Of Socks and Swims and Adieu to the Sun

Winter's arrived! Six months of hot drinks, long sleeves, jackets, scarfs, and hats loom up before my empty lemonade glass, and so it's time to reintroduce the word "sock" back into my vocabulary. ;)

In a quick and undetailed flashback over the summer, I have to say it's been one of the best. In the first week of both October and November my mom traveled up to Pretoria (capital of SA about five hours away) for Dr. Wayne Mack's Grace School of Ministry counselling course. For a full week each month, she had a wonderful time studying and listening to lectures, and came home with her suitcase crammed full of books and mountains of homework. While she was gone, my dad and I attempted to hold down the home front. And I think we succeeded, considering no one died from my cooking, or was poisoned from gas fumes when we did the house remodeling that can only be done when a mother isn't there to see the mess we made. ;) In the latter half of November, we had guests stay with us for a couple weeks, finished up the Sunday School year with a play and awards' night, and then packed everything up for a pre-Christmas vacation at a nature reserve, along with some friends. Thanks to the Murray family and Luke Foster incredible fun, skin-cancer-ensuring sunburns, braais every day, Boggle late at night, Monopoly in the middle of a rainstorm, swimming in a cold-cold river, and plunging off high jetties into the cleanest, clearest water made the week unforgettable. :)

Christmas rolled around in an endless array of the nativity story, secretive smiles about hidden gifts, surprises, songs, and reminisces of the Lord's endless and unfailing love and blessings in the past year. New Year was spent watching the impressive fireworks that lit up the Barbertonian sky, eating homemade ice cream with fresh mangoes and strawberries, coaxing the dogs out of our beds, and lighting off our own fireworks. Farewell to 2010! You were a colorful year, full of new things, and with tons of memories.

January began a new school year (hello, 11th grade!)and passed by rather uneventfully. Providing that heavy, humid heat, thundering hail and rainstorms, spring cleaning in the middle of summer, swimming and barefooting one's way through the days can be considered uneventful. February began with a rain shower in shorts and ended with a windstorm in jeans. In between, headway was made in school and I got the literally brain-numbing shocking surprise of having my best friend Gracie Woodrow secretly bus down to spend a week with us. I was reading on the couch on Sunday night, expecting a relatively uneventful week, and then Gracie strolls in grinning with a casual "So where do I put my bag?" :D Thank YOU, Gracie-dear, for that wonderful week of insanely late late-night talks, crying over movies and video clips, foxtrotting with coordination in the kitchen while making pancakes with the iPod attached to our heads, and thanks so much for sticking by me during my mouth operation (tooth removal, chiseling out a cyst, yanking another one into place, opening the palate, more chiseling, and stitches) and generally being the never-say-die and just amazing friend you are. :)

March brought a weekend in Johannesburg, my sixteenth, Lael's tenth, and my dad's forty-ninth birthdays, and Cole's beloved Cricket World Cup. Oh, and the pressure of our nearing conference season. Dad's printing out of 1000+ brochures and letters, dozens of boxes of books being sent out all over the world, and hundreds of envelopes to be licked and mailed. April was all of this and more with my parents' trip to Cape Town. Our friends the Mulengas came to stay with us while Dad interviewed at a theological seminary and Mom went house hunting.

All that was last week, which brings me up to the now. Good Friday, what a beautiful thing happened today over 2000 years ago. A Jew, a lowly carpenter beaten, bloody, humiliated, and whipped beyond recognition and hammered to a cruel cross, enduring hours of agony. The Son of God dying, God's plan to save mankind from sin coming to a close in Christ's labored cry, "Father, forgive them!" and then "It is finished." And this for you and me, so that we don't have to suffer for eternity, so that we can finally be complete, so that our lives can have meaning, so that we can serve and give and be utterly filled with His love... seriously, what are we worth, who are we compared to such an act of pure, selfless love done 2000 years ago? O Saviour, thank You!

Happy Easter to all!!

Oh, and would you mind praying for my dad? He's going to up Lusaka, Zambia next week to speak at a missions conference, and we would really appreciate prayers for everything to go well. Thanks a lot!