Road Trip to Arizona!

Last Wednesday afternoon, we headed out on a looonnngg road trip to Phoenix, Arizona to do a benefit dinner and silent auction for our Ethiopian school project. Everyone went along except for Adrian, who stayed home to play football and feed the animals. We had a wonderful trip, and saw many interesting things along the way! Our days were filled with visions of coyotes, roadrunners, elk, armadillos, petrified wood, the Grand Canyon, craters, mountains, bluffs, 3820 miles, plateaus, canyons, gulches, cacti, Native American art, Cherokees, Navajos, Hopis, scrub brush, mesas, scorpion suckers, plains, shooting stars, Historic Route 66, generous and loving people, "yank and shove" doors instead of "pull and push" doors, scenery straight out of the movie Cars, the St. Louis Arch, and driving, driving, and more driving. We booked late-night hotel rooms whenever we got tired, and got up early in the mornings to keep going. At one point on the trip, a couple of the kids were arguing over who got more room on the seat, and it brought out a classic Erica moment. Instead of telling them to stop having petty little squabbles, it came out, "I don't need to get involved in your squabby little petals!" This brought about gales of laughter, even if it was mostly from yours truly. :)

The benefit was tremendously successful, and I'll be updating our project goal thermometer as soon as AGCI updates the project website. In the meantime, here are some photos of our trip:

Chris dubbed this, "The leaning tower of water."

There are 3 things that make me really tired: heat, traveling, and pregnancy. I experienced all 3 at the same time on this trip! Baby boy rode along really well, though.

At one point, we saw two mountain goats fighting on a cliff far below. The crashing of their horns echoed throughout the canyon. One of the local men told the kids they were very lucky to get to see and hear it, because he comes to the canyon often and has never experienced that before.

Chris's cousin Steve took Chris and the kids hiking up the mountain behind the villas where we stayed. If you look closely at the following pictures, you can see some tiny little people on the peaks!

The benefit dinner and auction:

Jalen and Jordan got to meet Samara, a little girl from their birth region of Gambella. We got to spend some time in Ethiopia with Samara when she was just a baby living at Hannah's Hope. It was great to see her again!

Sunrise over Albuquerque. 

We stopped just north of Indianapolis for supper on the way home Tuesday evening. A man approached us and asked if the twins were from Haiti. He wondered because he has helped to build several schools and churches in Haiti. We told him a little about our project in Ethiopia, and unbeknownst to us, a nearby lady was listening in. As we were leaving the restaurant, she came over and handed us a donation for Metekle School! It was so kind of her, and amazing to once again see God's unfailing provision. :)