St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

By Steve Rucinski.

We actually managed to leave Bay St. Louis at 8:15 am on Saturday morning, we headed east along the Gulf Coast to Gulfport and then headed North. We had an on the road breakfast at McDonalds, gassed up, air in the tires and off we went. We went North to Hattiesburg caught I59 there and headed toward Alabama.

Ray and I hung together but we let Mary (The Rocket) blast ahead. I let Ray lead until we got into Birmingham and caught I65 to head straight north to Tennessee, unfortunately Ray and Bob made the wrong turn (a normal occurrence on this trip) and headed East toward Atlanta. They corrected course quickly and got back on I65.

We went through Tennessee and Nashville with no problems, stopping for a bite to eat in the car at a gas pit stop. We all arrived into Bowling Green, KY within minutes of each other at our host location, Christ Episcopal Church. They had a nice buffet dinner prepared for us and incredible hospitality, the people were great and so was the church and attached facility. We slept on cots in the Sunday School rooms which were on a lower level. They even had a shower for us to use in the morning. We then toured the grounds (which were beautiful) with Ray the gardener leading the discussion.

The next morning we attended the 8 AM service which lasted about an hour, had some of the breakfast they had prepared, packed up the vehicles and hit the road at about 11 AM. Bowling Green is a college town (Western Kentucky, 20,000 students) and the home of Corvette manufacturing. Unfortunately my Corvette wasn’t ready (just kidding) so we drove on.

Traffic from Bowling Green all the way to Medina was very heavy, didn’t seem like gas prices were being too much of a travel deterrent to me. The highest price I paid for gas on the way home was $4.09 a gallon just North of Cincinnati. We made our way through the traffic and arrived at our church at 6:25 PM. Rocket Mary was pulled over about 20 miles South of Medina for going just over the speed limit and the officer gave her warning after she explained that we were returning from a mission trip.

The warm welcome we received was terrific and much appreciated, thank you all. This trip was just great and we look forward to sharing more stories, feelings, photos and videos about it over the next few weeks.