On the road again....

Tonight I am in Jefferson City, Missouri. I was a good tourist today. I visited the home of President Lincoln, the tomb where he and his family are buried, and the Presidential Museum and Library. And also the church where he used to attend where they have the Lincoln family pew on display. It was interesting. I learned some stuff about the civil war that I didn't know, which basically would include anything about the civil war. I don't know why it is that I remember nothing I learned in school, but every time I visit a new historic site it is like I am learning it for the first time. At the gift store I bought several books about Lincoln so I could read more. I'm not sure why I think I will have time to read books about Lincoln when I can't even get through Tom Sawyer, but it's hard to pass up the opportunity to buy new books.

I had forgotten that Springfield was the capitol of Illinois until I drove by the capitol building this morning. It reminded me of the last time I was there, over ten years ago. I was working in Indiana for a short term missions organization. There were about 8 of us who worked there full time and we lived in trailers at the edge of the old church camp that the organization had purchased. Every summer we would send out about 10 or 12 teams of junior high, high school, and college kids to locations around the world. Being the most anal-retentive member of the staff, I was in charge of the paperwork, which include ensuring that all the kids had their passports and visas in time. Somehow, we discovered that one of the boys did not have his visa paperwork at the last minute. He was from the Chicago area and we called his parents and they insisted that they mailed it, but we had not received it. We made some phone calls and found out we could get another copy from the state government office that issued the paperwork originally, but his parents would have to request it. So his parents agreed to drive from Chicago to Springfield to get it. I packed up the car with a couple of our summer interns to keep me awake and we drove all night to meet his parents in Springfield the next morning. We met his parents, picked up the form as soon as the state office opened that morning, then got back in the car and immediately drove to Indianapolis where the team was waiting at the airport. We got the paperwork to him about an hour before the flight left. I was so stressed out! The worst part happened a few days later. One of my co-worker's wives had been picking up the mail every day and delivering to the office, then dropping our personal mail off in the trailer we lived in at the edge of the camp. During our training camps, when we were doing the week long training with the teams before they went out on their mission trips, things were always so busy that I barely had time to sleep, much less read mail. But a few days later when I finally started looking at my personal mail, I found his visa information. It was addressed to me and Amanda just assumed it was personal mail, so to be helpful she had put it on the kitchen table. So we made our all night trip to Springfield for nothing!