"I am bound, I am bound, I am bound for the Promised Land"

In June 2011, Michael and I took a pilgrimage to the Holy Land with our beloved Wellshire Presbyterian Church in Denver. It took us 6 months and some tactful urging by Margaret Bell herself to realize that we could indeed leave the kids for 10 days, travel half-way across the world into the unrest of the Middle East, and live to tell about it. Oh, and then there was the cost....the PTO cost for Michael and the financial cost of the trip. But you can't take vacation days and money with you when you go, so we bit the bullet.

All grandparents and half of their aunts, uncles, and cousins chipped in to make our absence possible. Not knowing what Andrew would understand or comprehend about it, we didn't explain the trip to him until a couple of days before. But what was priceless was his song of choice during breakfast for the few weeks prior to our trip. Before even telling him, he started singing a church favorite each morning: "I am bound, I am bound, I am bound for the Promised Land". Over, and over, and over again he reminded us of what was to come----for us, anyway!

The trip was the experience of a lifetime, no doubt.  Only after going did we realize why John has made the effort to go nine times.  What a blessing that is!  Below is a link to the Shutterfly Album I created.  It is an extremely brief version of the journaling I did while we were there, but a good review of our trip.

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AZMmzhk1at2TCWg