After Montgomery we then drove to Georgia where we went to Dr Henry Wright’s church in Pleasant Valley, Thomaston. When we called on Dr Henry Wright he was away but God was still around so we were thankful for that. We had arrived at the end of a 5 day course that they do there and it was awesome to hear what God had done over the week in these people’s lives. One man who really touched our hearts told his testimony about how he had wanted a Dad all his life because he never had one and this week he had found out that he had a father and His name was God and he no longer had to keep looking for a man that did not want him.

Raccoon in Atlanta

Plantation house from Gone With the Wind in Georgia

After going to the good Doctor’s church we left to find the Georgia Guide stones which are three really big stones in the ground and one on top of them; kinda like Stonehenge but newer. These stones have written in them the rules for a so called better humanity and they also put a cap on how many people should be alive in the world. No one really knows who paid for them as the man who asked for them to be made gave a false name, but we think it was a group called the Bilderberg group who are super-rich and secretly trying to take over the world with their new world order.

Georgia Guide stones

After seeing these stones that gave us the he bee gee bees we went to a motel in Atlanta that was not much better; there were drug dealers and gangster thugs all over the show. But we had booked in over the net already so we went to the office to check in and found it locked. A man sitting behind bullet proof glass then told us they lock the doors at 4pm for safety. He also said that although we had a reservation they were unfortunately full for the night and we would have to go somewhere else. We thanked God for keeping us safe and getting us out of there with our refund.

We have come to realise that third-world type problems are very common over here. Such as: double booked accommodation and transportation, shocking state of the roads, atrocious customer service, and terrible driving which includes a lot of non-indication. They are also surprisingly behind the times in a lot of ways. They have a lot of homes and buildings in use that would have been condemned forty years ago in New Zealand, and we met an Australian banker in New York the other day who said that their banking system is about ten years behind New Zealand and Australia.

Every time we order a meal without meat we have problems trying to get the waiter to understand what we are wanting, and pretty often end up with something we have not ordered. The other day, also in New York, on Wall Street no less, I wanted a burger without meat and the guy had no idea what I was saying, so he called over his manager and I had to explain it to her. It literally took five whole minutes to explain what a vege burger was while she tried to explain that they had never heard of and could not make such a thing. I was nearly yelling by the time I explained how easy it was to make – just like normal really; the bun, the lettuce, tomato, onion and cheese, only leave out the meat patty. Finally she got it.

Anyway, after Atlanta we were then off to see one of Holly’s friends - Christine in Tampa, Florida and were very blessed to stay at a beautiful mansion of a house that was kinda like an old Southern plantation. We went to the graduation of the Bible School at Rodney Howard Brown’s River Church and we got to hear both him and his wife preach. Also the general who was in charge of the black hawk down operation in Somalia in the 1990’s was preaching. 

Holly's friend Christine outside beautiful home in Florida

After much thought about staying longer we had to keep pushing on so we left the next day. We stopped in at the Lakeland church that had the revival back in 2008 and Roy Fields was going to be leading worship there that week; if we had of known earlier we may have changed our plans to stay and see him but we didn’t have time.

Lakeland Church where Revival happened

We kept on driving and came to a most beautiful town called St Augustine and an old Spanish Fort built in the 1600s that was still in really good condition. Slaves would run away and come to live at St Augustine as the Spanish did not keep slaves and would provide protection to the runaways. But after the Spanish left after the Spanish and American war most of the free slaves went to live in Cuba with the Spanish.

Beautiful old 1600's Spanish Church in St Augustine

The next day we went out to see Fort Pulaski which protected Savannah from the sea. It sits right in the middle of an island and they could shoot from there in any direction at ships coming in to the river on any of the tributaries. It was built of very thick brick work and was thought to be invincible at the time of its building. The Confederates held the fort at the time of the civil war and knew the attack was going to come at some time. But they hadn’t counted on the new cannon that spiralled the shot like a rifle does which makes the cannon ball fly further and hit harder. These new cannon had not long been invented and the Union army set these guns up on a distant bank which was almost an impossible distance for the older cannons that the Confederates had inside the fort. The new guns blew a hole in the wall after a day of fighting; forcing the Confederates to surrender. You can still see the cannonballs in the walls. We then drove back to Savannah to look around.

Cannon holes in Fort Pulaski

Ewan in Fort Pulaski

We then headed up to Charlestown and looked around an old slave mart where slaves were sold. We saw the place where George Washington read the Declaration of Independence to the people and where some of the pirates that were a part of Blackbeard’s crew were kept before their executions.

