Our Trip, - Part 2, Day 2

One would think in a house of nine children that bedtime would be chaos. This is not true of the Presley family. Now while there was still a good deal of kids being kids, bedtime moved in waves, with the younger children going first (the oldest child is sixteen and the youngest is seventeen months). There was also someone assigned to kitchen duty who was cleaning up the dinner remains. The next morning (Friday) moved in waves as well – the younger kids woke up first, ate breakfast and started on their schoolwork (they are home-schooled). The older kids slept in, but then followed the same routine.

It was delightful to spend time with all of the children. We had a great time asking them about their hobbies, their favorite subject in school, and what they had been doing over the summer. They brought out drawings to show us, books to share, and performed their favorite tricks for us on the trampoline.

We would have loved to spend more time with the family, but we didn’t want to interrupt their school day, and also wanted to spend more time out and about in Norman.

Funny thing was, we weren’t exactly sure what that meant.

Although we had a set appointment with the realtor on Thursday, we hadn’t really planned anything concrete for the next morning. So, Friday morning found us on our knees together as a couple, asking God to literally guide our steps.

We decided to start with a cup of coffee for my dear hubby at Starbucks (he was starting to have withdrawals without his usual morning cup). We had thought to ask my sister the night before about where the closest Starbucks was, and we managed to find it without many problems.

It was, of course, over-run with college students, and as my hubby ordered his grande black coffee, I sat and watched all the different types of students as they came in for their morning cup-o-Joe (do you Starbucks workers ever call it that, Nickle-Pickle?)

With phone book in hand (the realtor had given us an extra one from his office), we looked at a few different churches and places of interest.

Before we had taken the trip, my dear hubby and I had looked at a few different churches that had advertised a need for a worship pastor. It turns out that one of the main ones we had looked at was only a block or two away, so we offered a quick prayer and headed over. We weren’t sure what to expect, with Friday being a day off for many ministers and office staff in Norman. To our surprise, we did find a very sweet secretary who offered to show us the church. She then spent time chatting and visiting with us about our trip to Norman. She asked for a resume’ and we sheepishly went to get the only thing we had. We had brought an incomplete resume’ with us, meaning only to spend some of our drive time with a pencil in hand, updating it in order to make changes once we returned to Phoenix. We gave it to her, and left with the words that we would pray about sending an updated resume’.

We then set off to try and find one of mine and my dear hubby’s old college ministry leaders that we discovered was working as a college pastor at one of Norman’s Baptist churches. Jeff Jimmerson was the director of the Baptist Student Union at Grand Canyon University when my dear hubby attended there, and he was also involved in the North Phoenix Baptist college ministry, where I was involved in my earliest college years.

We stumbled around a little before the church literally found us, and upon entering the building we were VERY surprised to find that Jeff had just arrived at his office (again, very rare for a Friday). He was also VERY surprised to see us, and after hugs and handshakes all around, we sat down to a great visit with this solid man of God. It was so incredible to hear his heart for the college ministry there in Norman, and we shared our hearts about how we felt drawn back to Norman, our own passion for working with students, and my dear hubby’s giftedness with worship. We ended our time together with Jeff’s praying with us and over us.

I will unpack that moment a little more in a later post – it was one of the most special parts of the trip for me.

With an exchange of e-mails, we filled our car with gas, our tummies with food, and headed down the road to Texas.

Here are a few pictures that we took while we were “on the road” (literally). ;) Just more countryside...

 

 

 

We made it safely to my Meemaw’s house around 6:00 p.m. that evening and enjoyed a home-cooked meal of roast, potatoes, gravy, squash, fried okra, jello salad, rolls, and more!
(If that sounds like a lot of food…it was.…..I ate WAY too much!) Here I am helping to fry the okra (under my Meemaw's watchful eye..:)

 

My Uncle John and his friend were also able to join us for dinner, and after a night of visiting, we headed to bed.