lost and found

Occasionally, when looking through the books that come into the library from our various donors, I find stuff that people have left in books, probably as bookmarks. I have found a couple of dollar bills, tissues, etc., but this is by far the best thing that I've found yet.

defeating small oil

Over the past few months Henderson Settlement has been in talks with a local oil company about the possibility of drilling oil on part of the 1600 acres here at the settlement. They were prepared to give a donation of $10,000 up front and a percentage (12.5) of profits, which would go to GBGM as they are the land owners and could choose to give us all or some or none. They would essentially build a road to the site of drilling and have tanks on site that a tractor trailer would come to daily...weekly depending on how much of a gusher it was.

Mike Tupper who is on the board took it upon himself to investigate the location itself, where an access road would have to go and spoke to other gas and oil companies about their operations and how this work progressed. He and I spoke many times about the benefits and drawbacks of this. As a self admitted tree hugger I was worried about contamination and what happens after the oil is gone or not worth drilling anymore. There were also questions of how much oil this would produce and its a gamble even according to the oil man.

In the end the board voted to not accept their offer after not much debate and a good argument put forward by Mike. So here is to defeating small oil and not taking 10 grand that we could really use at the expense of our land and community.

photos from Knoxville

Hi friends!

Eric and I went to Knoxville this past Saturday. I had to get my allergy shot, and Eric wanted to see a baseball game, so we wandered around downtown in the meantime. You can see our photos here--they're in the Knoxville album.

great finds

We haven't done this in a little while but here is the latest installment of great finds at the thrift store.

I found a vintage camera bag for Sarah, and her new camera even fits in it.

I found two shirts like this, western shirts with flowers and pearl buttons, Sarah likes them, so do I.

I found this jacket for the River Oaks Soccer Club, on the back it has embroidered the name Ambrosio, which makes me look like a great Italian soccer player.

camping in the wilderness

Last weekend Mike and I decided it would be a good night to hike into the mountains here at the Settlement and spend the night. We packed our tent and food for dinner and enough stuff to last us a week but we were going for less than 24 hours. With our packs loaded down we went out here. (The blue is our campsite, red is our apartment). We got there in time to see the sunset and then made some pizza sandwiches but Mike had forgotten the sauce so they were really like grilled cheese, but they were good anyway. It was nice to be so far away from everything and just relax out in the woods.

what's the plan?

We have talked to many of you about this, but for those who haven't been in on the discussions, here's what we've been thinking about and talking about:

We committed to spending a year at Henderson Settlement, and that year will be completed at the end of September. Although they'd like us to stay indefinitely (isn't that nice of them?), we're feeling like it's time to move on and time to be closer to what feels like our true home. Plus, our student loans are calling our names, and although they might be able to be pushed back, they won't go away on their own.

We've started applying for jobs in the Binghamton area, but we've not really heard anything yet. We've decided that we'll stay here 'til one of us finds something, so it's looking right now as if we'll be here past the end of September. Eric is determined to be back up north by Christmas, though, job or no job.

And the grand plan? Well, the long-term plan involves us both getting jobs, using one salary to live on and one to pay off the loans, and being pretty much free of debt in about five years (or less, depending on how things go). Then we hope to be able to back into full-time volunteer/mission work. The details of that are still in the very fuzzy stages, but we will be exploring some programs through the United Methodist Church and probably some others, as well.

So pray for us as we start this new leg of the journey. And let us know if you have any job leads!

oh, and....

I've updated our picture page again...this is current as of today!