June 26 Bozeman, MT

I think I want to move here. The weather is fantastic. It's the end of June and most days we still wear jackets or have the heat on at night.

The town of Bozeman is really neat. It's a college town. They say it's a tourist town too, but I don't know why.

Downtown Bozeman is alive and well. It has so many stores and restaurants and most of them are unique. So many of them have outside eating areas, either on the front sidewalk, back patio or both. We've eaten at the Soup Garage a couple times. This is in an old filling station, believe it or not! Their menus have license plates for their covers. And they have a urinal decorated as a moose head for a wall decoration. Several of the restaurants are just little 'hole-in-the-wall' places, specializing in one meal only, usually breakfast.

Today we wanted to go to a little Mexican restaurant that doesn't even have a name. We got there about 2:30. They close at 3:00. We forgot our money. So we hurried back to the academy to get it. We got back a few minutes before 3:00 but they had already closed. We decided to walk down a couple blocks to Mackenzie's Pizza. We've eaten there a couple times.

About half way, I realized that a man was following us. He was a few steps behind Jim. He matched our speed, step for step. Finally, I stopped at a store to look in the window. He stopped quickly and turned to face the street, like he didn't want us to see his face. He just stood there until we started walking again. Then he followed like before. Scary! At the corner, I turned around to look at him, so he turned to cross the street the other way. He still didn't let us see his face. I don't know what he had in mind, but I'm so thankful that I was aware of him. I would not have liked leading him to our car.

Mt Ellis Academy has a really neat summer program. Last week the campus was full with the people for campmeeting. For the next month, several homeless families will be living here in the girl's dorm. The Church member bring in food everyday to feed them. So they get free room and board for a month, so they can save their money to get in a house or apartment. What a great program.

We started inventory on Monday. By Tuesday night we were finished. The next two days we packed and packed and PACKED boxes. A book store with no books sure looks empty. The room echoes now.

Terry Chestnut came from Pacific Press to work with us. So with Terry, Kathleen, Jim and I, we were 'smoking'. Today we finished packing the back room. Jim has most of it packed in the truck, but we still have a ways to go. You know how the left over stuff always takes the longest.

I've sold almost all the shelves and equipment in the store. Now that they are empty, everyone is busy or on vacation and can't get them picked up. If they were gone, it would feel like we were getting finished. So we have maybe another week here to finish up. Chad will be here on Tuesday to take the storage shelves to Minnesota. Maybe we can leave on Wednesday. I hope that we don't have to come back for a second load, if it all doesn't fit in the truck.

I think tomorrow we will go back to Yellowstone. I still want to see bear and moose.