Howdy,

We spent today (Sunday 6/29) at King of Kings Lutheran Church in Glenpool Oklahoma (near Tulsa).  It was quite an adventure getting here.  We planned to tow a trailer with our van like we did when we moved to Texas, but when I got home Friday evening just after 5, coolant started spewing from the radiator of the purple people mover.  Of course no mechanic was available on Friday.  With some help from an old retired missionary named Dick Bergman I acquired a new radiator at Auto Zone and then early on Saturday morning drove to the Mexican part of Grand Prairie where I found a mechanic that Dick recommended.  None of the people I encountered could speak English but thankfully I showed him the radiator I had bought and he figured out why I was there.

We then exchanged the trailer for a small truck to move in.  Dick was concerned about the strain that towing would put on the transmission in the 100 degree heat we were driving through and since we want to drive the van around the USA for the next year, we decided not to put undue strain on the transmission (the people purple mover has 165,000 plus miles on her.)

After all that and the strenuous process of emptying our home (you know how it is at the very end all the misc. stuff that's left), we finally got on the road at 6:30pm.  We stopped for dinner (which was nice) and then drove through some heavy rain in the middle of nowhere southern Oklahoma (which was not nice).  We finally got to Tulsa about 1:30AM, thankfully - safely.  Church went well this morning and then we took the fam to Incredible Pizza in Tulsa to celebrate Joshua's birthday (since packing, loading and driving is not the right way to celebrate his birthday which was yesterday).

We leave Oklahoma for St Louis tomorrow morning!