The states I will travel through

Like I wrote before in other posts, I bought an atlas and have been mapping out my route. Here are the states I will travel through. If anyone has been to any of these before or has any helpful knowledge on these, I would welcome it. Are there places I should not miss seeing, are there places I should avoid?

The states are: Massachusetts, New York (after about a month of travel, I will be near my home and get to sleep in my own bed. Hopefully I will still want to continue after that LOL), Pennsylvania (just the very northern tip, will probably only be two days in PA), Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming (scary to me, still debating about going through Yellowstone. I posted some of my worries about that in an earlier post), Montana, Idaho, Oregon (My final destination!The mountains in Oregon scare me too, but it helps that I know people there and can rely on their knowledge).

Sometimes I am just overwhelmed

Sometimes when I think about what I am about to do, I am just totally overwhelmed. How can I do this? I am not good at asking people for money or for help. I am not good at following through. Can I actually do this physically? It is a lot, a long commitment. Am I crazy to think that I can do it?

Then my answer is I just need to rely on God. Actually on my own, I probably can't do this, but with God all things are possible. I really believe this is of Him, so He will make a way. I will have to make an effort too, but He will handle the things that I can't. This is surrender, this is trust. There are so many factors that I just don't and won't have control over, so I will just have to sit back and let my Lord take care of those. I will do my part, asking for sponsors, getting the word out about the charities so they can reap the benefits of this, train my body, lose some more weight (this will be so much easier if I am not carrying all this extra weight), read all I can from others who have done this, and just basically try my best to be prepared. Then I just need to give the Lord control and let Him work and lead me. If all that comes of this is that I learn to totally put my trust in the Lord, then it will be all worth it!

UPDATE: I should be meeting with Northtowns Pregnancy Center next week, then I can hopefully get a link on here for you so you can see more of what there about and so you will be able to support them if you feel led.

God's amazing beauty part 2

Here is the picture. I did it!!

God's amazing beauty

I was walking on Friday night and was just finishing up and turned around to head to my car and this is what I saw. So amazing. I turned at just the right time, by the time I got to my car just a few minutes later, almost all the color was gone. I felt like God was saying to me...I will show you this beauty and so much more on your walk.

I will try to get the picture in the next post, can't seem to get it here. Either that or it will show about 10 times. Not having a good electronics day today. I can't seem to make anything work right.

It's a go!

I spoke to my pastor and I have his support so I am going to do this! Nervous and excited all at once. I have contacted the Northtowns Pregnancy Center since they are who I would like to raise funds for. I haven't heard back yet, but I just contacted them and I know they are at a conference, so I expect it to be a little while. I will hopefully be adding a link to their site here so that anyone can go right to them and donate. I will also set up a link to my paypal account for anyone who would like to support me and the expenses I will have preparing for the walk and while walking. Time to really start seriously planning and training! March or April will come really fast, I am sure!

If anyone knows how to do spell check on this, please let me know. I haven't figured it out yet and I am a terrible speller.

Meeting with my pastor

I am meeting with my pastor after work today to discuss doing this walk. I am not sure if I am more afraid that he will encourage me to do the walk or that he will talk me out of it. I should know by Friday whether this is a go. Then I can really buckle down and start serious planning. I can get a hold of the people I want to raise money for, really make this blog public. I have only told a few people so far. I want to wait to make it public until I am certain it is a go. At least as certain as I can be. A lot can happen before March or April gets here.

I went and bought an atlas and started marking out my route. I was just going to order one on Amazon, but I realized I really wanted to flip through the pages and compare different ones side by side to be sure it was something that would work for me.

Oh well, bye for now. Keep me in your prayers please.

I meet with my pastor on Thursday to let him know that I would like to do this walk and who I would like to raise the funds for, so I'm kind of in limbo unitl I talk to him. Hopefully on Friday I will have gotten a go ahead from my pastor and really be ready to move ahead with everything. I have some fold out maps and have been marking my route. I plan to follow route 20 most of the way. I am debating as to whether I will take route 26 in Wyoming for a while. It looks like it would shorten my route a little and it would take me around Yellowstone National Park. I am torn about this. Do I really want to get that close to Yellowstone and not see it? But then again, Yellowstone kind of scares me with all of the wild animals and all. Even though it is not like the animals recognise borders and won't be outside of Yellowstone if I take the route that leads me around it. I still have lots of time to make a final decision. I plan to read a lot more about that area first. I hope to balance being safe with seeing as much of God's wonders as possible. I am also thinking of taking the Erie Canal trail in New York instead of sticking to route 20. It just sounds kind of interesting. I will also be checking more into that before I make a final decision. If anyone has any thoughts/helpful information, I would love to hear it.