...Abby Haddad Carson, left her job as a nurse to "sound the trumpet" on mission trips with her husband, Robert, handing out tracts. They stopped working on their house and saving for college.

Last weekend, the family traveled to New York, the parents dragging their reluctant children through a Manhattan street fair in a final effort to spread the word.

...
Kino Douglas, 31, a self-described agnostic, said it was hard to be with his sister Stacey, 33, who "doesn't want to talk about anything else."

 "I'll say, `Oh, what are we going to do this summer?' She's going to say, `The world is going to end on May 21, so I don't know why you're planning for summer,' and then everyone goes, `Oh, boy,' " he said.

...In 1992 Mr. Camping said the rapture would probably be in 1994, but he now says newer evidence makes the prophecy for this year certain.

...
Gary Daniels, 27, said he planned to spend Saturday like other believers, "glued to our TV sets, waiting for the Resurrection and earthquake from nation to nation." But he acknowledged that his family was not entirely behind him.

 "At first there was a bit of anger and tension, not really listening to one another and just shouting out ideas," Mr. Daniels said.

 But his family has come around to respect -- if not endorse -- his views, and he drove from his home in Newark, Del., on Monday night in a van covered in Judgment Day messages to say goodbye to relatives in Brooklyn. "I know I'm not going to see them again, but they are very certain they are going to see me, and that's where I feel so sad," he said. "I weep to know that they don't have any idea that this overwhelming thing is coming right at them, pummeling toward them like a meteor."

...
While Ms. Haddad Carson has quit her job, her husband still works as an engineer for the federal Energy Department. But the children worry that there may not be enough money for college. They also have typical teenage angst -- embarrassing parents -- only amplified.

 "People look at my family and think I'm like that," said Joseph, their 14-year-old, as his parents walked through the street fair on Ninth Avenue, giving out Bibles. "I keep my friends as far away from them as possible."

 "I don't really have any motivation to try to figure out what I want to do anymore," he said, "because my main support line, my parents, don't care."

...
The children, however, have found something to giggle over. "She'll say, `You need to clean up your room,' " Grace said. "And I'll say, `Mom, it doesn't matter, if the world's going to end!' "

 She and her twin, Faith, have a friend's birthday party Saturday night, around the time their parents believe the rapture will occur.

 "So if the world doesn't end, I'd really like to attend," Grace said before adding, "Though I don't know how emotionally able my family will be at that time."