Hey, there, everyone! We had the opportunity to go to Henrietta, New York last Friday. The trip had a three-fold purpose. 1) We needed to open a U.S. bank account, so that when we are in the States, we will be able to cash cheques when needed. No problem. I just needed my passport and SS#. 2) We needed to get a cell phone # to put on our prayer cards so that we could get the cards sent off to be printed. That was accomplished, and the Lord answered our prayer in a great way. I will write more about that further down in the blog. 3) We wanted to take our annual trip there to see our good friend and missionary Jim Arnold. He is the field coordinator for West Africa with Independant Gospel Missions. When we first met him and two of his daughters, they were on furlough. Alan had just been hired on at FBC as full-time pastor. He allowed us to pick his brain, and he taught us how to treat a missionary. We asked so many questions about what we should expect from our missionaries, and what they expected from us. It was a great learning experience. His daughters at the time were still young (ages 8 and 10, I think), but boy, were they ever a great help to us. I had two little ones, and they just did a great job of helping to entertain them. I will never forget them for all that they taught us. So we have continued to stay great friends with him and we love his family dearly.

About the cell phones. We needed to get them from the States because their plans for coverage in North America are cheaper. So we stop at the Verizon store, and the nice lady answers all of Alan's questions. But she goes on to tell us, that our depost will probably be $400-$500. I forget the exact reason for the high deposit, other than the fact that we live in Canada, and really don't have much of a credit report in the States. So she goes on to try to sell a phone. Well, I think "Feere" is French for "free". We only wanted the free cell phones, which they do not do there in their little store. Alan said that we could get them online for free, so she encouraged us to do that. Then we go to Best Buy, where the young man there is very friendly and very knowledgable about his job. The only thing is that he had never heard of the kind of plan we wanted, so he did a lot of talking to head office. He was VERY patient! Then he goes to get us phones that we want, the FREE kind. He says to us, "Because you have to use your passport and SSN as a form of i.d., your deposit will most likely be around $500. I have never put in an application using a passport where the deposit was not a high one." I look at Alan, because I know that there is NO way we were going to pay that kind of deposit! So Alan says, "Can you just run the application and see how far we can go before a deposit shows up?" So the fella says, "Yeah, I can do that!" The Lord pushed it through! All the way, with NO deposti!! The young man was VERY surprised, but we knew Who was in control!