Greetings from Hopkinsville, KY

These pictures belong with the last blog:

The girls in the gift shop at Churchill Downs, site of the Kentucky Derby.
Outside of the Louisville Sluggar Museum...quite the bat wouldn't you say?
This glove and ball was inside, they played like it was a slide off the back of it.All of the "girls," Krystal Clayton, Heather Lancaster, Tawnya Suertefelipe, Sarah Gish:This was Abby batting. The picture of Cassy didn't turn out but we have seen Cassy batting before :)Maddie just loved it, she begged the whole time while everyone else batted to get to also. I thought she was too little but they allowed her to hit off the tee. She was so funny! She did well! This was outside the building. You could see them taking the piece of wood and making it into a bat...so neat!For this post:

We are going to be in Hopkinsville, KY for TWO nights! I am so grateful!

We are having a wonderful time and the Lord is blessing! We have really been blessed to be with different pastors and church people. We are at the seventh place since last Sunday evening. We have met and been reaquainted with many wonderful people that love the Lord. We have covered a lot of miles and thank the Lord He has kept us safe!

Since Tuesday morning, my last post, we have been to Nicholasville, KY to be with Pastor Lonnie Moore and his gracious wife. It was a wonderful encouragement to be in their church Tuesday night. There were many enthused Christians and a lot of young people. They were very kind to us and we just enjoyed being there very much.

Wednesday, we drove to Ratcliff, KY to be with Pastor Tom Green and his church. The girls sang in the chapel service and Mark preached. Maddie, Cassy and I played in the nursery during the service. It was nice to be able to play a little! We went on Wednesday afternoon to Fort Knox and toured the Patton Museum. We enjoyed seeing a little bit of history there. I have a few pictures from there. A funny story: we pulled up to the visitors center and we thougt it would be great to have a picture in front of the sign that read, "Welcome to Fort Knox." Sounds like a good idea, right? Well, we did not realize we were at the wrong gate and it was very high security where we were and no photography was allowed. It was right across the street from the underground gold.

These are some pictures we took at the museum:This was a Natzi flag that was captured and the soldiers signed it.
A battlefield, it looked so real
Not sure if this was a replica or the actual head from Saddam's statue that was destroyed.

The service Wednesday night was a good one. Pastor Green and his church was very gracious to us! He acknowledged Abby's birthday in the service :) Embarrased her a little :) We set out for an ice cream cake after the service which turned into quite an ordeal! The Baskin Robbins sounded good and we parked the 15 passenger van along with "Leonard" (the name we have given for our pull-behind trailer) and unloaded for our cake. We picked out just the one she wanted and started to pay for it. We THOUGHT we would just sit there and eat it rather than taking it back to our motel. Well, they did not have ANYTHING to cut it with. SO, we loaded back up to head to Dairy Queen for our ice cream cake. We parked again and unloaded a second time (the time is about 9:45) at the Dairy Queen just down the road. The doors were LOCKED! It closed at 10 but the doors were locked. SO, we loaded back in the van and decided to drive thru (with Leonard) to buy an ice cream cake. They also did not have anything to cut our cake with! SO, we went to Walmart and Mark went in to buy a knife to cut our cake with. We were just going to go to the motel and eat our cake there! We did go back to the motel and guess what...We could NOT find the knife Mark had just purchased! So, I cut the cake with the end of the plastic spoon and served it and we ate it outside our motel room! We had rooms right outside of the motel swimming pool...of course, no one was swimming, it was 10:30 at night and very chilly. We say she had a pool party for her 9th Birthday...and a very unusual one at that! It was very memorable and with a lot of laughs!

Thursday, the group sang and Mark preached at a Christian school, Landmark Christian School, where John Stone is the pastor. Mark was excited about this opportunity because this is not someone we knew. It was nice to meet another pastor trying to serve the Lord.

We went on to Lancaster, KY to be with Jason Wheeler at Lancaster Baptist Tabernacle for an evening service. Jason and his wife, Hannah (Moore) are graduates of Crown. They had a good crowd of people that came out for a Thursday evening service and it was also an encouraging service. We were able to see some current students and also some graduates there.

Friday, we drove on to Hopkinsville, KY, about 3 hours away on Friday. We spent the afternoon with Pastor and Mrs. Ken Shaver and their daughter, Kendra (a graduate of Crown). They took us to a wonderful place for the evening, Patti's Settlement. It was where they call "The Land Between the Lakes." It was beautiful. We walked around the paths, played at the playground, saw some chickens, peacocks, emu, a horse, and some rabbits. We walked through a few of the shops and ate at Patti's Restaurant. It was so nice! The food was absolutely delicious also! They brought out yeast rolls in terra cotta pots...umm...so good! They are famous for their 2" pork chops...Mark and Pastor Shaver ordered those. I ordered Kentucky Brown or something like that...it was turkey with bacon on it smothered in cheese with homemade potato chips. So good!

Us, with the Shaver's:The girls in the van last night in the dark. We had just dropped off the trio and the girls opened up their songbook and sang with their flashlights as microphones. It looked more like the next picture.

Today, Saturday, the group went soul winning with the church and are now helping to clean or work at the church. I am here at the hotel while Maddie takes a nap. Abby and Cassy are at the church as well, "helping." Tomorrow is their dedication of their new building. It is absolutely beautiful! So nice. They have a nice nursery facility...love it!

I don't know when I have been so longwinded, but I guess I just am enjoying sitting here in the quiet room just "chatting" with you.

I will update again on our travels. Please continue to pray for us!