road trip part 2

Greetings from our second road trip fo the summer. Yesterday we drove to Western Maryland to visit Erica's sister. She lives in Cumberland MD which turns out to be one of the most interesting and beautiful small cities I have ever seen. It is nestled in a little vally in the mountians of Western MD.
This morning we had breakfast at the Princess Diner in Frostburg Md..... mmmmmm Good Breakfast!!!! After breakast we departed Erica's sister and drove up to Gettysburg PA and explored the battle site. I was struck with a profound sense of awe at what actually happened there and the incredible bravery exhibited by soldiers on boths sides, at the same time I was also deeply saddened by the incredible loss of life that took place there. That place is truly sacred ground.
After leaving Gettyspburg we drove up to Philadelphia, this evening we went to a Vietnames version of Denny's for dinner.... Philadelphia is an amazing city Full off incredible urban architecture and an incredible diversity of cultures and cuisines. We are staying with one of Erica's friends here who happens to be a pastor. She lives in a row house in the city surrounded by neighbors of every ethnicity of imaginable. Part of me really misses living in a city like this with so many opportunities, so much to see and explore. I am excited and saddened to be here, this city is falling apart at the seems. There are a lot of ethnic prejudices and fear here. This is a city that truly needs the the love of Christ to truly heal it's wounds.
Tomorrow we are going to venture downtown and see some of the historical touristy things. I am really looking forward to seeing Independence Hall. I remember going there as a child but I don't think I really understood the importance of what happened there.
In closing I want to leave you with some words that stuck in my mind after my trip to Gettysburg:
Abraham Lincoln Nov. 19, 1863
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who died here that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have hallowed it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is rather for us the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."