Mennonite Disaster Service All Unit Meeting

We came to Sarasota, Florida to attend the All Unit Mennonite Disaster Service meeting. The posted schedule said that the meeting would start this morning at 8:15. So we were up early in order to be there on time in order to pick up our registration materials before the meeting started. When we got the new schedule, we discovered the meeting was not going to start until 9 AM! We could have slept another hour!

Like any Mennonite gathering, this one is full of singing. The group has been singing old favorites from one of the older hymnals -- wonderful four-part harmony. Mennonite Disaster Service is made up of all the parts of the Anabaptist family, so there are Old Mennonites, Amish, Conservative Mennonites and Mennonite Church USA folks.

We were treated this noon to the singing of this very musical family. I took the picture with my iPhone and we weren't sitting very close, so it is what it is. The parents have four children under five. The little boy and girl in front sang with their parents -- the little girl sang a solo. The little guy the Dad is holding is sound asleep and the one the mother is holding is just one year old. What a talented family they are!

At this evening's banquet, we listened to this bluegrass trio, the Shenk Bluegrass Group. The two on the right are twins while the other is a friend. The middle brother got a lot of teasing about his "skunk-striped" beard with offers to auction it off...

It's been interesting to touch bases today with many of the people we've worked with on various MDS projects over the years. There are people here from all over the United States and Canada.

On to Sarasota

Today we packed up all of our stuff, chairs, bike, trike, etc. and headed up the highway to Sarasota. It was a short trip, taking us around the top of San Carlos Bay on Interstate 75. When I opened the door on Toad, I discovered that this cute little lizard had hitched a ride. I tried to catch him, but he jumps a good foot at a time. I finally got him to jump out of Toad and disappear. Then I discovered his big brother had also hitched a ride on our lavender plant!

We are parked behind Bethel Mennonite Church where we will be attending the All Unit Mennonite Disaster Service meeting Friday and Saturday. Bethel Church has a very large piece of property. They have water and fifty amp power for RV hook-ups. There is a large grassy area behind where we are parked (their cemetery is in one corner). When we looked out to that area this afternoon, we saw this lone sandhill crane --

I took these pictures with the telephoto lens on my camera -- it was quite a long ways away. It is unusual to see one of these by themselves; they are usually in couples or family groups.

We saw this hawk fly into the pines on the edge of the church property. The brownish coloring and the two distinct white stripes on its tail make us think it is a Red-Shouldered Hawk.

We got a phone call shortly after we arrived from our friends Darryll and Linda who are also here for the MDS meetings, inviting us to join them for dinner. Gene is also here from Washington. He had rented a van, so we all piled in with him and went to one of the Amish buffets for dinner. (Sarasota is a popular Amish vacation spot.) We all ate too much, but had a great time catching up on all the news from home.