JOURNEY #2

 Long about the year 2006, my husband felt impressed that we were going to leave our long-time residences in Bakersfield, California, to another state. But we didn’t know which one, so we searched out probably ten different states such as Nevada, Arizona, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Utah, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, and some others. We finally narrowed it down to Idaho, after considering factors such as rainfall, population, crime rate, cost of living, et cetera.

In the meantime, continually a Bible verse came to me:  Genesis 12:1 – “Get thee out of thy country, and away from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will show thee.”   Originally, God was speaking to Abram but was using this verse multiple times— time after time after time to MOVE US!   I heard it on the radio, in church services, in random Bible verses, et cetera.

Finally, one day in 2008 I said to the Lord, “Lord, you know how thick-headed I am… even though I’ve probably heard this 99 times –I’ll probably have to have it on something as big as a billboard to actually know this is from you!”   

 And I kid you Not –-three (3) days later, just a couple blocks from our Granite Street home …on Pacheco Road, in Bakersfield, California, there was a BILLBOARD with GENESIS 12:1 on it!!  Oh, how I wish I’d had a camera with me that day.

 My husband saw it first and exclaimed, “Look honey!”  Of course, my mouth dropped open. We then both agreed: That’s it!  When we returned home from our errands, we went ahead home and finished packing. Since we had been planning for two years to move somewhere, much packing had already been done.

Accordingly, we put our house on Granite Street up for sale on the market, and eventually, we got a solid buyer.  This was a miracle in itself, because looking back to the housing crisis of 2008, we actually received full market value for our home.  Wow!

Since we had decided, with the Lord’s help of course, that we were moving to Idaho, we loaded up all of our stuff– lots and lots of stuff!  We then headed North.  And right after we crossed the border from Nevada into Idaho, we received a call from our realtor announcing, “Escrow on your house on Granite Street just closed!” 

Hallelujah!  what a blessing that was! 

We did not have a house, or anything lined up in Idaho, except for the fact that we had one friend Wayne B, who lived in Twin Falls.  We ended up in a campground– almost like Abram and pitched our tent. But our “tent” was many tents!  We had “Sunny”– our motorhome, a tent trailer, large utility trailers, a car, a truck. Needless to say, we had helpers to drive and pull vehicles. We had three small children, ages– 5, 7 and 10– a small dog, and a very timid cat. We stayed at Rock Creek Campground until we found a somewhat suitable house, a manufactured home about a month later. (The gracious camp hosts allowed us to park our extra vehicles in an overflow area.  Boy, did we ever offer overflow!  LOL! 🤪)  The Lord blessed us as school had already started, and the weather was becoming very cool. 

 We were able to move into our NEW HOME two days early in September 2008– on my birthday!  Sweet! 

We lived there about 4 years and then moved two more times within Twin Falls, Idaho.