Collections....

I have one final trip memory that I want to share, and (since I get to write all I want and do all these posts from my point of view) I thought I'd be fair and ask the rest of my family for what their favorite memory of the trip was, too. So here goes:

Matthew - fishing and (when I pressed him for a bit more) Amish country

Monica - going dress shopping (with the bride-to-be Aunt Helaine), family reunions, and Jungle Speed (new cool game from Scotland - thank you, Sheena!)

Zachery - everything but riding in the car (wow, don't I agree with that!)

Logan - the pond (in Indiana) and seeing friends

Alana - catching frogs, riding bikes, and backing up the trailer (hey, I'm just writing what she told me!)

Jesse - monster trucks and lady bugs (personally, I don't remember seeing either of those two things at any time....but they were still his favorite)

And now for mine - only since it has a story that goes with it, it will be longer than the others=) One Sunday evening we went to a small church in Charlotte, Maine. We'd never been there before and we didn't know anyone, including the pastor. However, he is a friend of Matthew's dad so, because of that connection, we were able to go and present NTI at that church. As he usually did Matthew introduced the 6 other members of his family sitting in our pew - typically 3 or 4 back from the front on the left hand side - and mentioned that I was the daughter of Dave and Joy Rozelle. After he spoke and presented the mission the pastor raised his hand with a couple questions and the third one was this, "Who is your wife's father?"
Matthew looked at me as he started to respond, "Well, um..." and I turned in my seat to tell him that "Eric Rozelle was my father, but now..."
Before I could finish his face lit up with a smile, "You're Eric's daughter! I went to school (New Brunswick Bible Institute) with your dad. He was one of the greatest men I ever met!"
All I could do was smile real big=). After the meeting was over and most people had gone home I mentioned to him that I didn't run into many people any more who remembered my dad. He said, and I quote, "I'm not making this up, your dad was the cream of the crop. Whether he was in the classroom or around the campus he was an amazing man. He was the first one of our classmates that the Lord took home." (As I've mentioned before my dad was only 31 when he died).
As we were loading up into the vehicle Matthew thanked Pastor Bill Hunt for having us and he answered and said, "Knowing you were Bob Chamberland's son was good enough for me, but if I had know that your wife was Eric's daughter the doors would have been open in a heart beat, no questions asked."
Wow, there will only be a few select people who read this who can truly understand what this whole experience meant to me! My dad was an amazing godly man, whose lack of physical presence in my life hasn't meant that I don't feel the load on my shoulders of following in the footsteps of a known servant of the Lord.

So, that's my favorite memory from the trip!