I hope you will forgive me a personal musing here.The separation from our relatives seems sad.
Sometimes I feel a real grief, especially in times celebration, as well as times of sadness, that they are not a part of my life, or involved in the lives of my children.
I was reflecting on this one day, and I had
a notion I had not considered before.
That the Lord, knew this would be so. Not that He had arranged it, but that He permitted it for reasons of His own.
I thought about how the separation I felt from "those back at the homestead" had been necessary because He wanted me to feel strong connections to dear friends in Latin America, and the permanent changes in the way we do things and the way we see things were desirable, and were, in part, because we were strangers in a strange land, struggling with language and culture.
Thursday night, both Kris and I arrived exhausted from work, a little car sick from traffic, no time to eat. We dressed and went to a reception for General Vallesteros, chief of the Colombian Air Force at the French Ambassadors residence.
And from the fatigue arose a most remarkable feeling....we felt among friends, loved and wanted. I saw men who liked and respected Kris and wanted to know in all earnestness if he would stay in Colombia. The generals and their wives greeted me too and kissed me as one of them. I think that says a lot about them, but it says something about us too. They like Kris because they know he likes them, and know he looks after their interests. This might not have happened if we had stayed connected to the old home town.
