We started out our over 2 week trip at Pastor Cowgill’s church- Bible Believers Baptist Church in Hillsboro, Ohio for a camp meeting. It went from a Sunday morning all the way to the following Sunday night with services every evening.

These are dear people from that church. They all treated our family so wonderfully, providing lots of food for our family and meals every night.

This is the tent the mtgs. were held in.

David trying to scoot out of the photo – gotcha!!

This was the special speaker for most of the tent meeting – Pastor Claude Spurlock. He is a Pastor at a church here in West Virginia.

The Neihaus (hope I spelled that right – smile-) Family was also there for this Brother to preach and they did some special music on the last Sunday also.

This is Pastor Cowgill’s youngest son – Aaron.

Aaron (age 22) is in college right now studying to become an occupational therapist. He embraced our family and children and went out and bought balls, toys, etc. and came (amongst his busy schedule with work and college) to spend time “playing” with our children. They enjoyed his fellowship. Thank you, Aaron!!

While we were in Ohio, Dennis & Lisa (Lisa is my-Jill’s-older sister) & 4 of their 5 children were able to stop by and see us. We love them and it had been over a year since we had seen them, so we enjoyed our visit!!

This was Lisa’s first time to see our newest addition – Sofia.

Love

The most exciting thing of this whole week was that this man named Henry, accepted the Lord as his Saviour!! He had been attending the church for close to a year, and finally got saved at the camp mtg.! Hallelujah!!!

Henry really liked our family and he started bringing us cards every night for 8 nights! He would hand them to me and later ask if I liked what they said. “Yes, Henry!” I would reply. “Thank you so much for those cards!!” He would then say, “I meant every word I said in them!!”

These are the cards.

Henry, congratulations on your salvation!! It is the BEST decision you will EVER make in your lifetime! We are so happy for you and we love you in the Lord!!

Our next mtg. (scheduled at Pastor Rick Drummond’s church) got cancelled due to the missionary speaker cancelling and Bro. Drummond getting knee surgery. Well, we were already packed up in our RV and had some spare time. David & I felt that we really needed some “marriage” time……….so, we headed to PA, near my sister – Angie’s house- and dropped off our oldest 11 children for Angie to “keep an eye” on. Then, David and I proceeded to a serene campground in Strasburg, PA (Amish Country). Little Sofia was with us due to her still nursing. It was a lovely time!!

We are standing in front of the “Sight & Sound Theater” here. We went and saw – “Samson”. SO GOOD!……as always!!

Sofia enjoyed the fountain. Cute.

This was our camp site. Cook out………..ymmm!

Behind our site, there rippled along a beautiful creek. Beyond that, was a country road where Amish horses and buggies kept galloping by. SO PEACEFUL!!

At the campground, was an old mill. It was SO interesting exploring around.

This is how old the mill was!!

David standing in front of the building/mill.

Inside the mill.

Again, inside the mill.

Oh…….if only these walls could talk.

Me sitting on an old sleigh in the mill.

Right outside the mill, was a historic covered bridge – called the “kissing bridge”. We thought we’d do a bit of that in front of it! We enjoyed this trip immensely and enjoyed working on always keeping our marriage strong. Thanks, My Love (David), for giving me that lovely time!! I miss it!!

Thank you, Jordan & Angie, for being willing to have a total (with your 6 and our 11) of 17 children in your house while David & I took that trip! You are SO sweet & we love you! Angie is holding her youngest – Azalea- who is now almost 17 months old. She is about 6 months older than our youngest – Sofia – but they are very close in size.

Guess WHO IS PREGNANT??? You guessed it – ANGIE!!!! This will be their 7th child and Angie is due the beginning of next February. We are SO happy for them. We were a little nervous how sweet Amy Foster would take the news, but as always, she was sweet about it and happy for the Hillegass family.

This is Jordan and Angie’s 3rd child – Preston. The day we picked our children up from the Hillegass’ home, Preston was graduation from homeschool kindergarten at a homeschool support group at their church. We were excited to attend.

Me & Preston.

From there, we headed to our next destination in Byesville, Ohio. On our way there, the belt on the engine in our RV, burnt out and broke. SOOOO, we were stranded on a country road in PA. We called a mechanic (Ken) we knew from a church in PA and low and behold, he lived only 1 1/2 hrs. away!! God is so good! He came and fixed it for us! Hallelujah! While we waited, I decided to make “lemonade out of a lemon situation”. The children and I went for a walk, did laundry at a local laundromat, washed the car at a car wash, and watched a car race on the side-line lawn and hill. It was fun! While I was at a store getting food for dinner, I also met a Christian couple – the Knupps. They were SO sweet and even graciously handed us some money to help out! I cried. It just touched my heart SO much that in the middle of no where, in a strange area, God showed up and encouraged us and showed us (through other dear Christians whom we had never met before) that HE was still watching over us! What an AWESOME God we serve!!  

We did not get to our next destination until 4:30 am. We were EXHAUSTED beyond words! We collapsed into bed to get some much needed sleep and then arose and got ready to at least make it the the church’s Sunday evening service. We also went to their Memorial Day picnic the next day. David is standing here with Pastor Leathley (on the left) at the picnic. Pictured up above is Kaylee with a girl from the church.

Enjoyed some games.

David’s turn.

Mrs. Leathley (Pastor’s wife) is all the way to the left.