#38 Weekend Woundup and Weview

We have had a wonderful busy weekend with lots of pictures to prove it. It is a good thing that we have pictures, because so much has happened that I might have trouble remembering it all without them.

Friday we met for lunch at Front Porch in Hattiesburg. We ate with Pastor Kenny Morris and his mother, Bro. Lamar and Sis. Tonya Chapman, Bro. Scott, Sis. Kim and all of us. It was a great meal with wonderful fellowship.

Watch for Superman Flying into these pictures.

Friday evening we drove a little over an hour to be in church with Pastor Donnie Williamson and all the folks at Tanner Williams. This is Homecoming week for them too so the Millikin's were in revival. That gave us even more incentive to make the trip. It was worth every mile of the drive.

We loved the service! Bro. Jimmy preached wonderful and the singing and music was wonderful too. It was also very nice to get to visit with many of our great friends. The Apostle Donald C. Williamson has been my encourager for many years and it is always good to see him, his wife and his church.

Saturday morning we loaded up and drove about 35 minutes to Ellisville to see Bro. Kenny and Sis. Joan Morris. They were having a rummage sale and we all had a great time with them. Bro. Kenny has some old cars and they always have something interesting going on.

We love Bro. Kenny and Sis. Joan so much. They have been so dear to us and it is always good to see them too. Hopefully we will get to be in church with them under the tent quite a bit this week.

Bro. Scott and Odie were horsing around and threw Odie out on the ground. At least that is what they would like for you to believe. Odie's big grin gives it away.

Sunday morning started before daylight at the Richton park. Bro. Jimmie Radcliffe, Bro. Scott and I measured everything and marked the stake line for the tent. We have set up the tent in this park four other times so it has become pretty easy to lay it out. However the city paved some new walking paths so we had to move the tent about 30 feet or so. That made the layout a little different but we had it completed in a little while.

Bro. Jimmie Radcliffe pulled his tent trailer into place after that. With that done, everything was ready for the tent set up Sunday evening.

We had other important things to do first. Sunday was Homecoming at Richton First Assembly. The great crowd, the great service and the great food combined to make it a super great Homecoming day. We love Homecomings and we are always thrilled when we are asked to be a part of them.

As soon as we were finished eating, Kelly Jo and I went out side to get the BoggsMobile ready to ride. She was working on things inside and I was cranking up and unhooking the utilities. We left the church about 2:00 and a few minutes later we were pulling into the park about 3-4 miles away. But the time we were there and parked, some of the men were helping Bro. Jimmy get the tent stuff ready to go up.

The set up crew was huge and they were ready to work. We will have pictures and more to write about that later. I did snap a picture of the tent before I went in for the night.

Bro. Jimmy and Sis. Shauna Millikin and their children came to Richton after the Homecoming at Tanner Williams and they spent the evening with us and all of the Morris family. We love these folks and it is good to have them with us. They are going to spend the day with us today and be in church with us tonight. It is great to have them!

That pretty much wraps up the weekend. We begin City Reach tonight in Richton and we are expecting God to meet with us in a mighty way! Pray for us and come be with us if you can.

Thanks for reading.

Davy

View Out The Front Window October 2, 2016

Check out our posts from the last week at the links below. 

Odie's Saturday Post

Travel Days

Getting Ready For Virginia

Picture In Place of A Post

BoggsMobile In Vonore, Tennessee

Weekend Woundup and Weview

This was our view out the front door at Flying J in McCalla, Alabama Wednesday night and Thursday morning.

This was our view out the front window.

This is our view out the front window at First Assembly in Richton, Mississippi.

This is our view out the front door.

Today is Homecoming at First Assembly and we are looking forward to it. We will also be setting up the tent later today and beginning City Reach at the park tomorrow night. It is going to be a great day.

Thanks for reading.

Davy

Having Fun With My Mother

Hello Friends. Welcome to October. I love fall! It is pumpkin time and I love it when Pumpkin Spice is the featured flavor. This is Odie and I am happy to be coming to you from Mississippi. 

I want to take a moment to wish a very special friend a happy birthday. Reese Lamb is celebrating her big day tomorrow! We love you, Reese, and wish you were in Mississippi so we could celebrate with you. Thank you for being our awesome friend. 

 

Homecoming is tomorrow in here Richton Mississippi. We love Pastor Scott Morris and the church family at First Assembly! They always make us feel at home. City Reach Richton begins in the city park Monday night. I am expecting great things in the week ahead. 

While the BoggsMobile was in the shop this week, I enjoyed some quality time with my Mom. Of course, that included some "Retail Therapy".  I did find a few bargains that could not be passed up. I even did a little Christmas shopping. 

We had a lot of fun. I mean, we had a really large amount of fun. Some of the fun is so funny, I figure I better tell you about it in this post before Mom decides to write a post about it. 

We were shopping in Stein Mart and I was telling Mom a story. Part of the story involved me waving hi to someone. Well, in the middle of the story I spotted a sweater on a rack that I wanted to point out to Mom. I mixed up my story and what I was actually doing. Instead of pointing at the sweater I WAVED at the sweater!   

Yes, that is correct. I WAVED hello at a sweater hanging on the rack like it was my long lost friend.

Here is the conversation that followed. 

Mom: Oh my goodness!

Odie: What?

Mom: Did you just wave at that sweater?

Odie: YES!! I am so dumb!

I doubled over in laughter and had a hard time regaining my composer. I am still laughing at myself! Have you ever liked a sweater so much you could wave at it?

