Destination Experience Compassion Conference: Day 7

The last day of vacation and it would involve about 12 hours of driving...yikes!

We left Utah really early in the morning. The kids were great about getting up, geting things re-packed, and helping out since this was the fourth morning of early morning rising to prepare for a long day of driving.

There was quite a bit of rain as we were driving through Utah and we even saw this double rainbow!

One of the rainbows even stretched from one side of the freeway to the other! We don't usually see this type of weather at home in the summer time unless we head up into the mountains, so we were easily delighted to enjoy the rain, the clouds, and the rainbows.

We stopped in St. George, Utah to fill up the gas tank and get a morning treat at Starbucks ($5 gift card was a blessing!), and let Matthew have a chance to drive us part of the way home. He ended up driving us all the way from St. George, Utah to Barstow, California. About 275 miles which brought us out of Utah, through the corner of Arizona, across the bottom corner of Nevada, and into California. Since he was driving, I was able to take a picture of this sign...

 ...as we were driving through Las Vegas...

...and this sign as we arrived back in California!

As we were driving across the Mojave Desert, I took a picture of the Joshua Trees along the side of the road. I thought this might be a good picture to share with our Compassion kids since these trees are so different. Maybe they have something like them near their home.

After all that driving Matthew did, we were all ready for a break from the car. So after eating lunch at one of the biggest In-n-Out Burgers we have ever been to, and filling up the car again with gas, we were in for the home stretch. The home stretch was over 5 hours of driving still! California really is a huge state!

We arrived home in time to unload the car, treat our house sitter to dinner, and relax at home after being gone for a week. Since Matthew starts college in 2 weeks, this was a wonderful opportunity to take a family vacation together.

So where did you take your family vacation this year?

Destination Experience Compassion Conference: Day 6

So after a long day of driving the day before to get us back into south-western Utah, we packed up our lunches and headed over to Bryce Canyon National Park.

I think it is great that many of the National Parks have a camera stand near the entrance sign. Makes it so much easier to get a group photo using the self-timer on your camea rather than waiting or relying on other people to take your picture.

We stopped in at the Visitor's Center to pick up the Junior Ranger booklet for Kelsey. Since we had time before the ranger talk we were going to attend, we stopped at one of the points along the rim for our first glance at the canyon. Just absolutely amazing! We were blessed with an overcast day which made for even more dramatic colors.

Almost doesn't even look real!

Another rare photo of all four of us!

This little guy was quite popular with all the photographers

For part of the Junior Ranger badge, Kelsey had to listen to a ranger talk. This one was on geology.

After lunch, we decided to hike down into the canyon on one of the easier loops. Kelsey was a little concerned. Last year, when we were at the Grand Canyon, one of the rangers scared her about getting too close to the rim. We encouraged her along and she ended up loving the hike!

Certainly not as deep as the Grand Canyon, but it made for a great hike for our family

Look at that smiling face!

Down in the canyon

Time to climb up out of the canyon

So many different rock formations!

The climb up out of the canyon seemed to take longer than the hike down, but then there were so many photo opportunities along the way!

Getting closer to the top

Yay! We made it!

We still had to walk along the rim to get back to our car, so just a few more photos along the way.

Every now and then we saw a spark of lightning, but I couldn't catch it with my camera.

It was now starting to rain so we drove out to the end of the park. Along the rim of the canyon, there are many stop points to view and take pictures. Some of these points are also the beginning of hiking loops down into the canyon. Because of the rain, and the fact that we already hiked over 3 miles that day, we just tried dodging the rain drops and get pictures along the way.

Yellow wildflowers growing along the rim of the canyon

An arch!

One last amazing view

Great job Kelsey doing all that work for the Junior Ranger badge!

After a pizza dinner in a little town by the campground, we headed back for a early night to bed. Tomorrow morning would be an early one to start our long drive back home. Good night Utah!

Destination Experience Compassion Conference: Day 5

We decided to start our day with a good breakfast at Cracker Barrel before hitting the road. We don't have any of these restaurants near our home and since we had $10 in gift cards, this was a great morning to have one breakfast out on our trip.

For most of the day, we were heading west on the main interstate. Once we were back in Utah, the Google directions I had printed out at home put us on Highway 24, then eventually Highway 12. Little did I know that Highway 12 is one of the most scenic routes in the United States. (Scenic route usually means long winding road!)

 We started to see a glimpse of what we might see the next day at Bryce National Park.

 Love all the layers of colors

 We stopped at one point because I saw a sign along the road that said 'Petroglyphs'. Can you see them?

 Didn't know we were driving through National Park grounds, so we stopped to peek in the visitor center and pick up a Junior Ranger book for Kelsey.

 Just north of the visitor center

 Since it is monsoon season, we had quite a bit of rain along our drive

 We learned later that we had driven through the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. This area is 1.7 million acres of a territory of multicolored cliffs, plateaus, mesas, buttes, pinnacles, and canyons.

We were so glad to finally arrive at the KOA we would be staying at for the next couple of nights! Next stop, Bryce Canyon National Park!



Destination Experience Compassion Conference: Day 4

The big day had finally arrived!

After months of planning and 2 full days of driving, we would be spending the whole day at the Global Ministry Center for Compassion International!

On the way to the entrance of the building, this statue was my favorite.

Great reminder, right on the walls of the building!

Even though we were in for a full day, we arrived a little early so we could walk around the building a little bit. On this wall is a huge world map with highlights from each of the 26 countries where Compassion works.

This is the room where we spent most of the day with about 200 other attendees of the conference.

Matthew went up on stage before the room was filled, he looks pretty comfortable up there... :o)

Grant Norsworthy led us in worship to start off the conference

Then Innocent Mucunguzi welcomed us and thanked all of us for our volunteer work with Compassion. He challenged each one of to "sacrifice 5 minutes to write to your sponsored children. Sharing with them is caring."

After Innocent spoke, we were all off on a quick tour of the building. My favorite part was this mock up of a project center. There was a big screen at the front of the room with children singing. There were so many little details in here. I just have to go back so I can spend more time looking around.

Once we arrived back in the conference, we were able to take part in one very special treat!

This is a Skype session with GU930, a child developement center project in Guatemala. Since they are in the same time zone as Colorado Springs, they were able to get up, practice, and be ready for our 11am worship time together. We had a great time singing along with them! (I was really hoping to upload a video, but after waiting way too long, you will have to make do with a picture. Sorry!)

One of the most important things I came away with is that our sponsored children want contact with us. For the kids who receive letters regularly, their self-confidence is higher. Our letters do not release these children from poverty, but our letters give them hope. The little bit of time that we spend writing letters to our kids can produce a big outcome.

This was an amazing day I was able to spend here with my family!