32- Stay Home and Be Safe or Forge Ahead

After a short and sweet honeymoon in Santa Barbara, and time with my family, we returned to the little brick house in Reno. We continued attending our church, and Dottie organized a wonderful wedding reception for us in a park. Dan worked at his construction job, and we prepared for our adventure. After a few weeks, I began to feel symptoms of pregnancy! When I went to see my MD, he calculated that I had become pregnant on the third day of the honeymoon. We were ecstatic. We had given our family planning to the Lord, and His grace flowed to us to celebrate.

My mother, Grayce, felt we should change our plans and not go overseas. She was concerned that since I was 33, I might have a high-risk pregnancy and might not be able to find a doctor I could communicate with. Being a worrier myself, I took her seriously.

Dan’s mom, Beth, on the other hand, was a globetrotter! When she was a child, she and her sister and her mother had traveled on a ship from NY to LA in the 1940’s, via the Panama Canal. She had recently returned from several years of living in Pakistan, Honduras, and Senegal, an African country, with her husband who was an American engineer who built dams. She talked about the pioneer women crossing the great plains and the treacherous Sierras. I did not think of the ladies who died and were buried along the way, but I caught the vision of assessing the possibilities for misfortune but taking courage for the adventure. We forged ahead with our plans.

Dan and I had already practiced the ‘forging ahead principle’ when we chose to walk by faith in Jesus into our relationship.

The school strictly limited our baggage, so I took only the maternity clothes that I borrowed from my sister Marsha. My mom bought me another outfit, and a warm coat that could grow with me.

We said tearful goodbyes to our friends and family in Reno and Oxnard, and flew away into our first wild adventure.

We did not know that in another year and a half we would be flying with Timmy to visit missionaries in Japan for six weeks–with me pregnant with Steve!

We did not know that another year after that,while I was pregnant with Mark, Dan would be building a solar home for us.

We did not know that a couple of years after that, when Danny was two years old, we would be driving across the country to upstate New York to attend yet another Bible School.

sold-out