Friends

Its Thursday morning and we are in Houston, we'll be leaving later today for Pensacola, after it warms up a little. It is below freezing here, but it is suppose to warm up later. We spent 3 nights in Liberty Hill in Alex and Nicole Dossey's driveway. The weather was real nice the first two days there, but it got cold, so we had to move on. We had a great time there, the Dosseys were wonderful hosts and made us feel at home. Their children, Olivia (6), Autumn (4) and Carter (11 mos) were fun to be around, the girls reminded us of Andrea's Naomi and Daphne, and Carter is just a happy little guy crawling all around. Nicole is a lot like Andrea and they are the same age, we had great time there with them and they let us use their vehicles to visit other friends in the area. We were able to visit Lloyd and Sue Hodges and see their ranch. I got to go have coffee with Wade and we solved a lot of the world's problems, now if they"ll just listen to us. Later we had dinner with the rest of Wades family, Heather, Caleb and Elijah and the Dosseys at what was supposed to be one of the best bar-b-cue joints in Austin. I don't know if it is the best, but I do know that if I lived closer I would weigh a lot more.

A couple of months ago when we were planning this trip D'Linda started trying to locate some old friends we had lost track of. Pam and Gregg Stewart were close friends when they lived in Bellingham in the 80's, they moved to the Dallas area in 1989. We had visited them there a couple of times and they had been back to Bellingham once, but we new they had moved and we hadn't been in touch for a few years. D'Linda had searched the web and hadn't had much luck. She even asked our son Scott who works for Google to look, but we couldn't find their trail. About a week or so ago she managed to find a Clayton Stewart, who she thought might be their youngest son, on Facebook. She sent him a message and a couple days later he responded and said he remembered us and that his folks would be glad to hear from us. We waited, but he didn't get back, so D'Linda sent him another message, but no response. The day before we were going to leave Liberty Hill D'Linda started to search more, she got on Clayton's page and found he had a Ryan and Gregg Stewart as friends and messaged both of them and they responded almost immediately with a phone number. She called and was able to talk to Pam. They were both so excited, and they lived in Spring Texas, just north of Huston. We would have driven within 20 miles of their home the next day. We have been at their house for the last two days and it has been great catching up. Their sons are all grown up and all men of character. Brandon (30) is a junior high history teacher and football coach. Ryan (26) is a personal trainer and shares an appartment in Allen Tx with Brandon. Clayton (22) is attending Abilene Christian U studying to be a youth minister. We saw a video of a sermon he gave last year and it was very good, he also plays guitar and sings songs he writes. We saw a video of him singing one of his songs, he has a very good voice. I was able to talk to Clayton on the phone and invited him to come to Bellingham and preach for us this summer, he has plans, but said he would love to come back and see his birthplace. I'll keep working on him, I figure if he does come then Pam and Gregg will have to come and visit. They are all very handsome, and to Pam's chagrin single. If anyone out there has daughters or nieces that are women of character give Pam a call, she would really like some grandchildren. I remember the boys as wild blurs, maybe Jamie can identify with that, but they have grown into real men of character. We heard some stories that prove that Pam and Gregg's pride in them is justified. They kept offering to show us the sights of Houston, and I'm sure Houston has some great sights, but we came to see them not the sights. This whole trip we haven't seen to many sights, but we have been able to visit with a lot of friends and I think that has been more fun. If you have someone you've lost track of I recommend hunting them down, it is great catching up, good friends are what makes life valuable.

We are off to visit friends in Pensacola we met last year in Israel, Tracy and Roy and their beautiful daughters. Their oldest daughter is at college in Alabama, she is smart along with being a woman of character. You know, Tracy and Pam are both southern girls, they speak the same language and Roy and Gregg would get along great, maybe I'll try to do a little matchmaking