Our Blessed Trip to Florida

Uncle Greg and Josiah

Here we are at Disney

The Lord blessed our trip to Orlando SO MUCH and we are so grateful! The Lord provided the money needed to go and then some! :o) When we arrived, we were blessed with our visit with Don's sister Michaelle and her sweet family. Don especially enjoyed spending a relaxing afternoon shopping and visiting with Michaelle. Don's Mom was there and we were able to spend time with her too, which was a huge blessing.
We stayed the first two nights with John and Michaelle, then we were able to stay at the beautiful Gaylord Palms Hotel for 7 days...we had fun at the AMTC competitions, swimming in their huge family pool with slide, etc. We also have some new friends who live near Disney World and they have 8 children. They came to visit with us and swim one day with 5 of their children and that was a lot of fun! We met so many wonderful people through AMTC and Don was honored by being picked to be one of 20 select men for their special Gospel choir. Don was also honored and flattered to have "Advantage Model and Talent of Nashville," invite him to sign a contract for representation.

We also were able to go to Holy Land Experience. Our favorite treat there, was seeing a live reinactment of "The Passion;" however, we missed the best part (The Scriptorium) because we were hot, tired and ready to go home! God blessed us unexpectedly with 8 FREE tickets to Disney World! We couldn't have worked that out if we'd tried! We only had to pay for a park-hopper pass for Josiah. John and Michaelle had two different friends who work at DW and they wanted to bless us with the tickets. Suffice it to say, we were very humbled, grateful and we had SO MUCH FUN! :o) We got to go to Animal Kingdom and Disney Hollywood Studio Parks! We were on our way to watch fire works at Epcot in the evening and were too tired, so we went to a wonderful Chinese restaurant, relaxed and filled our tummies with the delicious food.
I think our favorite time in Orlando was our few brief fun-filled hours at the beach. My friend Rachel gave us some wonderful tips on which beaches to go to, but for the sake of time, we opted to go to the closest one...Cocoa Beach, one evening. We had an exhililerating time of memory-making playing in the waves, digging our toes in the sand (we did that for you Melissa!), and watching dolphins swim by way out in the ocean. Thanks to Rachel's advice, we took baby powder with us that helped in getting all that sand off our bodies!
At the last minute, we found out we were going to get to meet my brother Greg and his wife Janice on our way home! They live in Kentucky and met us in Memphis for 3 days and two nights. Noah, Mary and I got to tour Graceland with them. My favorite part was Elvis' car museum. I couldn't believe how giving he was in giving so many vehicles away...he also had many vehicles he liked to play on, like a tractor! That night, we were able to go to a fun park and ride go-carts, bumper boats, and play games together. Uncle Greg and Josiah left the other drivers in the dust in the go-karts! Seeing Greg and Janice was the "icing on the cake" of our trip and it was truly a blessing to spend time with them.
God's timing in this trip was perfect! Nathan was able to save a small child from drowning in the pool at the Gaylord Palms. Also, we started planning this trip in March. Shortly thereafter, Don's sister Michaelle was diagnosed with breast cancer. We were all able to visit with Michaelle and her family at a time when it was really important for us to be there. In addition, John and Michaelle planned 6 mos. previously to go on a cruise to celebrate John's parents 50th wedding anniversary. God worked it out for them to be able to go on the cruise at the only possible time (right after Michaelle healed from surgery and the week before her chemo/radiation was to start...Praise the Lord!)
We are so grateful to all of you who helped us be able to go on this once-in-a-lifetime trip as a family! Many of you paid us for work we did for you, sponsoring the children in their reading, prayers and donations. We couldn't have done it without the Lord's blessing and without all of you.
Thank you from the bottom of our hearts...We love you,
Don, Lori, Nathan, Noah, Kaylee, Janna, Hannah, Faith, Josiah, Jonathan and Mary Ann - P.S .Thanks to all of you who sent cards to Don's sister, Michaelle. She's mentioned more than once what a blessing it was to hear words of encouragement from people she doesn't even know.