Operation: Asa Joy

I am so sorry about not posting in a while. We are deep in the process of packing up our 2200 sq. ft. house and moving what we absolutely need into our new 308 sq. ft. We have moved all the clothes and necessary items into the camper already. In fact, we are all sleeping in it at this very moment and have been for several nights. Our neighbors must wonder what those crazy Trautman's are up to now. Currently, we have a 36 ft. camper in our driveway. We also have a utility trailer that we borrowed from some wonderful friends to transfer things to the dump, storage unit, or the be donated. We also have my in laws Suburban parked out front. They very graciously drove down from Maryland to help out for a few days. They are going to watch the kids and cook food for the next couple days while Carl and I finish the final push of moving. As of right now, we plan to be completely moved out by the weekend. The final walk through for the new owners is scheduled for January 6 and we close on ...

Here are the promised pictures that prove that we are not crazy. The first was taken at the dealer before we even left the parking lot. The next three are of the hitch assembly and the damage that was done. The last is of the hitch attached properly with the hitch pin. We took that one yesterday afternoon after the fact to see if we could compare the pictures. We wanted to prove to the dealer that they forgot to put the pin in.    This is what the hitch assembly looked like when we left the dealership. If you look closely you can see the receiver, hitch, and chains but NO PIN! It should be right there by where the chain is attached to the receiver. This is a picture of the hitch assembly. You can clearly see that it is cracked all the way across. Pretty scary.  This is another view of the hitch assembly. You can see that the top portion is cracked all the way through.  A side view of the hitch assembly. You can see the crack going up the side of i...

This post is not the one I had originally planned. We have had an interesting two weeks here at the Trautman household. We got a contract on our house (which I will write about later) and bought a new camper (more information and pictures on that later too). Things are falling into place for us to really begin our journey in January. What I want to write about today is something that happened this morning and has rocked me to the core and proves that God still does miracles. I have seen times in my life where God did something amazing. Most Christians can point to a time where they saw God working in an answer to a prayer or in some mighty way. I can recall many times whether it is four women waking up in the middle of the night to pray for a soldier under fire at that moment in time or a prayer for an anxious child waiting for an iv to be calm that was answered immediately. God is good all the time and we often take that for granted. We do not know all the ways that he is p...