Packing

What do you do when you are so sick of packing and eliminating and sorting and bubble-wrapping and duct-taping?

Voila!  Have Aunt Carolyn come up from Rolly!

Carolyn, who attended RVA back in the day, and served alongside her husband, Paul Koning as a dorm parent at RVA in 2007, is an amazing woman of God who has greatly encouraged me since I decided to go.  She has a lot of practical wisdom to give, as well as a boatload of faith.  I have been so blessed by her Facebook messages and e-mails and phone calls this summer…obviously, because she lived at RVA, there is a very real connection that we made from the start, because I am going there.  But, also, her mother-in-law, Gertie, was my Oma’s sister.  So, it has been fun to recount memories of the “Van Leeuwen Sisters.”

Anyways, at the beginning of July, she called me and asked if she and the family could come up from NC to visit and help me pack before I left.  So, last weekend, they did just that!  Boy, was I grateful for their help.  I told Carolyn and Paul, “Ok, I’m going to point to each item, and you can just say “Yes” or “No.”  Needless to say, my piles of “things to take” were a whole lot smaller than when we first started.  Thank you, Paul and Carolyn, for coming!