Greetings from Van Horn, TX (Part 1) & November 2016 Charity

Run Stats:
Day: 338
Miles Completed: 1237.2
Miles to San Diego: 862.8
Miles to El Paso: 148.8
Avg Miles/Day: 3.7
Marathons Completed: 51.0
Longest Run Streak: 9 days
Playlist Favs: Serial Podcast
Guest Runners: Molly Donovan, David Pipkorn

Bible Verses of the Day:
"Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?" - Matthew 6: 25 (NIV)

"Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you." - 1 Peter 5:7 (NLT)

Run Reflections: Well, there have been some great running times since my last post. We spent Thanksgiving with Judy and Herb in Memphis and I was able to go on a post Thanksgiving dinner turkey trot with Molly, accompanied by Jody and Judy on bikes. We got in a 4+ mile run along some train tracks and also got to do a few hills. This past weekend, I ran my first race of the year with my good friend David Pipkorn. For the past 2 years, we've gotten together to run the Panama City Beach half marathon together. We had a great time and cut 7 minutes off our time from last year. It was great to get a chance to get caught up with him and I had forgotten what a positive experience a road race can be. From the many volunteers to the overall positive attitude of those out there participating, it's a really fun time. Oh, did I mention that there was free beer and gumbo at Margaritaville after the race? If you've never done a road race, I'd encourage you to consider it, it's really a lot of fun. I've included a picture of David and me as part of this post.

From the overall virtual run perspective, I'm past the 1200 mile mark but still about 30 miles from the next town that shows up on a map. Thanks to some help from the texasescapes website, I discovered that I have reached the ghost town of Kent, TX, which is located along I-10. The texasescapes website identifies that Kent, was founded in the 1890's and was originally called "Antelope." A post office was granted in 1893 and by 1914, the population was up to 25. Today the population is around 60 and there is little left to interest a tourist (or an old fat guy who is waddling by) but it is part of the scenery of the west TX desert along I-10. I have included a photo taken by Barclay Gibson of the Kent Mercantile store along I-10. There are also some cool pictures of the running of the Kent public school and an old red house on the texasescapes website if you're interested.

Depending upon weather and holiday schedule stuff, I hope to get in enough miles to cover the distance to the town of Van Dorn, TX, in my next post.

November 2016 Charity - World Vision: Since we've crossed into a new month, it's time to reveal the charity organization that we will be supporting from mileage run in November. This month's charity is World Vision - World Vision USA - Giving Where It's Needed Most‎ . They are a Christian humanitarian organization dedicated to working with children, families, and their communities worldwide to reach their full potential by tackling the causes of poverty and injustice. They pursue their mission through a variety of means and programs including sponsoring children, transformational development of communities, emergency relief and promotion of justice. In all that they do, they follow Jesus' example to show unconditional love to the poor and oppressed, serving every child they can - of any faith or none.

Our family has supported several aspects of the world vision organization for many years and it is a great pleasure to donate $100 for miles run on this virtual run to them this month. One opportunity that they offer that I particularly enjoy is their Christmas-time gift catalog. During this time of year, they offer a lot of varied opportunities to donates gifts to those in need - both in our country and overseas. For many years when I was working with our church Awana pre-school program, we would collect offerings from the kids all year long and, when Christmas-time came, we would go though the world vision gift catalog as a group to figure out where we could help out. They have a lot of different options from farm animals to food supplies to bedding and netting to protect at risk kids from mosquitos. The kids seemed to enjoy looking at the options and selecting an option that matched what we'd been able to raise. In keeping with this spirit, we are donating the gift of a goat and 2 chickens. I have included a link to the world vision gift catalog below and I'd encourage you to check it out and consider making a donation either for yourself or as a gift in recognition of someone else.

Gift Catalog

That's a wrap for this post. I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas season! If you're in the local area, let me know if you'd like to join me for a run sometime.

God Bless,

Pat