Reunions and Other Happenings

Just before we left for Christmas we had someone new show up at our church. She looked like someone that we thought maybe we should know but we couldn't figure it out until the time in our service where they have introductions. It turns out that she is the sister of Pennine, the pastor’s wife. When they were fleeing their homeland she was two years old and had been separated from them in the confusion and she hadn’t seen her mom until that week –18 years later! Pennine fled with her mother, sister and two younger brothers. This sister who was the youngest was somehow separated but has been kept by another older brother since then. Isaac, one of the brothers who is here, said to me, “All these years, whenever Mama has been sick it’s been because of her—it just made her sick all the time because she had lost our baby sister.”

Although our separation from our homeland wasn’t nearly so long ago, we were richly blessed to be able to go home for Christmas and see our family as well. We thought that we were leaving behind difficulties with internet and electricity only to arrive in time for ice storms that incapacitated much of the electrical lines in Toronto and to a house with no internet or phone. Jennifer had hoped to get progressive lenses for eyes as reading has increasingly become a problem. Our doctor had suggested it might help with the headaches she had been experiencing. We had our own “series of unfortunate events” that in the end we were not able to get glasses that worked before getting back on the plane. We were however fortunate to get on the plane before they shut down the Toronto Airport.
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