Alison here. We are about to celebrate 7 weeks of being on the road!!!! Our odometer is saying we’ve traveled over 3500 miles. Wow! That HAS to be God. He is faithful in making Mable able! Especially when we look back and remember that at one point we weren’t sure we were going to make it out of Grand Rapids!
Our verse for yesterday was Romans 5:3,4 “But we also glory in tribulations knowing that tribulations produce perseverance, and perseverance, character, and character, hope.” We looked back yesterday and saw all those things manifested in our family as we journeyed through the tribulations! And, we give God all the glory for the smooth ride from here! Claimin’ it!!

We left Miami last Saturday after spending a sunshiny week with a beautiful circle pool. It was just what the doctor ordered for the girls. We needed a bit of a break from state parks in the middle of NOWHERE and this place was lovely with beautiful, well-lit bathrooms and avocados practically falling out of the trees into our greedy little hands. Well, kind of falling. The rules were that we could have any of those beautiful green guys that were on the ground. “NO climbing the trees like monkeys,” is what we were told. Well, one of my three (who shall remain nameless) found a way to go AROUND the rule when no fruit was found on the ground other than rotten ones. See, if you throw the rotten one at the good ones, the good ones end up on the ground and then in your possession! Clever middle child. Oops. So much for nameless.
We played some and worked a lot. The girls did their school faithfully while Christian was away each day working. Justin and I started plotting our course west.

We finally got Christian’s engine deal wrapped up! Thank You, Jesus!!!!!! It was a huge success with an extremely wealthy businessman from Bolivia ending up VERY pleased with my husband. We got to meet the man and his Porsche. ONE of his Miami cars. He lives on a 40,000 acre ranch in Bolivia. One of six ranches he owns. I call him Ricardo Montoban. He’s got shoes worth about what Mable is, I think. Nice guy.
Anyway, we met him at a Mobil station in Miami to give him his logbooks for his new engines. Interesting picture for you. A Porsche with the equivalent of Penelope Cruz inside crammed next to Mable at a Mobil station with Ricardo Montoban looking at logbooks with Christian. Then our whole family (including the dog) piles out of the RV just like on National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and meet him. Yeah.
On our way out of Miami, I was feeling in desperate need of a haircut. It had been eight weeks and every girl can understand that there’s just a moment where you can’t stand it anymore! What to do? I had 50 min. before our meeting with Mr. Fancy Pants to find a salon and get the job done. First place I ran into was called “Zuna’s.” I walked in and there was a lady screaming into a cell phone quite angrily in some other language and it wasn’t Spanish. I turned around and went right back out. She probably laughed all day at how she scared that little white girl right out of her shop.
The next place was called the Hair Cuttery. Sound fine, right? It was; I think. Everyone was very friendly. Well, very smiley since I wouldn’t know if they were friendly or not since no one spoke English. I got them to understand I wanted a shampoo, cut and style through a mixture of smiles, sign language and well, I don’t really know how. Once we established that a half inch cut is not the same as a one and a half inch cut, we proceeded. My hair looks fine, but I must say my heart was pretty poundy there for a bit!

We began driving Saturday evening and have covered about 400 miles a day. That’s no small feat in Mable let me tell you. That’s like 8-9 hours of driving. I’m proud of my crew. We are pretty much a well-oiled machine at this point. We can get up, shower, tear down this motor home to travel, empty the poo-poo, etc., and get on the road in no time flat.
We get into a lot of conversations about Mable. Apparently she is quite the conversation starter. People cannot believe what we are doing. Not sure if they are surprised that our girl is up for the trip, or that a family does this kind of thing. Maybe they are just stunned to see us pull up at a gas station and put orange levelers that look like Legos under our tires so we can prop the back end up to be able to put gas in it. Who knows, but we look at every conversation as an opportunity to brag about how loved we are by our heavenly Daddy.

We are SUPER excited about the next leg. Currently we are a couple hundred miles outside of Jackson, MS in Louisiana and thrilled to have been able to visit family and friends for a day and a half or so as well as letting the boys work at Davis for the day. Mable got a tune up in Jackson as well and feels oh-so-refreshed.

Thank you all for your prayers. We KNOW you are because we’re still smiling and we’re still driving! We are having a hard time believing it’s October. There is no point of reference yet for seasons. We miss Michigan in some ways, but remind each other daily how blessed we are to have this opportunity. We should be seeing wild buffalos within one week! Yeehaw!!!!

We love y’all…