to say and left for Portugal:) Hope he remembers to take me on the plane with him!:) We are getting a good laugh as we watch the video.

Really it was an awesome time, we are blessed!