Greetings dear family and friends!
Welcome to 2023! The theme of Episode One of this season of our snowbird winter escape from SNOW and COLD could be titled WINDSHIELD TIME. This will be our seventh snowbird season. We are not your normal snowbirds as we want our time away from family and friends to be more than enjoying warmer weather, no SNOW and cold weather and quality time with winter friends from Minnesota, Canada, and numerous other states. Our snowbird season is structured with a missional focus.
In prior years we worked one month of our time in Arizona with a mission minded organization called SOWER's. SOWER stands for Servants On Wheels Ever Ready (RV'ing with a Purpose). For more information on this unique ministry go to www.sowerministry.org. The SOWER organization connects individuals, mostly retired couples, with organizations that want help. The organization provides the SOWER with RV hookups, free of charge and the SOWERs lend their many talents to whatever work needs to be done. All SOWER members work three four-day weeks at a particular project, then they have one week off that they can stay at the project site for free. In past years we have worked winter projects at the ETHOS 360 Aviation Training Center in McNeal, AZ, Prescott Pines Camp (Prescott, AZ) and two years at the Gospel Rescue Mission Womens Center in Tucson, AZ.
The rest of our Snowbird Missional work is with CASA de La Esperanza or Homes of Hope. Click this link www.christiansinmexico.org for the CASA website. CASA builds homes in San Luis, Mexico for needy Mexican families. Curt and Kelly Van Ekeren who originate from Sioux Falls, SD are the directors. CASA has developed into a multi-focus mission not only building desperately needed housing but also helping the youth of San Luis get a quality education. Our Student Ministry sponsors youth who want an education beyond eighth grade. In Mexico the government provides public education for all children through eighth grade. After the eighth-grade Mexican citizens must pay for continuing education. Many families simply cannot afford to send their children to school. Without an education the youth must work fulltime at low paying jobs to help their families exist. CASA connects students who want to go on to higher education with sponsors. Sponsors commit to supporting the students financially. There are currently 25 sponsored students! This successful ministry has helped a number of students reach good paying successful careers!
We love working with the CASA ministry! This 2023 snowbird season we have chosen to work the entire 3 months with CASA. When not working with CASA we enjoy RV park activities, coffee and happy hour with our friends, shuffleboard games for Wendell and for Deb, hours of quilting with her friends.
On the December 26th, 2022, with lots of help from family, we packed away the Christmas decorations, pulled the camper out of the snowbank and loaded the camper with everything needed for our winter escape from cold and snow. Wendell tends to be the worry wart in our family when it comes to winter travel with the trailer! So, he was really nervous about the challenges of avoiding winter complications loading the camper and driving 2000 plus miles to our winter paradise in Yuma, AZ. But with Deb's ever needed encouragement and hard work it has been a great experience! No travel problems. Great roads and even greater temperatures once we got out of South Dakota! Just a lot of windshield time as Deb recently stated.
We stopped in Claycomo, MO to enjoy a short visit with Dillion and Mackenzie. They are busy with life and jobs, so it was pizza at the motel. We so enjoyed the time catching up with their busy life.
From Claycomo we traveled west to Topeka and then down to Wichita. In Wichita we picked up US 54 ending up for the night in Guymon, OK. When traveling Deb does a great job of researching places to stay. We usually stay in Motels until it is safe to put water in the camper. Speaking of campers, ours has served us well. This is the 6th year it has made the trip to Arizona.
The only reason we needed a picture of the camper this year was because the Tucson campground we are staying at needs a photo of any camper over 10 years old! So, Deb took the picture, but our friends who we were stopping in Tucson to see vouched for us!
Tucson, AZ was our first extended stop. Tucson is where our friends Tim and Cindy Klein are on extended assignment as caregivers for their now 5-month-old granddaughter, Mae. We spent a few days catching up on news, playing cards and celebrating the new year! After a wonderful time spent with the Kleins, we pushed on the short-day ride to Yuma.
We are comfortably settled into our space at Villa Alameda RV Resort. Our address is 3547 South Ave. 5 E, Lot 140, Yuma, AZ 85365. Most of this week has been spent setting up the camper, fixing little things that always seem to pop up when you have an older camper, etc. Wendell took a brief trip over the border with Curt VE to San Luis, Mexico on Thursday to check out the Mission home and bring some donated items across the border. Keep us in your thoughts and prayers.
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