At the Gresh's!

Our last night at First UMC of Cocoa Beach was a memorable one.  We attended a Bible Study led by Pastor Melissa that focused on the same theme the Sunday School class had yesterday, which was also on the message, which came from Adam Hamilton’s book ‘No Silent Night’.  The discussion was great.  But greater than that was meeting a friend of an old friend.

Some 15 years ago David Potts, his wife Lori, and daughter Amanda became Methodist Missionary Society (a non United Methodist missionary sending body) missionaries to Kazakhstan.  They served there with Teen Challenge in very difficult circumstances among Muslims, many of whom were radicalized fundamentalists.

David became ill and died and is buried there.  His wife and daughter returned to the states and Lori became the Director of Eastern Pennsylvania Conference connected Methodist Society work.  Hope Church sent some support to them for years.

Last night we met George Steele. George was an associate and friend of the Potts’ and was there when David died.  I no longer have contact information for the Potts family, but if anyone does, please send them this picture of George.  He would love to be remembered to them.

We also learned that a retired pastor and former visitation pastor of Lititz UMC, Derwood Strunk, made FCCBUMC his home church every time he would come south for the winter to Florida.  It IS a small world Mr. Disney!

Speaking of small worlds, after departing Cocoa Beach we stopped at Coastal RV and had Doug adjust our new water pump so it ran smoothly then drove the 80 miles or so west to Kissimmee, Florida to meet the Gresh’s, who live not 15 minutes from the south entrances to Disney World.

Chad, Jill, Gabriel, Jaeden and Sydney moved here from Reading and Hope Church  1 ½ years ago.  And they came here to Central Florida specifically because they wanted to live in the center of Disney’s magical world. And boy do they!  They have 365 day passes each year to almost everything WDW has to offer.  AND they have discovered countless other FREE ways to enjoy the resorts, transportation systems and surrounding wonders of Disney-anna to keep adjacent costs low to zero for their                             family of five.

Chad is a teacher/administrator in a grade 5-8 middle school in the Osceola County system and Jill is an operating room nurse in the neurological department of the Orlando Regional Medical Center. Did you know that fully one quarter of the students in the Kissimmee Middle School are living in motels, or vehicles, or tents with their                                                   families or guardians? 

And I never knew that the Orlando area leads the US, as I understand it now, in vehicle-pedestrian head  trauma accidents and deaths. Too many tourists and locals trying to cross too many crowded 4-8 lane highways on foot. Shades of Rte 30 in Lancaster, County, Pa.

We parked FROG and TOAD in a very quiet parking lot behind the Cracker Barrel Restaurant next to the Antigravity Theater and across from Citrus World on route 192, the original Kissimmee tourist strip dating back to the 1940’s.  But behind us is a large, very quiet resort development and hotel.  And not another rig in the lot but us! Ah, silence!

We called Jill and she called Chad to say we were here and immediately invited us for dinner.

What a great evening we had!  Their home is lovely and they live in a nice neighborhood.  I’ll let them tell you about the cool stories of late night neighbor burials and HOA rules that will get you a ticket if you park the wrong way on the street but not if you park your Mack Tractor Truck in your home driveway between jobs. But then every community has its ‘stories’.

They have a cute little dog they have rescued through the pound and for the life of me I cannot remember her name!  Come on kids, help me out here!

These pics illustrate that the dog has more energy than all three kids put together, and they, let me tell you, have wonderful energy! And they LOVE their weekly AWANA classes.  They couldn’t wait to show me the Scripture texts they were memorizing this week.

We are hoping to spend more time with the Gresh’s while we are here.  They asked how long our plans allow us to be here.  And we could only answer, “plans?” 

But the Florida Keys are still calling.  Its going down to 50 degrees here tonight and we’re 200 miles north of Miami!

-Ken