Are we there yet?

Yesterday we did get there--to a Baptist camp near Edinburg, Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley. We had been travelling for 11 days, and 5,500 km. The first 5 days were familiar territory, and the roads good except for an icy stretch in southern Montana and Idaho. New Year's Day was spent in the desert with our friends in Yuma. On Jan 2 I swam in an outdoor pool in Benson, AZ.
Then up into the area near El Paso called Hueco Tanks State Park. Young people were climbing the boulder hills, armed with foam pads to fall onto if they lost their footing. It was 0 degrees Celcius the next morning! The next day it was -5 C in a place called Ozona. Western Texas was so barren I called it an alien place. In the middle of the night when I can't sleep, I often repeat familiar Scriptures. Psalm 23 reminded me that the God of the green pastures and the still waters was still with me.

Our birder friend, Gary, told us of a sight we shouldn't miss. We waited at a certain stoplight in a nearby town for 5:00pm. Precisely on time, hundreds of green parakeets congregated on the wires! They come from Mexico; what makes them arrive at that exact location, at that same intersection, just to roost on those wires? On a microwave tower back at the camp, what a sight to see hundreds of turkey vultures roosting at twilight. We 10 SOWER couples are huddled quietly together in our RVs, like so many sheep, under the mesquite trees . The pasture isn't green, and there is no body of water, but God is here.