Slave Mart in Charleston

The reason we had been in a rush was we were on our way to a conference called Awaken the Dawn at the house of prayer in Fredericksburg, Virginia. The conference was the lead up to The Call Virginia, led by Lou Engle. Some of the preachers at Awaken the Dawn were Corey Russell, Lou Engle and Rheinhard Bonkke who kept his messages simple and preached the gospel of redemption of souls. This man has lead 1% of the world to know Jesus Christ through massive revival meetings with millions at a single gathering.

The prayer room was also open most of the time and when we had enough of hour after hour of worship and preaching we would go into the prayer room and we found ourselves involved in some awesome prayer times. This all culminated in The Call on the Saturday - a day of fasting and prayer for the state of Virginia. It was an exhausting day but it felt like we were being stretched and having more room made for more of God. They were calling for people to make a stone wall of prayer to stop the disintegration of humanity. I felt that God spoke to me saying some people need to go over the wall and meet what’s on the other side, and I feel that’s why we are here: to help meet the need of a fallen world.

While we were in Fredericksburg our car had to go into the shop to get $700 worth of work done, so we were doing a lot of walking.

After The Call, the next day we spent looking around the civil war battlefields around Fredericksburg – there were a lot of battles here, as it was half way between the two capitals Richmond and Washington DC. We saw the Sunken Road where the Confederates fought off the Union, and also the place where the famous Southern General - Stonewall Jackson was killed. We then went just up the road to the Potomac River to a place where the slaves of the south would come to when they were running away during the civil war, they could then get a ride up river to Washington and freedom as President Lincoln said that all slaves in the Confederate south were free, even though the slaves in the north were not yet free. Of course the south was controlled by the Confederates though, so to get their freedom the slaves had to escape to the north first. We stayed that night in Richmond and went to the Confederate white house and museum. 

Holly on Sunken Road, standing where Confederates lined up to fight Union Army

Slave Auction Block in downtown Fredericksburg

After our time running around after the civil war we felt it was time to take our war-torn bodies to rest up a bit, and what better place than the Smokey Mountains. As we were coming in to the mountains on the North Carolina side we called in to Ashville which is situated in the most pleasant of locations in the mountains, it is home to the St Lawrence Basilica which makes for a very nice prospect. We then drove along the Blue Ridge Parkway that goes along the ridge of the Smokeys and passed the home of the Cherokee Indians. The drive along the parkway was stunning and we decided to take an extra day or two to explore the mountains further. We then booked a quaint little cabin in the woods which we were able to book using our android phones when we had signal. That night we went out to find bear and other animals at a place called Cades Cove which was once a community up in the mountains; there are still ruins of the old log cabins and other buildings these people used up there, but when that section of the mountains became a national park the people from this cove and the others in the park where made to move out. But now as then you can still see bears and other animals playing in the old fields. We didn’t see any bears but we did see a lot of dear and a grey fox or it might have been a grey coyote. Ewan also saved two tortoises that where running on the road.

Ewan giving to poor at St Lawrence Basillica in Asheville

Smokey Mountains

 

Tortoise Ewan saved

Deer at Cades Cove

Our cabin in the mountains, has a hot tub out back

Random bear near Smokey Mountains

Old log cabin from 1700s

After a couple of days we needed to move on so we drove to the cove that the real Christy lived in when she was living in the Mountains and went to her old church where she taught school. As we kept driving I was thinking man Uncle Dave would love this place.

Sight where real Christy lived

As we were driving out of the Mountains we discovered that not all roads that the GPS knows are really roads and when it says “not paved” it can actually mean that it’s a one horse track that you should really walk; not made for a Toyota Corolla from California. But it made the two hour trip five, which is always fun, complete with getting stuck on very steep and slippery gravel slipping downhill backward.

We arrived in the capital of Washington DC a bit later than planned but looking forward to our time. We had booked ourselves on a hop-on-hop-off bus tour which means just that - they drive, you hop on and off at sights and have a look. It’s an open top double decker bus so you can sit in the fresh air which is fine if there is not a hurricane like there was on the second half of the first day of our tour, but it makes things more exciting, especially the boat ride down the Potomac. In our time in DC we saw the Vietnam Memorial, Iwo Jima memorial (I think DC has a memorial for every event and person in US history), Washington Monument, Capitol Building, the White House of course, the Pentagon, Georgetown, the National Archives - being the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence. Oh yeah, and the New Zealand embassy, which we took some photos of – it was probably the most excitement the security team had for a long time. We think we will most likely be arrested when we come back into the country as being part of the Uruwera group.

We found Washington a lot more beautiful than expected. It also has a really nice peaceful feeling about it. It was pretty much our favourite big city on the trip so far.

