We've consolidated our posts of Saturday and Sunday because of our late arrival in King of Prussia on Saturday. It certainly was an interesting day in several respects. For one thing, we encountered rain - often torrential - from eastern Ohio all the way to the Philadelphia area. Several times we had to turn on our emergency flashers and slow down because the rain was coming down so hard. Our van handled the roads very well.
The other unique experience occurred about mid-way through Pennsylvania, shortly before the Turnpike went through the first set of tunnels. Eastbound traffic was completely stopped, for no apparent reason. An ambulance flew by on the shoulder, so we initially suspected that an accident had blocked the road. After about a half-hour, we noticed that the westbound traffic had stopped. A few minutes later a convoy of busses, escorted by flashing police cars passed westward. It was the Clinton campaign bus, heading towards Ohio. We surmise now that the traffic was stopped through all of the tunnels, for security reasons.
The result of this was that we arrived at our motel around 7 pm, over two hours later than we had expected. By then, we were ready for a dinner and unwinding from our stressful day. Our motel desk clerk recommended a restaurant a short distance away, adjacent to the King of Prussia mall, which we understand is one of the largest shopping malls in the country. After some misadventures, we finally found the restaurant and were treated to a delightful dinner. When our waitress learned that we were heading to New Jersey on a mission trip, she provided us free dessert - a welcome end to Day 1.
Sunday we spend the morning touring the Valley Forge National Park, just northwest of where we were staying. The museum, film and auto tour of the beautifully-maintained park impressed on us how much we owed the men and their leaders who sacrificed so much for us to be able today to enjoy the country we call America.
As a reinforcement of what we experienced at Valley Forge, we toured downtown Philadelphia in the afternoon, to see some of the sites which cemented our freedom - Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, the site of the house where Jefferson drafted the Constitution, the Cruiser Olympia (Admiral Dewey's flagship at the 1898 Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War), and the mighty battleship New Jersey, docked across the river in Camden. Crowds and time limited us from doing much more than viewing the sites at a distance, but if the opportunity presents itself in the future, perhaps other mission teams will be able to see more than we did.
After walking about six miles around the hot, humid city we completed our final leg of our trip to Pleasantville, N.J., where Pat Bradley did an excellent job assigning us to search for food items for the coming week at a nearby grocery store. Susan and Jack Perry hosted us with dinner, where we had an opportunity to learn about them, the church (which dates to either 1899 or 1919, depending on which cornerstone one looks at) and the community. The church was so far inland that it was unaffected by Sandy. They've been hosting mission teams like ours since the storm came through.
Tomorrow we begin work at a home in Ocean City, coincidentally only a few blocks away from where we worked in 2014. We want to thank all of you for your donations of snacks and other items, and your prayers as we begin to make our contribution to the rebuilding effort.
Frank Wassilak
