Frozen Eyelashes.

Hey everyone! Sorry we have updated you in a LONG time!
Where to start.... Well I'll start with my title. Frozen Eyelashes. What does it mean? 
Well, my family came up for Thanksgiving week and we went out and I showed them around the area and they decided to go dog sledding. Yes. I said DOG SLEDDING. We first went to check out the place and it was kinda sketchy to get to. 
Hold on. Sorry if this post is ALL over the place. There's just been so much going on!

Ok. First, my family and Erin went to the Olney Mercantile to ... I forget why we went there. But this place. O golly. It's seriously one of the weirdest places I've ever been to! It's definitely culture shock! They don't have much on the shelves, have dolls nailed onto the wall, and 99/100 things are expired. The lady there is nice... It's just kinda sketchy. 
(There's another story I have to tell you guys later about this place!)  
After going to the Mercantile, we then made our way to visit the dog sledding guy. We didn't go sledding that day, but we went to see if it was something we'd wanna do. We left the Mercantile and turned left. All we knew was that at the pole with the colored ribbon, we'd have to turn right. Craziness. We found that stick and turned... We started to go up a driveway and saw a man on a tractor thing that waved at us, like he hadn't seen people in months! We kept driving and started to hear dogs barking. A LOT of dogs barking. We looked to the left and all we could see were dogs. So many Huskies! We get out of the car and meet the man from the tractor and his wife, who both own the business. They were the sweetest. Both told me that they have a husky named Darla. How ironic, I thought. But then after finding out that they have 114 HUSKIES, it didn't seem that weird. Yeah... Ok. 114 dogs. Picture that. Can you? They were ALL over the place. It was definitely a culture shock. 

Thanksgiving Day. Warmest day of the week. It was maybe 10 degrees out. MAYBE. I woke up and started to get ready to head out to go dog sledding. My family got to the place again and heard the 114 dogs bark again. We split up in two groups and went on the ride. All of me was covered, except my eyes. I had mascara on from the night before, that hadn't fully come off, and when we started riding, the snow would hit my eyelashes and cause them to freeze together. I would then have to take my hands and melt my eyes. At the end of the ride, we were invited into their home to have cookies and hot chocolate. It was definitely warm in that house, because I was successful to have my mascara melt down my face.
Thanksgiving dinner was delicious. It was great having almost all of the people involved in the ministry there. My family left a couple days after Thanksgiving, but the craziness didn't stop.
Have you ever been to an orchestra? I have! We had the opportunity to go to a performance of Handel's Messiah with the interns and a few staff members. If you've never been to an orchestra, then I definitely recommend you to go to one!
So ya know that story about the Olney Mercantile that I said I'd tell later? Well here it is... All the interns went out one night, except I stayed back (I forget why). I ended up hanging out with Emily and Kendyl, two of the staff members that are like 19. We started to really crave ice cream, so Em and I ran out to the Mercantile and boy O boy... Sketch-fest. We pulled up and there was a SUV sitting outside of the store, which is weird, cause there's usually NO ONE there. We walked in and strangely enough, it smelt DELICIOUS! It smelt like they just baked cookies! We walked over to the ice cream and got 3 bars and started to walk around a bit. The lady that runs the store has a little boy and he was sitting at a table in the store watching football and eating fries and fried chicken. As we were about to walk by him, he started waving at us (with fries between every finger) and proceeded to tell us about his kittie that is lost. Suddenly a man (who didn't have much teeth in his mouth) was right next to me and started to tell us that they had 2 stray cats, but the one was pooping everywhere and he KICKED it out the door. As he said the word, "kicked", he kicked the air and he was exceptionally close to us. We walk up to the counter to pay, there was a woman and her daughter in front of us selling the Mercantile lady a Santa statue for 40 dollars. Emily and I ended up laughing the whole way back to the ranch and still talk about how weird it was.
Erin and I don't know what has happened the last couple of weeks, but we've been BUSY! We've had normal classes, inductive Bible study, and Pastor Don McClure was here this past week.
Sorry that we haven't been writing... We miss you all, but NOT for long!!!!!! See you all tomorrow! Please pray that we have a safe flight HOME!!! Ok, well I gotta go board my flight!
Love, Darla Maxine