Sunday/Monday-Feb. 8th & 9th

These two days have gone from high to low. We started out going to church, hearing a wonderful sermon on love and relationships:

"Choose to love the Lord your God...and commit yourself to Him..."

"If you only ove thoe who love you, what credit is that to you?" (I should know when you hear something, you are called to task about living it)!

Met Janet and Charles Hall at the church(see pic); our wonderful Angels who always make us feel good (which we sorely need at this point). Then, Jim just worked on resumes all afternoon, and I tackled taxes. This is going to be a nightmare trying to get everything put together by April 15th in this state of disarray we find ourselves in. That didn't help my mood.

We went to 24 Hour Fitness to work out. I talked to Stacy, the "Angel" who had given us the two week free pass. I told him we would be staying until the 28th and could he give us some kind of interim membership-willing to pay, of course. He went to see his Manager, retuning with a free membership until the end of the month! Like I keep saying, for every negative that occurs in this weird journey, God provides a balance of something good! God knows how much Jim and I need and love our workouts. It's our sanity! Stacy and I talked briefly, and I discovered that he is a Christian interested in missions even visiting Turkey on a mission trip. He invited us to his church and had once attended the church we are going to with Janet and Charles, The Fellowship of the Woodlands. This six degrees of separation gets more uncanny along this path we find ourselves.

After our workout, we went to dinner with the President of AMPCO, several AMPCO people, and one of the Resident Managers from Equatorial Guinea who was "supposed" to be helping Jim. As I sat there listening to their talk, I felt like I was in the middle of a bad dream. People at the table were talking about their impressions of Guinea, wonderful stories about their travels, and Jim and I are sitting here homeless after Feb. 28th if nothing develops with Marathon-and we are supposed to be acting polite and laugh as if nothing is the matter.

Bottom line, I was sitting next to the Pres. of the Company, and one thing led to another, and his wife said he was very influential with the leaders of Equatorial Guinea. I lost it (quietly) and said, "Well, if he was that influential, why was Jim kicked out of the country?" My timing was off, to say the least! He then chastised me that this wasn't the place to discuss it, but he would be glad to later. I haven't slept much, and still don't understand why things have happened like they have. I know what they are saying; I know the ulitmate outcome is in God's hands, but it all seems so useless. We changed our entire lives for this job-giving up both our cars, our home, our furniture-for what? I know all the nice platitudes I've uttered heretofor, but right now at this moment, this sucks royally! I suppose we had a restful time to get ready for this battle; but if you had told me last month on January 9th, we would be in this situation, I would have laughed you out of the room!

I've opened the door and have invited Satan to come in and sit down and discuss this with me!

The President did offer to come over and talk to me today, but I sent my apologies through Jim for my rash timing and declined knowing that a discussion won't change anything. We have to move on. So, today, it's cloudy, rainy, and my mood matches the day perfectly. I guess I'll go work out and try to do something productive. I did wash clothes in the one and only hotel laundramat, had my usual breakfast in my room, and answered e-mails.

I am having to really practice loving some of these people who are "so sorry" that this has happened but don't seem to want to go any farther with getting us back to EQ or getting our stuff back. I KNOW something is not being said; I just don't know what it isn't! They rave about Jim and what an excellet manager he was, how he was a perfect fit for the job----AND---????