The Tucker Family: Camping with the Meeks

We spent the first weekend in May camping with the Meeks family. Will and I stayed with them in Jelico, TN back in the fall. They spend their time ministering to and serving the families in the community. Before they moved to Jelico, they were missionaries in Africa for 15 years. Needless to say, they are very inspiring to Will and I, and we just completely try to soak in all their advice for the ministry and child training. They are amazing parents and great servants in the Kingdom. We hope to share a lot of these camping trips with them in the future. We are taking our youth group to stay with them in Jelico the third week in June. I know all our kids will greatly benefit from the experience! We are so thankful that the Lord has blessed us with these new friends.

This is a picture of Gaines in the tent. He thought the whole tent experience was the greatest thing ever! He especially loved wrestling in the tent. The funniest thing of the whole trip was Friday night when I brought him into the tent to put on his PJs. After I changed him he said, "mommy, you go out there and I'll sleep in here." I repeated what he said to make sure I was hearing him right. He said , "yeah." So, I gave him a flashlight and told him to turn it off when he was ready to go to sleep. I walked over to the camp fire and told Will what happened. We couldn't keep from laughing as we continued to look over at the tent for the next 10 minutes or so watching the light of the flashlight wind around the tent. We checked on him a few times, but before long the glowing light slowed down and eventually stopped. He was asleep! Our two year old put himself to sleep in a tent by himself in the dark...in the middle of the woods. Does this seem strange to anyone?!

This is Hannah and Donna fixing the veggies for dinner...everything taste 10x better roasted over a camp fire. They were delicious!

Our little fisherman.

Thursday night we ate steaks, drank Chai and chated around the campfire. Everything was great until the drizzle set in. I love camping, BUT I DON'T KNOW WHY IT ALWAYS HAS TO RAIN WHEN I GO!!!

This is Josh and Ben...our firewood collectors. They were quite the outdoorsmen.

Here is a picture of the Elk. We camping in Cataloochee. It's about an hour and 15 minutes from us. They reintroduced elk back into the area several years ago and now they roam around nearly like pets.

The boys watching the elk.

Here we are roasting "snake biscuits." A new camping treat we learned from the Meeks. Wrap biscuits around a stick, roast 'em and then sprinkle powdered sugar on 'em...mmmm!