in 2003 i drove over 60,000 miles in four months going from chicken farm to chicken farm trying help farmers clean the water they were feeding their chickens. my happiest poultry adventures often lent occasion for me to visit a little church that just started meeting about a year before, the savannah church of christ. they didn’t have a preacher so sometimes they acted like they enjoyed me visiting as much as i enjoyed seeing them. in january of 2004 i would move to savannah and spend 2 years there, loving the church and the weather, hating the gnats and mosquitos, and making some really good friends for life. just to mention one, chris fellows, who still tries desperately to beat me at words with friends on a daily basis. the church is now about to celebrate their 10th anniversary.
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we left savannah just after christmas 2005 and came out to portland which has become home for us for no reason other than we are part of another small congregation of sweet people trying to follow jesus. i have come to love portland, the town, and the wild west especially (i’m so close to the best motorcycle riding scenery in the world and that keeps a handful of my best friends…my secret motorcycle club…coming to see me annually) but were it not for the church we’d have moved on a long time ago i’m sure.
back when we moved to savannah two couples came with us from nyc; the brewsters and my inlaws, mom and buzz. for the brewsters it was a move that at least in part kept our daughters together. skylar and mcKenzie, along with a red head named sarah, had been inseparable from birth. but sarah had already migrated to florida and now with skylar leaving, no way the brewsters were staying, so, luckily, we got them in savannah with us.
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mom and buzz had joined us in new york way back when we all lived in manhattan and aren’t just family. they’ve been our best friends and partners all over the world. when we started a church in cape town in 1990 they were with us and when lisa and i brought mccall back to nyc, they stayed in south africa and lead the church for not as long as buzz wanted to. he’d have never come back were it not for his love for us. and when we moved to savannah they went with us, buzz taking a job eventually at a hospital emergency room. in no time he was running the place, but when we moved to portland he stayed in savannah and lead the church there for a year and that, too, was not as long as he’d have like. for love of us he gave that up and moved to portland.
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and chemise. what can i say about chemise? chemise was in savannah when we got there and not long after we came out west she showed up, too. and nothing could have made us happier. chemise is a wonderful, one of a kind, who speaks her mind and almost always makes more sense then most people i’ve ever known. and she also served as bait to get vince out to portland; in love, he showed up not too long after chemise got here and now they’re married and have given us eli to adore.
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so there’s a tie that binds loving hearts from savannah to portland and blessed be it. happy anniversary to all of you in savannah. rats to the gnats.