Well, hopefully confession is good for the soul!

After Stein Mart we journeyed to the mall. We got the nice surprise of seeing our friend Deana Woods and getting to meet her friend Kathie. God has really touch Deana this year. We are Praising God with her!

 

Thank you for reading today. Have a fantastic weekend. 

Odie 

Travel Days - Vonore, Tennessee to Richton, Mississippi

Wednesday and Thursday were travel days. We only traveled about 470 miles over the two days so we obviously did not get in a hurry. In fact, I text Bro. Scott Morris Thursday morning and told him I was only about 210 miles from him and if I could do 70 miles a day, I should be there by Sunday morning.

We left East Tennessee Luxury Coach some time mid-morning and headed south west. Here we are as we prepare to pull out.

It was a beautiful day to travel and once we cleared Chattanooga, the traffic thinned out quite nicely. After all of the activity of the previous few days, I knew I would not drive far but I did want to go at least half way. I made it about 260 miles.

We needed to empty our holding tanks before getting to Richton and the Flying J at McCalla, Alabama was our last chance to do it. We decided to pull in there and call it a day. After snagging a spot among the trucks (The RV spots at that Flying J are always filled with trucks) we settled in and all took a nice afternoon nap!

I mentioned in yesterday's blog that Kelly Jo and I worked most of the evening on our travel visas to Nigeria. The kept us up late and then I could not sleep. I did sleep some in the early morning hours but I was awake shortly after 6:00 again.

I let the girls rest while I had my devotions and worked on the blog. We cranked up the BoggsMobile, emptied the holding tanks and we were soon on our way. We stopped at Dirt Cheap in Meridian after about 120 miles so the girls could get in a few minutes of retail therapy.

When they were finished we pulled over to Walmart so Kelly Jo and I could get our photos for the visas taken. Office Depot was across the parking lot and we went there next to Fedex the whole package to the Nigerian Embassy. We should have the visas in less than three weeks. Then we can finalize our reservations.

Once that was completed we finished the trip to Richton, arriving about 4:00 PM. It is great to be back home in Richton and we enjoyed some time and a great meal with our friends. We love Bro. Scott and his precious family.

Just about bed time, Bro. Jimmie Radcliffe pulled in and it was super great to see him. Once he was half way parked we said good night and got to bed just after midnight.

That puts two travel days in the books.The next two days will be spent preparing to get the tent up and getting ready for City Reach Richton. It feels good to be back in the swing of things!

Thanks for stopping in today.

Davy

Getting Ready For Nigeria

Things are staring to come together for our trip to Nigeria in November. I was beginning to get a little worried about our travel visas. You must have a prearranged travel visa to enter Nigeria. You can not fill out the paperwork on the plane or the airport like you can in many countries.

A Nigerian visa is a long drawn out and complicated process involving you or someone else hand carrying your passport, two new passport sized photos, money, application, recent bank statement, invitation letter, copies of the first four pages of your host's passport, travel itinerary, receipt for the amount you already paid online to Nigeria and receipt acknowledgment into the Nigerian Embassy. 

I am not sure they need the certified oil analysis for our last four BoggsMobile oil changes and the results of my third grade California Achievement Test or not but I may send them anyway.

You can not apply for the travel visa more than 90 days away from your trip. We have normally paid a company to go to the Embassy in Washington D. C. for us. That is cheaper than traveling to the Embassy and staying in town 3-5 days waiting for the visa to process. Once it is processed you go back in, wait in line all over again and pick up your visa. 

Since we were in New York about 90 days from our travel date, we decided to try carrying in our wheel barrel full of applications and other paperwork to the Embassy ourselves. This would save us nearly $90 each plus shipping and would be a new experience. (It used to be $35 then $55 and now $89.)

Our first hesitation came when we learned the Nigerian Embassy in New York City has absolutely terrible reviews for customer service. The show stopper was the website. We waded through the pages of visa application for each of us and it kicked us back to the homepage on more than one occasion. ALL of the information was lost so we would start again.

After finally making it through the applications successfully the website would not allow us to pay. I would put in our payment information and hit the button and back to the login page we would go!

There are warnings all over the page about how difficult to impossible it is to obtain a refund if you double pay so the onus is on us NOT to double pay. After getting kicked back to the login page when pressing the payment button I would wait a day or two to make sure the payment did not show up on our statement. 

This is all in their instructions. They expect you to have problems paying on their website. Once you know the payment did not go through, then and only then, you try again!

This went on for 2-3 weeks long after we were gone from New York City. I have messed with it at least once per week since then with similar results. Last night was the night designated to rise and conquer this thing. It had to be done. We can not book our tickets without our visas in our hands.

Last night I spent more time than I care to remember on the phone with the website company and then much more time with our CC company walking through the steps over and over again until someone flipped the right magic twanger and the payment went through. 

We are paying a total of $305 each to the Nigerian Embassy, $89 each to the company walking into the embassy for us and $60 total for Fedex shipping both ways and we are almost done! All we have to do is get the recent passport type photos and ship it all in. Wow!

When payment was confirmed, Kelly Jo and I spent the next hour+ printing duplicates of most of the documents listed above and then collapsed into bed very late with a satisfied grin that we were finally on our way.

That is when i discovered I was so hyped up that i could not sleep! Oh well, at least we are going to Nigeria!

Thanks for reading.

Davy

Picture In Place of Post

No post today. And this pictured drawn over a year ago by Devin Heath explains the reason. Great job, Devin!

Davy