Capitol Building

Washington Monument

Anti-Nuclear protestor, she has been doing this in this spot since 1981

White House

Canal in Georgetown

Ewan in poncho in Georgetown

Lincoln Memorial

The Reflection pool on The Mall

Vietnam Memorial

Pentagon, but not a good view as you are not allowed to take photos up close

Ford's Theatre where Lincoln was shot

Cute squirrel entertaining the crowds

After a full on time in DC it was nice to get back to the old country (England) when we went to the town of Annapolis; an old sea port in the north. Two things that we picked up on were how much it looked like England and how much older most of the buildings are in the north than the south: the south was greatly destroyed in the war. And the other thing was that seeing as we really like this English look we probably need to go there at some stage too. We pulled into Baltimore and had a yummy fish lunch and went to see an old sail ship of war which stopped 3 slave ships on their way to the south. 

Annapolis

After a night in the worst motel we have stayed in so far, my gosh this one was a shocker – smelly, run down, pretty much nothing worked, we travelled to Gettysburg and stood where the Union soldiers stood and faced down Pickett’s charge and turned the war. We stopped at the graveyard just behind where hundreds of graves of fallen soldiers lie.

Our motel room in Gettysburg

Civil War cemetery at Gettysburg

Gettysburg - the Confederates charged from where that tree line is towards the Union soldiers about where we were standing

We then hitched up our britches and headed down to Amish country to see how the folks do it down in Bird In Hand. We went for a ride in an Amish horse and cart driven by a real life Amish man, complete with beard and suit. He took us past some Amish farms where they still use a horse and plough in the fields. They don’t use electricity, but they sure use a lot of propane. We ate shoo fly pie – an old Amish treat, and looked at some amazing quilts that take a community of women 3 months to make all by hand, we would have loved to buy one, if only we had a spare $600.

  

Amish man ploughing his field

Amish farm

Amish family in their garden

Our Amish buggy ride

Being good socialists from New Zealand we needed to go to Philadelphia to see Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell and to see the house of George Washington who had slaves illegally while he was the President. Independence Hall was the place where they wrote the Declaration of Independence declaring America independent from England. We watched a DVD of how this decision split the country in two as some were for independence and some wanted to stay with England and others did not know what was right.

Independence Hall

Liberty Bell

Pretty building at Princeton University, New Jersey

We then went to New York to have a look around. We booked ourselves on another hop-on-hop-off bus tour again, which was not as good as the Washington one. We went on an old sailing ship to tour around NY Harbour to see the Statue of Liberty. Other things we saw in New York were: the Rockefeller Centre, Central Park, the Museum of Natural History, Brooklyn and Coney Island, a Mafia Restaurant, the UN, ground zero and the rebuild of the world trade tower – they call it “One World Tower”, and Wall Street. We went to Broadway and saw Sister Act and walked down Times Square and went to the M&M shop.

Next we popped over to Long Island which was a long way, as we hit every car in NYC I reckon in the famous New York traffic. But on Long Island Holly ate her first lobster roll and now she is hooked. We caught up with Taryn, an old friend of Holly’s from when they were kids, and her flat mate made us a spectacular pasta dinner. Their Upper East Side apartment was a cool experience. Four narrow flights of stairs with no elevator up to a small space that three women share; and it costs what a three bedroom home in Auckland would. New York was a great experience, but I think I would prefer Washington DC if we had to live in a big city on the East Coast.

T-Rex bones at the Museum of Natural History

Giant prehistoric turtle

Boathouse Cafe in Central Park

Central Park and New York from top of Rockefeller Center

Times Square at night

Times Square during the day

New One World Tower above ground zero

New York from the River

Statue of Liberty

Brooklyn Bridge

A Mafia Hangout, Italian Restaurant

Coney Island

We left the big smoke and headed for Cape Cod and over to Nantucket where the book Jaws was written, and also where the ship left from in the Moby Dick story. The Cape was awesome with its old lighthouses; one being so old that George Washington had been the one to orchestrate its building. And there were also a lot of beautiful old windmills; we felt like we were running around in Holland. The houses in Nantucket are all old wooden shingle set on rugged coast and at the beach we saw huge sea lions playing in the water right in front of us, a whole school of them were only a few metres offshore. We are looking into the cost of a house there as Holly has decided that she wants to live here instead.

Lighthouse at Cape Cod

Cape Cod

Cape Cod

Nantucket

Nantucket

Sea Lion at Nantucket

Nantucket

Nantucket

Nantucket

Windmill at Cape Cod

Next we went to Plymouth where the Pilgrims first landed and settled and had the first thanksgiving with the Indians, we also saw the Mayflower two here, as the first Mayflower was pulled apart for scrap 2 years after the captain died.

First rock that Pilgrims stepped on when they arrived

Mayflower 2

Sight in Plymouth where the first Thanksgiving was held

Much love to you all from Holly and Ewan.