Back from New York

We have returned from our trip to New York. We left last Saturday and stopped to visit our long time friends, John and Hennie Rensen in Grimsby, Ontario. The Rensen’s family and Carrie’s family have been friends for over 50 years, ever since her family first immigrated to Canada. We have visited a number of times before and Carrie always enjoys seeing the old haunts. Grimsby is in the beautiful Niagara Peninsula, between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, in an area of many vineyards and wineries.

After going to church with the Rensens we drove across Rainbow Bridge, giving us a quick peek at Niagara Falls, and into New York State. Driving with the top down we enjoyed the rolling green countryside as we zipped along the coast of one of the Finger Lakes and stopped at a couple of wineries. The sky was clear and blue and the view of Lake Cayuga was stunningly nestled in between the green hills.

We arrived in Binghamton mid afternoon and spent a couple of hours meeting with a Presbyterian Disaster Relief organization, checking out the facilities that a CRC church team will use when they come to work here in August, and viewing some of the recovery work that is going on from the floods of June 2006. Because of the 1-year anniversary the local newspaper was full of flood and recovery stories.

Tuesday and Wednesday we attended a conference for volunteer agencies who do disaster work in New York State. We are continuing to get to know more and more people and are making great connections. One of the leisure time activities was attending the AA Binghamton Mets doubleheader game--including a picnic supper of the local specialty, speidies, which is a marinated chicken sandwich.

We arrived back home about noon on Thursday. Tomorrow we leave for a weekend away with the Van Veens, including our family from Australia.