Dear Family, Friends, and new friends, 

    We have been meaning to write this for a while to explain what our mission is about with Meandering Bain’s. Life has been crazy so we weren’t able to find the time to do this until now, which is day 2 in our first long road trip.

    About 3 years ago I was working in Sparks and was wearing a ton of hats; youth pastor, athletic director, dad, bus driver and I’m sure a few others that I am forgetting about for my own sanity. God met me where I was and I felt the strong urge to lay down most of those titles to focus on family and refocusing on what God had in store for myself and my kids.

    During that same time as I was trying to step away from where I was I met Natalie, who at the time was living over a hundred miles away from me and we started to date after a crazy mission trip I went on. We grew closer and got engaged in late 2019 and had expectations to be married in spring 2020. We had grand plans but God knew better. Obviously 2020 was a challenging year. We were not able to have a big family wedding in April of 2020 so we had a super intimate family wedding in late March of 2020.

    God knew far better then we could have ever imagined; come May we knew we were expecting an addition to our clan. I was out of work from march until the end of May, during that time Natalie and I grew together and had dreams of possibly one day being able to travel and be a blessing wherever our feet landed. At that point we were struggling to purchase a new car, and really had no direction. By the summer I was back at work and we received the news that our family was growing not by one but by two!

God blessed us by having the new truck we tried to purchase (before we knew a pregnancy was coming) fall through. While we were disappointed with our initial car choice gone, we didn't lose hope and when the dust settled, we had a paid off SUV that would fit the twins and the rest of us and still be able to tow a trailer. We also had enough funds left over to outright buy a trailer. We spent the summer and fall fixing up this trailer to accommodate our needs and the dreams started to feel more possible.

Winter of 2020 was very difficult for our family; as most twin pregnancies are no walk in the park. But late December finally came and our girls arrived safe and healthy! We hunkered down like everyone else during the craziness that was late 2020, early 2021. But we had been saving and praying about what God had next for us. Early February we took our first trip with the twins camping to see if it could be a reality to take them out in our camper for an extended period.

    The blessings continued as we were able to make our finances work so that this summer we could begin to travel and we started planning a trip. We had a test run trip planned for the week of the older kids spring break. This was a test run to really test our limits. It wasn’t a perfect trip but it helped prove that we could and should take our family out and bond for the summer. When I returned from the trip we decided to commit and give ample notice at work that we would be leaving in mid May.

That was 7 weeks ago, we have been frantically trying to prepare ever since. Solidifying plans, packing, working on the trailer, making sure my work was left in good hands, and trying to parent newborn twins. It was a lot, but God has uniquely equipped our family for just such an occasion. It was not easy, we fell behind and some projects had to be delayed. The day did arrive, and the finances made sense, and we have now embarked on a fascinating adventure that will take us up the west coast for sure.

    We will be regularly updating people on life and there will be many stories from the road. For the next week it will just be the twins, Natalie and I in Southern Nevada and Southern California. We will be joined next weekend by the older kids and our trip will begin in earnest. Please be praying for safe travels and opportunities to be a blessing as we go.

    If you know of a church or person that could use a visit from a crazy traveling family please get us in contact: part of our mission is to serve those we come in contact with in anyway God leads us. The hope is that through our Meandering Bain’s site we can travel and write and create a following; so that we can continue our missions trips with our family.

    This ended up being longer than I expected but hopefully gives decent context for what will follow in the next 7 weeks. Please comment and share our pages as we want this to bless anyone and everyone anyway we can!

    You can also look forward to new books being self published along the way; this is how we hope to stay afloat financially. Currently we have a camping book published, and we are diligently working on a children's travel series as well as a young adult novel.

God bless.

Love Mitchell, Natalie, Peyton, Fletcher, Kayleigh, Charleigh, and Katie