Our first DEW!

Posted by: Patience


A couple months ago, our friends, the Staddons, kindly invited us to their home for a family-on-family DEW conference (i.e. a Discipleship Encouragement Weekend)! We were  excited, blessed, honored and  privileged all at the same time to have the opportunity to go and visit with them just the other weekend! The purpose of our weekend was two fold: (1) For the parents to study what it means to be disciple makers and (2) for the children to enjoy working on their small farm.

We started out packing (of course;). For a large family, packing for a weekend may look more like clothes for a two week trip!

Arial view of our luggage...

 

 

Alright Staddons, here we come!!

The trip to their house was very picturesque. Mountains, rivers, and lakes graced the entire trip to and fro.

 

When we got there, Mrs. Staddon served us a delicious supper. We greatly enjoyed the fellowship over the meal. The next morning after breakfast, we had a thorough farm tour and an in-depth gardening lesson  followed by a little hike to Poo Bear's house (a tree house in the woods and up the hill:). They have plenty of bees and a dog, but otherwise, they just have plants and trees. We thought I thought they had ginnie pigs for a while, but I soon found out that we were the ginny pigs! (We attended their very first DEW:)

Pooh Bear Treehouse

"Careful please! Don't fall!!"

 

We were excited to help Micheal and family build bee hives! It was like a carpentry class, except there was less testing I'm sure ;).The only prerequisites for this class was good eye sight, hand-eye coordination, the ability to read and measure, and two hands to glue with, along with  a heart that is excited to learn new things.



Analyzing the next move....




                               

The product of our labors!!

The beautiful Staddon creek (is that its name?:).

After that, we had lunch and went on a hike up and down the hills of their property. That was *tons* of fun!! Fifty acres of property mostly covered with wooded hills is enough to throw even the best of brains for a loop :)! While we hiked we saw numerous hunting stands, plants, holes Sentry (the dog) dug out, and trees (sounds normal). We also heard a bunch of unusual stories about a hunting from a  blind camouflaged on the inside (not the outside?;) and a prolonged story about the Normolian cat situation from Tali. All together, we had bunches of fun. Right Normoyles and Staddons?

We also went creek jumping. Good jumping, brothers!!

After the Staddons left for Church, the Normoyles went on a small hike before heading home.

 

When we got home, it seemed as if we brought the West Virginia fever back home with us. Look at what happened (below)!!!

 

Well, this is the perspective of the trip from one of the children. Unfortunately, it would not do justice without saying how much my  parents enjoyed about being with Mr. and Mrs. Staddon. Thank you Staddons for your hospitality and all the time and energy all of you put into making our weekend memorable.