Dots on a mission.

Dots left this week on a mission trip with a group of 5th and 6th graders from our church. They are spending five days in rural Mississippi working on a community farm and doing some cleaning and painting at a local school. They also have an outing planned to an area nursing home.

Last night Dots borrowed her leader's cell phone and called me in tears to report that she was homesick. It about broke my heart! I could relate because I got homesick whenever I went away when I was growing up, even the summer I spent in Paris when I was 15. My mother's response to my teary phone calls was to fuss at me and tell me to straighten up. I must admit this was pretty effective because it made me question why I wanted to go home!

I talked to the counselor later last night, and her take on the situation was that Dots was exhausted after a long day. She relayed that Dots had fallen asleep within five minutes of lying down on her cot. This afternoon I received a text from the leader saying that Dots was having a ball today and had turned down an offer to use a cell phone and call home.

Here's hoping that the rest of her week is fruitful and fun and that Dots comes home reporting that the trip was a great experience, for both of our sakes!


Lots of kids and parents gathered by the bus before it departed for Mississippi. But wait... who immediately located the cute high school girls going along as leaders?


Why, it's Hockey Boy! Clearly he has found an effective way to assuage his grief at the impending departure of his sister


Dots's leader posted this picture on her Facebook page right after the bus passed into Mississippi


It was a slight improvement over the picture Dots attempted to take for me when we were on this same road last month