This lovely note just in from a friend of Vision Forum:

I have a story to tell which is probably becoming quite common for you to hear but I wanted to share it with all of you. Perhaps it will bless someone in some way. Thank you for your ministry of uniting church and home and specifically for the first conference you held back in the fall of 2002, I believe. We lived in Long Beach, CA at the time. My husband was the associate pastor at the church we attended for fourteen years. He started out in youth ministry and progessed on through various other ministries there all the while the Lord was teaching us so much about the institution of the family. We have six children, our oldest being fourteen on July 18th and our youngest turned 2 in April. We have homeschooled all the way but we were alone in our convictions at our church. As time progressed, we found ourselves more and more alone as the Lord taught us so many things the last few years.

And then I heard about your [Uniting Church and Family]conference. I sent off for the tapes and recieved them in Nov. of 2002. Then when I heard about the website listing family friendly churches begun in Jan. of 2003, I would spend hours reading through the descriptions at night after the children were in bed. And then a ‘vision’ began to form. Wouldn’t it be great to get to travel around the country and visit some of these people and choose a new home for our family. Real estate in So. Cal. had been climbing for some time and we had owned our home for a while and stood to clear quite a bit of money if we chose to sell. So, in May of ‘03, I presented an idea to my husband never dreaming he would go for it. “Why don’t we sell our home, buy a travel trailer and travel around the country for a while visiting these churches?” You guessed it. He jumped at the idea. A month later we owned a 34 foot travel trailer. Shortly after that he resigned from his job and in Sept. ‘03 we sold our home. On Oct. 4th we took off to “Seek first His Kingdom....” a scripture which often comforted me during my many anxious moments. It was the hardest three months of my life,...all of our lives. But was it worth it! A hundred times over! Then the fun began but I’ll just summarize as I’ve taken up way too much of your time. We traveled for 8 months and 21,000 miles. We met some wonderful people with inspiring stories. And finally in the middle of May we settled in Burnet, Texas. We are a part of a wonderful little church here and every Sunday I breathe a prayer of thanksgiving. God is so good. Thank you for being his instrument to share His vision for the family. Please pray for us now for my husband to find a job here. We are not worried. The Lord has been so faithful and he will continue to be. Again, God bless you, and thank you!Dino and De Anne