Good Neighbors

One great thing about living in the "boondocks" is the quality of your neighbors. Our nearest neighbors live about 1/2 a mile down the road and have always been available if we need them for anything. In return, we also make ourselves available to them.

Almost a year ago (August 10), we moved to this place. We came hauling up the dirt road with our two ancient pick-up trucks, one pulling a HUGE trailer with all of our stuff. (When we left Utah to move back east, we got rid of about half of our belongings, but we still had a lot of "stuff"! I've been gradually weeding through all of it with the desire to only have things we will use regularly and one box of "keepsakes". This is a big chore!)

Anyway, back to my story...

We finally got to the driveway...about 5 hours after leaving my in-laws place in PA...and we got stuck. The driveway is short, but steep! We just couldn't get enough "umph" out of the old Ford (pulling the trailer) to get it up that last hill!

Luckily, the lady we bought the house from (who is a very good friend of ours today) was still there unloading all of her "stuff" (and she had much more than us!) into a moving truck, so she called another neighbor from down the road that owns a tractor. Even though he had just stopped working and begun eating dinner, he dropped everything and came down to our place to pull us up that driveway! And he didn't even know us!

I am so thankful that the Lord provides for us in ways we cannot predict. I don't know what we would have done if the previous owner hadn't been here that night or the neighbors hadn't been all that friendly. It would have taken us hours to unload our things and drag them up that driveway one by one!

Last week, our neighbor came to our home one morning carrying gifts for the children. Her mother (whom I have never met) made the two little ones teddy bears and my son a pillow. I was blown away by this! I'm sure these took hours to make and she was so kind to give them to my children. I took this picture so that she could see the kids with their gifts:

Jack's bear is bigger than he is!

Then, just a couple days ago, the same neighbor brought my daughter some toys and some clothes that she found, just when she was beginning to outgrow everything she has! What a blessing!

It seems everywhere we go (and we've moved around a lot), the Lord has blessed us with "family", even when our own parents and siblings have been so far away. He is so good!

'Til next time...
Brandi