Finally coming to the end on the sale of our house in Albany

We have a lot of people to thank for helping us get our house in Oregon sold after our move to North Carolina.  Janet and Norm, Rhonda, Mike and Spencer, Ryan and Jeannie, Jim and JoAnn, Mark P., and others.  We surely have appreciated all the help and the reminder that we are part of family that is much bigger than us.  Many times you don’t really know the things you will really miss about a place until you have left.  Believe it or not, one of the biggies for me is the vigor with which people some people say “Amen” in Albany.  I think it said something good about the place.  Maybe that is just my tradition, but it is certainly one that I like.  If all goes well, we should close on the house on Thursday.  Lorena and I signed the last addendum this morning, the house is in escrow, and the documents should be available very soon.

Last night we drove out about forty minutes to a little town called Algier to have a Spanish language bible study with three of our ministers, some folks from Panama, some folks from Mexico, and some Spanish speaking gringos.  One of our ministers is an eighty year old man named Robert.  He is a native North Carolinian who has been in the ministry since 1953, but is working in North Carolina for the first time.  This is his second year since returning.  He has an accent and a humble, kind, fun-loving attitude that the whole family just loves.  Before we went, the ministers came over to our house for a dinner of shredded beef tacos with very hot salsa, black beans, and white rice.  For dessert, we had Amish friendship cake for which Lorena got the recipe and a starter from Kasey’s grandmother.  Food does not really get much better than that.  It is why Bryan is still beating me like a drum in our weight loss competition.

All that being said, I am finally ready for a weigh-in again on Friday.  Will you remember to send your lbs on Friday, Bryan?