Haven't posted since February... oops!
I'm finding it difficult to write as often as I'd like or to even begin to articulate everything we've been through in the last few months. We get the standard questions all the time... "how is life on the road?", "do your kids like it?", "How is life different in an RV?...
The answer to those questions changes on a seemingly daily basis. We have good days and bad. When we don't force ourselves to get outside everyday things can get pretty rough. If we're cooped up for a few days because of bad weather and the kids are close to killing each other we we're not exactly stoked to be living in 300 sqft. When we miss Church one weekend, or are just struggling to make connections, or just need a friend to talk to, or haven't been reading our Bibles & praying enough, we can get down in the dumps pretty quick.
But enough with the doom & gloom. On the other hand, life on the road is awesome. No, seriously. We've been able to see and experience so many amazing things. We've been able to visit family and old friends and so much more. The ability to pick up your whole house and move it is pretty liberating. One friend described our family as "agile". That part is pretty sweet.
I think one of the reasons that we've been struggling on and off for the last few weeks is that we've been staying in the Denver area and been leading a semi-normal life. Translation: we've been crazy busy with appointments, work and responsibilities and trying to do that while living in the RV has been really difficult. When we leave CO in a couple of weeks it's going to be bittersweet. We're going to miss family and friends again, but we're really looking forward to getting back to our normal RV family schedule.
Bare Necessities
There is something about stripping your life down to the bare necessities that is good for the soul. Is it annoying to have to figure out where we're going to laundry this week? Totally. But at the same time it makes us incredibly thankful that we have enough quarters to even do it or that we have so many clothes that we don't even have to do laundry every week. Simplifying your life has a way of making you thankful for the little things. We're thankful that we get to spend so much time with our kids every day. We're thankful that we have food in our bellies (too much actually), a roof over our heads, warm beds, money for propane, gas, etc, etc, etc.
We've been meeting a lot of families lately that have been taking the plunge to simplify their lives. We had the opportunity to have 2 families over for dinner while we've been in Colorado that are both actively planning to greatly strip down... one family is planning to live in an RV like us and the other wants to build a tiny house. It's inspiring to meet families that want to get out of debt, spend more time together, and live more intentionally.
Life Update
In terms of an update on where we've been & where we're going you can visit our schedule page for the specifics. The basic plan is to head back out to the west coast in June/July for a big family trip to Catalina and my sister's wedding in July. Then, we plan to make our way out to the east coast for the fall.
As some of you know, we've been kicking around the idea of buying a house in the mountains above Canon City, CO. The idea would be to have a sort of home base that we could come back to every couple of months. We've been trying to figure out if it would be better to wait until later this year or do something in the next couple of months. There is a half-finished log cabin that we fell in love with that would require a few months of work that we are still thinking about. The goal would be to have it done by the fall of this year. The current plan is to see if we can qualify for a construction loan on the cabin and if not wait until the end of the year.
In terms of Agape Bags, we've never been busier. In fact we're going to have to do a separate post to go over all the cool things that have been happening. We've been able to distribute 750 bags since February!!
Please Pray!
Life on the road can be really fun and exciting but really lonely too. Being in Colorado has made us realize how many people love and care about us out here. There were key people that encouraged us during our most difficult days. You know who you are! Our number one prayer request is that we can continue to find fellowship on the road and be faithful to reach out to family and friends to keep those relationships going. Even though we don't consider ourselves missionaries, we totally know how they feel in terms of craving fellowship!
Other prayer requests:
- Praise: The annual homeschool testing for the girls went really well! It was a huge encouragement to see their progress.
- Praise: We've been getting bombarded with Agape Bags activity. Orders, Church events, etc. It's exciting to see what God is doing!
- Praise: The Christian Real Estate Network has been crazy busy. April was a record month in terms of referrals assigned to Christian agents since our re-launch in 2010. God is changing our hearts to view this as the ministry it is. It has the added benefit of supplementing our income. It's an amazing blessing and we're excited to see what's going to happen this year.
- Request: That we would finish this homeschool year strong. We officially only have 4 more weeks!
- Request: That we would follow God's leading on the timing to settle down into a house. Specifically that we would have wisdom regarding the log cabin we're considering right now.
- Request: That God would open up doors for Agape Bags throughout the west coast as we travel through the area in June & July.
Thanks for reading this very long post. Sorry for the delay in getting it out.
If you want to take a look at some of our recent pictures, here are a couple of links:
Much Love,
The Smiths
