Where in the world are Jim & Kristi?

I'll try to make a long story short.

We closed on our house on May 17th. All went well.

Both Jim and I finished at our jobs on May 18th. I picked Jim up from work as we were down to one vehicle. I'll just say, it was a long process for him to say all of his goodbyes as his coworkers became like family to him after 10 years. (Huge thanks to Jim's coworkers for praying for us before we left)

On May 19th, we moved our stuff into Jim's ex-bosses house as he had a couple of rooms available for storage.

We stayed at our friends, Phillip and Cara's, and hogged their computer looking for a vehicle as mine was not reliable for our long journey. We took a day of rest on Sunday and went to a night of fellowship at our Sunday School teachers house. On our way home, we noticed a car for sale in a front yard. We stopped and called the # on the car and the owner came out to show us his car. It was a five speed, so it wouldn't work for me, so instead, God had brought us there to meet and chit chat with Reubins. He invited us in and we met his son and we think his nephew. They had just bought a trampoline, so Jim and I went out back and jumped on it for a while. An hour and a half after arriving we had the opportunity to pray with Reubins and some of his family. It's always awesome to be reminded that God's plan is much better than ours and that it is not about getting tasks accomplished. We soon forgot that, as you'll see in the next story.

After 3 nights at Phil and Cara's, we moved to Alison's as we still had not found a vehicle within our budget. We spent five more days extremely focused on finding a vehicle so that we could leave for our trip. We hit one dead end after another and we were both exhausted, confused, irritated, and doubtful. Basically, we had no peace. As we prayed, begging God to reveal his will, He made it very clear that we were so focused on the task of finding a car, that we missed out on several ministering opportunities. Jim knew that God was telling us that we had unfinished business in Atlanta. We committed the next day to hanging out with some friends that we had told we would hang out with before we left. It was an awesome day of fellowship and rest. God gave us incredible peace which only comes from Him!

We left the next day (Memorial Day) to Nacogdoches, Tx, in my car, knowing that God would either provide a vehicle somewhere along the way or that my car would make it across America. I was only pulled over once in Texas for speeding. The very tall officer with chew all over his teeth, looked down at my license and said with a very thick Texan accent, "Mrs. Sutton, are you on vacation?" I said, "Yes, Sir." He said, "Slow down", and gave me my license back. I high tailed it back to the car to Jim in his straw cowboy hat, looking like Crawl from the movie Son-in-Law as he laughed at me. After a few days of hanging out with my brother, sister-in-law, and niece, we drove to Lufkin, Tx to meet a car salesman that my brother had met the week before. We got a great deal on a car and were able to trade in my car. It was an exciting day in many ways, but most importantly, God gave us the opportunity to pray for the financial guy and our salesman, who are both going through trials.

We have been at Marc and Lisa's for over a week now, because Jim has been sick with bronchitis for the past two weeks. We thought it was just a cold, so we waited to got to the doctor. He's been on some good drugs for the past 4 days and is feeling much better. We are leaving tomorrow (Wed) morning for Carlsbad, NM to do some hiking at Carlsbad Cavern and see the bats. We are just going with the flow from there. We'll write more when we know.

Jim & Kristi

P.S. Never hold a deer by the legs!