We finished visiting all the communities we wanted to Wednesday afternoon. The weather out here has been cold – below normal for the month of March. Hence, we didn’t spend as much time “on the ground” as we originally planned. However, thanks to many hands both likely and unlikely, I believe we saw what we needed to see.

We tried to reschedule our stay at my sister’s place in Edmonton a day early since things were progressing so quickly, but then I learned why she had not been responding – she has had the flu for a week. When I finally learned what was going on, she was staying at my Mom’s place because she couldn’t even watch her 2 year old daughter she was so sick. She is in good hands over there though. My Mom is a pretty good nurse when it comes to colds and flu.

So, the backup plan was instead of staying overnight in the Edmonton area, we hightailed it back to Red Deer – which was only an hour and a half south anyway. That’s another neat thing about Alberta – everything is pretty close.

On the way south after seeing Spruce Grove and Stony Plain, we stopped for dinner at White Spot! Heh. They’ve even expanded out here. We prayed and looked at the material we had for the top two, and God brought us to a consensus. The deciding factors were definitely not on our list before we left so this trip was absolutely worth it.

So that was the good news. The bad news…

Cheryl was grateful that we would have another extra day to rest up as she was getting uncomfortable in the long rides. Being at her parents’ place that helped too. So we visited her grandmother yesterday afternoon and had a great dinner of Roast Buffalo(!) and went to bed, planning to leave today.

You might ask, “What is Shane doing up at 4am posting a blog entry?”  The answer would be Cheryl and her youngest brother Sasha waking up at 4am (Mountain) and throwing up into buckets.  Now they are both occupying different couches with buckets beside their heads and not feeling at all well.

So now the challenge, in addition to about 30 total centimeters of snow that has fallen on us since we got out here (don’t know if more fell last night or not – I haven’t checked), we have the challenge of waiting for this sickness to pass.  Which puts us…

Right back on schedule.  If we leave tomorrow morning, that is what we planned all along.

In our heart we may have planned this trip, but the Lord has definitely determined our steps! (Proverbs 16:9)