Dear Co-laborers with Christ,

Each summer for many years now, our family has traveled to a favorite vacation spot, a cottage on a lake in the heart of the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. From our home in New Cumberland, it is a driving distance of about 400 miles to our destination. Often we made the journey in one day, at least a total of eight hours of driving, mostly on interstate highways until the turn onto the last one hundred miles of scenic two-lane road cutting across the Mohawk Valley and into the mountains north of Cooperstown. It has always been worth the trip, knowing that at the end of the long drive, there will be time for relaxation, refreshment, and renewal.

In recent years, though, we have not made the hurried drive in one day. We have taken time to soak up the experience of the journey itself, breaking the trip into two days. We avoid the interstates and seek the back roads of Pennsylvania, looking for creative and often meandering routes to the New York line and beyond. We stop along the way to investigate places new to us, small towns with familiar or unfamiliar names, vistas previously missed or unseen: Centralia, Catawissa, Shickshinny, Eagles Meer, World's End and Ricketts Glen, Dimock, Sharon Springs and Canajoharie. Some of the sights are breathtakingly beautiful or touchingly quaint, while others are sad with age and depression, decay or abandonment. Along the way, we discover new sources of enrichment, new experiences, and a broader understanding of our country. The journey itself becomes an event, every bit as important to us as the destination.  Read more...