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Hello again. It's been a long time. I want to catch up on all the events of the past few months. We have been busy to say the least.

We left Cyprus in May this year. We traveled to the United States before TSA got weird. After visiting with relatives in Texas and Louisiana for a few weeks, our household goods shipment finally arrived and we were able to make the long drive to Missouri. We arrived in Kirksville on June 19th, and started the long process of moving to our land.

First we camped in Thousand Hills State Park. It was lovely, but two weeks was a long camping trip! We met some great people, even a Russian woman from Kyrgyzstan. We were waiting for our water line and our electric service to be installed. This took a couple of weeks.

On July the 1st, we finally moved our tents to the land. Happy day!!! We were still camping, but we were on our own place. July 4th was our day for pouring the footings for our cabin. We wrote Scriptures on all the big posts, and prayed for God's blessing on our little home.

All went well until the second half of July. Michael began to feel sick and was in a lot of pain in his stomach area. He rested and he worked, until he couldn't stand it anymore. We went to a doctor, and he sent Michael to a surgeon. It happened to be a bad gall bladder that was about to burst. Since we had no insurance, we were floored by the cost the hospital quoted. We wondered if it were better to die than to be in debt for years. The doctor insisted that if the gall bladder wasn't removed immediately it could burst and cause gangrene and Michael's life would end much too early.

We went through with the operation, and then we had to check into a budget motel for a week to recover. Our cabin was put on hold. We lost two weeks of work time, but it was August and terribly hot.

One day while in town I stopped at a friend's store and told her about this new development. She said we should just move into the apartment on the upstairs floor of her store until Michael was on his feet and the cabin was finished. So we did. It is a consignment shop right downtown. This has been an interesting journey.

Meanwhile, back at the land, we were stuck since we needed help in a major way to put on the roof. One Saturday I went shopping at the local downtown farmer's market and met an Amish looking lady who told me her husband did handyman work. I told her we needed help. They went to their church group and the whole bunch decided to come out and help. We had a roof raising, and they also got the sheathing on the outside. What an incredible blessing!

I will post again soon and continue this saga. For now, we are humbled by the process.

Aimee