Jason and Angie Bechtel Bringing Hope to Unreached People Groups
As you all know, we fled to Florida for some warmer weather and a relaxing vacation earlier this month. Well, we had relaxing, but it definitely wasn’t as warm as we had hoped! We left on Friday, Jan. 7th in the evening after dropping off the girls at Jason’s mom’s house. We drove the 5 hours to Ohio where we spent the night at my cousin’s, once again! 
In the morning we hoped to drive out of the snow, but no, it stayed with us all the way to Virginia –sometimes in the air and sometimes just on the ground. Jason had thought about just leaving his coat at home, but boy was he glad he brought it! Especially when he needed it in the car while I, the pregnant one, sat in my t-shirt! LOL
We had a bit of an interesting arrival in Virginia. Just as we turned into the town where our friends live and the gas pedal didn’t respond when Jason pressed it. He stomped on it and away we went until we had to stop at the lights. The car sputtered and Jason had to restart it before it would go. We turned onto our friends’ street where it the GPS told us that we had arrived just as the car stalled again. We didn’t see their house yet, so we tried to start the car again. It did start after a couple tries and we made it into their driveway. PHEW! We were so glad that God allowed us to make it there with our broken car! We tumbled out of the car and shared our driving adventure with our friends to which they replied, “Are you out of gas?” To our credit, our gas gauged doesn’t work and yes, that was the problem, PRAISE THE LORD! We usually keep track with the trip meter, but, for some reason we didn’t that day –probably because we don’t usually drive 800+ kilometers in a day! Needless to say, the next day we filled up at every stop we made! 
The next day we also finally got out of snow in North Carolina and we made it to Sanford, FL around 7:30 pm. Jason spent the next few days in meetings with his American co-workers. I relaxed in our guest apartment, reading, doing puzzles and shopping. Okay, so why was I indoors in Florida? Well, it rained most of our first day and the sun came out the next day, but it was still quite chilly. It was still relaxing though!
On Wednesday we left Sanford for our real vacation destination –Okeechobee, Florida – to stay with Jason’s grandparents. They have a nice little winter-home on a river. We thoroughly enjoyed our time down there and it was the first time where Jason actual set aside work for a few days. He even put an automatic vacation responder on his email which he has NEVER done before! The sun was out our few days there, but it was still quite cold unless you could get out of the wind. It was the last day when I actually got a bit of a tan! We had a good time doing next to nothing! We did get in a boat ride where we saw an 8 foot-long alligator and lots of different birds.
We ended up heading home two days early as the weather predictions weren’t very good for most of the USA and, as much as we would’ve loved to extend our vacation, I don’t think the grandparents or our girls would have appreciated it! Our drive home was quite uneventful. We made it to the Georgia/Tennessee border the first night and then were back at my parents a little before 8pm on Monday night. Delena was super excited to see us and well, Lorelei’s eyes got as big as saucers when she saw us in the morning!
Thank you for your prayers!
We were getting down to the wire. The excitement was building. Financial gifts for my trip to Indonesia were beginning to come in. Even with our third child due to arrive the end of March, I was going ahead with my plans to be in Indonesia for two weeks the end of February. It hadn’t sunk in yet for Delena that I would be missing her birthday, the one that she has been talking about since forever — she is going to start school after she turns four, don’t you know!
