Chris is famous for visiting old friends when we go on trips. The rest of the family isn't always so keen on the idea but I can't think of a single time when we've actually regretted it afterward.
Chris was born in the small town of McConnelsburg, PA where his dad taught at the Edenville school. During the course of his family living in PA, the Blaine Brechbill family took the Eichers under their wing and treated them like family. The connection is still there all these years later! When Chris called up Verna (Brechbill) Garber and wondered about visiting them on our trip, she welcomed us with open arms.
Friday, June 25
Our drive over the mountains to Marvin's house was a beautiful one. After our stay at Elsie's house, with people that we knew, I think some of us were feeling a bit apprehensive. What would these people be like? Would the children get along? Why did we have to go to their church??
We certainly would not have needed to worry.
It didn't take us long to feel right at home with the Garbers. While Charles might not have been thrilled with the chicken enchiladas for supper (children are so good at embarrassing their mothers but it turned out to be a recurring joke of the weekend) he was quite thrilled with the stash of legos he got to play with. The other children soon had a game going after supper and that, coupled with discovering that the Garber children enjoyed playing music, left no question how the weekend would go!
Saturday morning, Marv treated us to airplane rides in his little, four seater plane. We needed to get up early to beat the heat but it was totally worth it to fly up over the Crooked River Gorge and Smith Rock and see the views from overhead!
Some of them also got to watch sky divers while they waited for the second load to come back. In the process, Chris dropped his phone and completely ruined the screen. Hopefully we'll be able to get some pictures off of it after we get home -- his phone being the one with the best camera and all....
From there, we drove around to see the gorge and Smith Rock from a lower view point.
We stopped by the bakery owned by some of Marv and Verna's church friends and enjoyed delicious cinnamon rolls and other goodies.
Marv took Chris and the boys to Walmart to get his phone replaced and the rest of us headed back to the house to relax -- some of us even snuck in a short nap. Some of the more ambitious people played games and ended up with the ping pong table outside. We decided they were pretty hard up, with the temperature over 100°!
That evening, Marv's married daughter and family came over for supper. We enjoyed trying to make friends with their solemn little one year old. I think we had him warmed up to us by the time the evening was over. The highlight of the evening was the music. We could hardly let them quit playing!
Church on Sunday turned out to be nothing worth worrying about. The small group that Marv's meet with is not a scary one at all. We enjoyed joining in their morning service.
After lunch, a couple of people braved the heat to go throw some discs with Isaac. In the evening, we enjoyed having the rest of the church people join us for an evening of food, fellowship and more music. The fun ended abruptly for some of us, when Isaac got hit with a terrible toothache. It reminded me of my tooth story and I could just about feel the pain and the worry of how this would all end up made me wish to be in the safe walls of our own home.
As usual, the Lord knew more about the situation than I did. The Garbers knew their dentist well enough to call him up on a Sunday night. By the time we went to bed, not only had God answered our prayers and calmed the pain down, we also had a dentist appointment for 9 a.m. Monday morning!
Instead of leaving early Monday morning, I started laundry early and we enjoyed a breakfast of biscuits and gravy. Isaac and Chris headed off to the dentist and Chris soon texted to say Isaac is in the chair and they should be back by 10:00. The kind dentist did a local x-ray and a temporary filling for $87.40. God sure did have it covered!
So, we said our goodbyes to our new found friends and headed out toward Yellowstone. Once again, visiting old friends proved to be a good experience.
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