Leaving Branson about 0900, we set out for Arkansas, my old home state. Our first stop was Mountain Home, AR. The Tackett family has lived here for more than 40 years. Although the population is about 12,000, Harold said its doubled since they moved here. Retiring from the USAF, he took up full time fishing the nearby Norfolk Lake. It was a tough life but he caught fish! It was great seeing them again! This was our third visit since I first met them in Angeles City, The Philippines, where we were stationed at Clark Air Force Base. Harold, June, Kathy and Vicky were my family away from home and I spent a lot of time at their house. I think the kids were 7 and 13 and a lot of fun to be around. This trip has been amazing to renew old acquaintances! Thank you Harold, June and Kathy for taking time for lunch! We also got to have lunch with David Pitchford and his wife. David was a fellow teenager when we lived in Kansas back in the 60's.
We arrived in Searcy about 4:30 and grabbed a room at the La Quinta, then headed two miles down the road to Harding University. We are a out 150 miles from where I grew up as a kid. We started texting our Metro teens and met up with, Stephanie Hoover, whom we almost missed as we had no phone directory with us! We also met Loryn McCaughan, David Gallespie, Shelby Trauber and Zach Hailey, all students from our home church in Oregon. We took them to dinner at Chili's and had a wonderful fellowship of food and laughter. It's always great to see familiar faces when traveling far from home! And good food to hungry teens is like baiting a bear trap.......they always come!
Our meeting was great! They are such wonderful kids and we love them! Later in the evening we went to the home of Kyle and Rebecca Williams, a newly wed couple, also from Oregon that we've known for a while. In fact, Rebecca has been on two of our Wilderness Treks with us! She is a lot of fun to be around. They are seniors, graduating this year and moving back to Oregon. Kyle is taking a position as Youth Minister! We has a great, but short, visit, and we enjoyed every minute of it!
Today we meet up with one more student. Debby's cousin, Paige Spiller, is also a student. We are picking her up for lunch. She's one of our favorite people in the whole world and have known her all life. It will be a fun day!
God is good, all the time!
Hey! I went to school at PVHS, not far from there!
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