Tuesday evening, the Mishues and the Rains arrived back in Charleston from our Bahamian adventure! It was probably the most relaxing vacation I've been on. On the way down to Florida to get on the Celebration cruise ship, we stopped in Savannah to shorten the trip and stayed with Granny Rains. We arrived in West Palm Beach, FL around lunch time the next day to board the ship. Our little trip consisted of what I like to call a mini-cruise (two nights) to the Grand Bahama Island and back and two nights at Our Lucaya resort. What I loved was that we basically had three days on a beautiful resort, but we still got to enjoy two nights of the fun cruise entertainment, games, and food.
Our Lucaya resort had beautiful white-sand beaches, several pools to lounge by, and best of all the resort was so spread out that at times it seemed like we were the only ones there! Across the street was Port Lucaya Market Place. This was neat, because I felt like we got to enjoy a bit of the Bahamian culture. We listened to some island singers and a conch expert tell us all about diving for their famous cuisine and the different ways they cook it (conch fritters, fried conch, conch hush puppies, conch burger, and conch salad).
Back on the ship, Bradley ate WAY too much food. Our Rains/Mishue team won "Name that Tune" and should have won "Friendly Feud"...I don't like losing:) We enjoyed the entertaining Cirque du Soleil show, magicians, and a comedian. Also, the whole trip (especially the long road trip back to Charleston) I had my nose stuck in a book. I use to read all the the time, but in the busyness of life the past few years have done it less and less. There are several books I have on my list to read this summer. At the beginning of the summer, I read Heaven is for Real by Todd Burpo. Presently, I'm reading Calm My Anxious Heart and What is the Gospel?. The book I read over our trip, is entitled The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. It's probably the first secular book I've read in years. I couldn't put it down! You may have heard of it, it's the first book in a pretty popular trilogy and the movie came out about a year ago. The book is pretty intense and deals with material similar to the tv show Cold Case. So, if you don't like graphic, mystery-type thrillers you probably shouldn't read this. The author did a wonderful job with the storyline. The book basically has three different stories going on and they all end up connecting--very entertaining to say the least. Oh, and I almost forgot we pretty much sang "knee deep in the water somewhere" the whole time...somehow we never got past that one sentence of the song.
Since Tuesday, we've been working on things for the upcoming year, mainly support. We will be traveling back & forth these next couple of weeks on our support raising journey and then returning to Panama on the 16th to wrap up Summer Beach Project.
Most exciting of anything that happened as of late is a special little girl we got to meet last night. Bradley and I met our dear friends Kaz and Amy's precious little girl! Annie Rice is a very special and beautiful 11 month old blessing. You can check out Amy's blog to read all about life with Annie Rice and their road to bringing her home. Bradley and I felt so joyful after leaving their home last night. They have prayed hard and stayed faithful that the Lord would bring them a child in the perfect timing. Annie Rice is more than perfect! She is extremely happy and most definitely already loved by so many!
