As we planned our summer adventure the “anchor” was Nazarene General Assembly in Indianapolis. If not for this big event we would likely have traveled west instead of to the Midwest and points east. For those of you who aren’t associated with our branch of the Christian family tree I’ll explain that every four years Nazarenes from around the globe come together for a big family reunion of sorts. There’s also some business to be conducted: elections and resolutions and the like; but this is mainly a celebration that draws not only elected delegates from over 150 world areas but folks like us — whom I call “Nazarene tourists.”

For us, Indianapolis has lots of pluses. This is our family’s home territory and there are lots of cousins and other relatives around. We enjoyed seeing our cousin Kathy Schreiber and her clan on Sunday morning.

Our family from Texas came too. Scott and Cherie and Matthew along with my sister Susan came because our wonderful granddaughter Sarah qualified for the big World Bible Quiz that took place on Saturday. “How’d she do” you ask? Well, let me tell you: she and several hundred others came home with the gold! We’re proud of our Sarah! On Saturday evening the whole gang sat together in the worship service: us, Scott and Cherie and the kids, Susan, Jackie’s brother and sis-in-law Jim and Phyllis. We even had our good friend Marsha with us. So our little group took our own bit of space in a crowd of over 15,000.

There were thousands of Nazarenes in Indianapolis. The Sunday morning worship service alone drew over 20,000. We saw lots of friends including folks who were at our wedding almost 44 years ago. It is so much fun catching up with so many people we’ve known in the past or who are friends of ours on Facebook or NazNet or elsewhere.

Our Indianapolis stay has been Nazarene all the way as we’ve been camped at the Indianapolis District, Church of the Nazarene campground at Camby just outside of Indianapolis. This is a grass campground and, because of the limited number of full hookup sites we’ve had only water and electric. It wasn’t much of an inconvenience because we spent most of our time at the convention center anyway.

On Sunday afternoon there was a big thunderstorm with considerable wind. There was some tree damage, including one big tree that came down. Thankfully, no buildings or campers were damaged.

Jackie and I really enjoyed General Assembly, especially seeing our family. Now, though, we’re ready to head for Ohio and back into our “normal” full time RV activities.