To have a friend that you are "soul sisters" with is such a special joy and blessing, and my dear friend Karla is all that and more.  However special that friendship is, add to that the fact that the four of us (her husband Michael and my husband Steve) are every bit as close as couples as we are as girlfriends.  Wow!  What an amazing gift their friendship is.

We drove up to Hume Lake Christian Conference Center on Thursday.  This is the lake and us sitting on the lawn enjoying the scenery and catching up.  There were the three benches in a cluster that we settled into and talked for an hour or more!  The first shot is Karla, then Mike and then Steve and I.  We spent a couple of hours there showing them around the facilities and introducing them to our dear friend Floyd Cornford (see next photo of Floyd and Steve).  If you have read my blog from the beginning you will remember Floyd lost his wife Kathy on June 10th of last year to breast cancer.  Floyd is the friend that we spent Valentine's Day with so that he wouldn't be alone.  The four of us were also dear friends and we all miss her deeply. 

Those of you that pray, please pray for Hume this weekend, there are 8 high school football teams at the camp (over 400 young men) many of them without fathers and from the inner city that will be at a football camp there. 

The coaches mentor these young men and step into that father role in amazing ways.  On average 50-75 young men will meet the Lord for the first time and half will recommit their lives.  The long term impact on their lives is incalculable.

On the way to Hume Lake, we stopped in to Grant's Grove, the home of the 3rd largest living thing on earth, the Grant tree.  Then we took them down into Redwood Canyon where you can walk directly among the trees in the largest Sequoia grove on earth.  The dogwood are blooming there and that part of the park is uncrowded and mostly undiscovered.  Here's a shot of a Giant Sequoia that is digitally compiled from 3 photographs.  The couple in the foreground were just there, she was somewhat handicapped so they we walking quite slow and I liked having them for the perspective.  These trees range up to 310 feet in height and 40 feet in diameter!  There is no way to adequately convey how HUGE they are.  Mike was a logger in his earlier life and the largest diameter tree he felled was 12 feet, he was in a state of constant amazement.  The tree to the immediate left of the couple walking was planted in 1949 and is 58 years old, these trees grow very slowly over long periods of time and most huge ones are over 2,000 years old.

We convinced them to stay one extra day (we hog tied and tortured them until they gave in!)  We went to a delightful dinner theatre in Fresno called Roger Rocca's and saw "Fiddler on the Roof."  It was a fabulous production… who says small towns can't have culture?!  The only problem with living in the mountains is we didn't get home until 1 AM.  So after a slow start this morning they're off for the second half of their journey and the next visit will have to be ours to their place.

If you have a chance to be out of doors this weekend, take time to drink in the beauty of God's creation and thank Him for being such a wonderful artist.  There is no greater beauty than that of the world He gave us to enjoy and take care of.

Have a great and SAFE Memorial Day Weekend.

Audrey Jeanne Roberts