For those of you who prayed us through, your prayers have been answered.  We are in our new home!

This morning we left Amarillo being very careful not to slip on the ice that had formed on the road.  A little way down the road Mark said, “There’s something you don’t see in Oregon!”  I looked where he was pointing and there was a humongous cross beside the highway.  We could see it for several miles.  Of course, that part of Texas was so flat I could see the entire horizon for miles in every direction.  It’s pretty amazing to see that much sky!

When we crossed into Oklahoma, there was an almost immediate difference.  Texas was brown everywhere there wasn’t snow.  In Oklahoma we began to see green rolling fields.  From what I’ve seen on this trip, I’d say Texas is ranch country and Oklahoma is farm country.  Another interesting thing about Oklahoma is that they alternate between billboards that advertise casinos and billboards that advertise Jesus.  I mean that fairly literally.  One of the Jesus billboards had a picture of Jesus (the Americanized version) and it said, “Behold, I am with you always.”  It wasn’t advertising a church or anything else.  It was just advertising Jesus.  That’s something else we wouldn’t see in Oregon!

Oklahoma City was, I think, the biggest city we’ve been through on this trip.  It had sky scrapers and a traffic jam due to construction.  If we ever need a big city fix (ha!) we can go there.

Finally we reached Gore.  Let me tell you about Gore.  The town itself is several miles off I-40 and the whole surrounding area is countryside.  There is one main street through Gore.  There are one or two smallish grocery stores, one school, and at least three churches we could see from the street.  There are a few other businesses – including a quilt shop! – and at the north end of Gore there is road construction that narrows the road down to one lane…just like in Saratoga when we first got there!

We went beyond downtown Gore to get to the entrance of Marval Resort, and even that’s down a long drive.  After spending every night for the last week in places where we could hear highway traffic and/or trains, it is so quiet tonight!

We pulled up to the office where they were expecting us.  We met Pam and Steve, who are the assistant managers, and then we met Melanie and Jeff who hired us.  Melanie and Jeff have been here a year, first as assistant managers, and in October they became the managers, so this will be there first summer to be fully in charge.  Melanie also introduced us to an 11-year-old girl named Kayleigh.  Melanie said that Kayleigh was eager to meet the new activity directors.  She’s been here with her family for several years and is looking forward to the activities starting up again.

Melanie asked us if we’d like to start work tomorrow or take a day to get ourselves situated, and we said we’d like to get settled.  Both Mark and I are realizing we’re exhausted tonight.  Jeff and Melanie and Kayleigh led us to our site and visited with us while Mark got things hooked up.   I took pictures and was going to share them here, but our internet connection is so slow they won’t upload.  In the future I’ll see what I can do about that.