Future memories...

If you care to join me on this meandering down a sunlit path of my mind...come along side me and walk in quietness...maybe your memories will carry you down a path that temporarily removes you from this world...

When I am doing intensive Internet searches I end up in a place that is all visual and almost virtual. Like a recent search I did on my maternal grandparents...Assemblies of God missionaries to Africa for more than 50 years. I Googled their names and found old archives with articles either by them or about them. I even found a professor at a Bible college that had their names listed on the course outline as missionaries to study. I contacted him through an e-mail asking if he had any information on them that he could share and he referred me to a very helpful lady at the denomination's headquarters. She was very helpful in letting me know what the available resources are.

This comes as a follow-up to a book that my mom just authored about her life as a missionary kid. Between reading her book and reading the articles about and by my grandparents I have been flooded with bittersweet memories of them. I remember when they would come "home" from Africa -- that is how I thought of it as a child -- only to realize now that Africa was their home, not the USA -- they loved the people and the land -- it was a God given love that extracted a great price from them...but I never heard them complain. As an adult I grew to love them more as grandparents. As a child they came and went from my life every 4 years...usurping the authority from my parents when they entered our home...which I resented as a child. As an adult I was able to share a more common view with them, and especially my grandma during her years as a widow. If I think too hard on either one of them the tears well up and my face scrunches up and the sobs begin. How is it that 20 years have passed since my grandpa died, and 7 years have passed since my grandma died and I can still cry fresh tears?

Back to my thoughts on going down the sunlit paths of my mind...I recently came across an address within an e-mail that was sent out to a huge group of people...it looked like it would belong to a couple that I knew years ago (I think it's not proper e-mail etiquette to "harvest" e-mails from someone else's e-mail...but I couldn't pass up the opportunity). It turned out to be the couple that I was hoping for...they lived in Belgium at the same time I did...in my early 20's...I was there on short-term missions. I went through some really rough times and they were so kind to me...just simple things...a smile...a prayer...a greeting...small things that went straight to my heart. I was so happy to get a reply from them. We are going to try to meet up in the near future and catch up on the last 20 years.

The Internet can be an amazing place of reconnection. I pity the poor fools who have fallen into its trappings of demise and destruction. For me it has helped me reconnect with people that I couldn't have (without hiring a PI anyway).

Back to the present...a memory of the morning...

As I was driving to work I called my parents. My mom's cheery voice answered the phone "Buenas Dias" -- we try to greet each other in any foreign greeting we can come up with -- as I was driving I was moved by the sunrise that God had painted for me to view this morning...mountains in the south that were a surreal blue violet decorated with foamy white clouds surrounding the peaks (reminded me of ice cream foam floating on hot coffee) and interspersed were sheets of dull gray rain down to the horizon...then the sky to the east was literally filled with pale blue violet clouds interlaced with big white puffy clouds that broke open in places to allow back lit liquid amber to spill forth in rays that reached upwards toward heaven and downward towards earth...and one spot in particular that was all white...it looked like a perfect opening for Jesus to reappear (please come soon Lord Jesus!).

Sigh...and now it's back to the present...which will be a memory in the future...