Takashi and Family

I finally got word from our Japanese "son" Takashi, that he and his whole family, including his 100 year old grandmother, are fine after the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan. They are all in the south of Japan, so were not affected directly. Prayers have been answered!

Auf Wiedersehen, John and Betsy

We, of the Northeast congregation of the Church of Christ, said farewell to our preacher, John, and his wife Betsy today. They have worked with this congregation since its beginning, 14 years ago. Although they will be sorely missed, we are excited and happy for them and the mission they are taking on. They will leave, tomorrow, for Kaiserslautern, Germany (known as "K-town") where John will preach and minister to an established English-speaking congregation of about 125 people. K-town is a military community, and John and Betsy were actually stationed there, themselves, when John was in the Army. They are perfectly suited for this work. They plan to complete a three-year commitment there, before returning to Albuquerque, to work in some capacity with the church here, again.

We said our goodbyes during a potluck meal in their honor this afternoon. The congregation presented them with two gifts. The first was one of those bluetooth digital picture frames, so we can all send photos directly to them through a dedicated email address. And the second was an amazing wreath, made, by one of our ladies, from cash donations from the congregation.




We'd appreciate your prayers as we look for a new preacher to come and work with us. Until we find and hire him, the men of the congregation will be sharing the preaching responsibilities.

It's been a hard day's night, and I've been working like a dog

My blogs have been neglected lately. To those who have come here over and over, only to see nothing new, I apologize. Please don’t give up on me.

Our planned move is still nearly a year away, but because we want to put the house on the market in April, we have been working like two old dogs getting the house ready to show. Our storage unit is beginning to look less sparse, as we move boxes and bins over there. Still more to go!

On Wednesday my friend, Tina, who used to run her own business, staging houses for sale, came to help me rearrange furniture and to make suggestions for showing-off the best features of our house. From that session sprung yet another long to-do list.

Yesterday I boxed up two dozen of my milk bottles in preparation for shipping them to my friend, Cindy, in Juneau, who is going to “adopt” my collection. I have one more box of bottles to pack tonight, and then that task can be ticked off of my list.

For the past couple days, I have been busy using my nifty new receipt scanner to scan all of my receipts and other documents that need to be saved for several months to a year, so that I can shred the originals and just keep the scanned images in tidy little computer files. That is a start on cleaning up the most challenging room in our house – the office. I want to have the office completed by the middle of next week. Wish me luck on THAT one!

And here’s a follow-up on my very first Craigslist experience, as mentioned in my post below. That entertainment center, especially the center unit, is terribly heavy. It took four strong men – Dan, Tim, our friend Gary and his son, Ray – to haul the three units out of our house, into Gary’s pick-up, and, from there, into the storage unit. They did that last Saturday. On Saturday evening, around 9:30 p.m., I posted my Craigslist ad. When I got up on Sunday morning, there were two responses. One wanted more information, the other wanted to see it. I made arrangements with the second person to show her the furniture after our second worship service that afternoon (our second service runs from 2:00 to 3:00). Dan and I went to the storage unit around 4:00, and the interested party and her husband showed up, with a pick-up, trailer, and $$$ in hand, a few minutes later. They were serious buyers! The only bad part was that poor Dan had to help man-handle that monster once again, from the storage unit to their trailer. But there was no quibbling on the price, and it was sold about 18 hours after I first posted the ad. Success! I was pumped. I came home and started eyeing everything around the house. What else could I turn into cash?!! This is too easy.

First Steps

This evening Dan and I moved the first load of moving boxes to our storage unit. They look so insignificant in that otherwise-empty 10x10 space! But these twelve boxes contain books - books that came from the shelves on either side of our entertainment center. Books are heavy, and loading the boxes into our little SUV, and from there into the storage unit, was a pretty big job for the two of us. (To give credit where credit is due, Dan did all the heavy lifting. I was the vehicle driver, door opener and dolly pusher.) It sure felt good when it was done!

The entertainment center is one piece of furniture that we do not intend to take with us when we move. We bought it when we had a big, heavy TV. Now that we have a flat screen, we don't need such a gigantic piece of furniture to hold it. We will be selling it on Craigslist -- our first time ever to either sell or buy using that venue.


Having the TV sitting, as it is now, on a slim sofa table, that we already had, makes our family room look bigger - which can't hurt when it comes to showing the house to prospective buyers.