We left our 3 littles (the longest I have been away from them) early Wednesday morning and arrived in sunny CA to snow capped mountains all around and beautiful palm trees blowing in the wind.  We drove up to Immanuel Baptist Church sitting on a beautiful campus!!  I could get used to being there for an extended period of time!!  I didn’t realize how much I missed the mountains, growing up in Alaska, until seeing them again.  I sure prefer the warmth of California to the cold of Alaska though!! Ha!

We had a great time getting to know so many people from all over the US and the world.  We saw some familiar faces from our annual meetings in Central & Eastern Europe.  There are several members who have volunteered their time to watch our kids in the past at our regional meetings.  Two specifically had been in our kid’s class!!  It was great to see them all again!!

We had a wonderful Sunday School Class that hosted us, provided us with housing, a car, and meals!!  Jerry had attended Immanuel’s GOC last year and enjoyed reconnecting with them and specifically the Sunday School class that hosted us.

A few ladies from the class even took me out for a wonderful meal at The Mission Inn, a historic hotel with a beautiful outdoor restaurant.  We had a great time!

IBC had some wonderful focused times for their children, senior adults, and the as a whole through an International Banquet and worship services.

They even gave us some free time to enjoy different sites and shopping in the area.

Although I would have loved to stay longer I was very ready to get back to the kiddos!  We had a somewhat eventful plane ride.  We left CA and flew to Salt Lake.  As we were about to take off for DFW a man 2 seats in front of us slumped over in his seat.  We’re not sure if it was because he was sick with the flu, but he was also complaining of chest pain and numbness.  We went back to the gate and the paramedics came to get him.  Everyone on the plane handled it so well and I heard no one complain of the delay.  We (the passengers) all had a chance to call our families/friends to warn them of our delay.  It only delayed us about 40 minutes and while we were in the air the man sitting in front of me said it was sleeting in Dallas.  We were a little leery, but even though it was snowing we were able to land.