FOURTEEN WEEKS!

As I write this, I am sitting in my youngest daughter’s backyard enjoying a  glorious day.  We are in Winona, Minnesota. A beautiful little city nestled between bluffs to the west and the Mississippi river to the east.

Earlier this morning we drove out to  Prairie Island Campground which is in a Winona City Park located along the Mississippi river. This is a fairly large city park with a large campground. This campground has 107 water and electric sites and 68 primitive sites for a total of 175. Several of the sites are located right on the river. We wanted to see the campground and check on the site we have reserved for our first week of full time RV living. We are only 14 weeks away from  beginning our full time RV life.

This is getting real. When I think of all that still needs to happen before we launch this new lifestyle it is a bit overwhelming.

Two years ago we went through a major purging when we sold our house and prepared to move into a one-bedroom apartment so we could begin a simpler lifestyle. A few weeks ago we went to another “scaled down” purge when we donated a bunch of our stuff to our churches garage sale. But now I look around the apartment and see so much stuff that still needs to go and we are running out of time. We’ve got to get rid of this stuff!

I will turn 65 the first week on November. Because of this I’m investigating the best way to submit my application for Social Security. I will also need to apply for Medicare and  figure out my best option for supplemental plans. Mary will wait another six months to collect her Social Security and qualify for Medicare so we are also looking at the best options for her medical insurance.

Before all of that is done, we need the acquire a mailing address in South Dakota which will become our state of residency. I want to do this before all the Social Security stuff so that when we do it, we will already have our new “permanent”  address. We have decided to use Your Best Address in Sioux  Falls, South Dakota as our mail service. Sioux Falls is just four hours from Winona. Since we will be here at least once a year it will be easy to pop over to South Dakota to take care of any business if need be. And it checks off something from my bucket list. I always wanted to be a cowboy!

There remain a few jobs I want to do  on Pete before we hit the road.  I need to reinstall the antenna for our cell booster. It was on top of Pete and was just too high.  A couple of times in campground it tangled with tree limbs and that’s just not good. So I will attach it to the back of the trailer so it doesn’t stick up so high. There is also the lift kit I want to install on Pete. Since Penelope came along Pete’s front end rides too high when being towed. So I have some three-inch axle blocks to install between the leaf springs and axles to lift Pete up just a bit so the height difference will be less dramatic. I also have digital running lights to install all around on Pete. And I am going to build some full-length drawers to install under the dinette benches. Sounds like a lot  to get done in 14 weeks.

October 27 will be our last Sunday in our current ministry assignment as the Pastor of Warren Woods Baptist Church in Warren, Michigan. That day I will have completed 45 years of ministry. I spent about a fourth of those years as a North American Missionary serving in a local Association and then a State Convention. The rest of those years I have been a pastor of a local church. I have been blessed to do work I truly love for my entire career. Ending that chapter of my life is exciting, scary, and emotional. While we have been preparing to do this for three years now, we only have fourteen weeks left to get our heads and hearts ready. This, I think, will be the hardest job of all.

Just fourteen weeks?!