Two months and counting . . .
If you ever answer the call to long term missions with SIM,
you will receive training in “how to say goodbye.”
Knowing that you are leaving for a while, and people you love will continue to live and have amazing or funny or sad or crazy experiences without you – well, that’s the real burden of leaving. Living this life with our family and friends has been beautiful. So, this particular writing is devoted to memories. If you see yourself below, know this memory is strong today. If you don’t – then know I was thinking of you yesterday or will tomorrow because that’s what happens when you leave; you think about those you love. We’re not saying goodbye, just beginning to adjust to the idea of not seeing you for a while. Here we go:
- I was at your house and we (my children) accidentally killed your hatching baby chickens, while your daughter and I screamed for a full minute in horror. How unfortunate this was my first thought.
- We’ve hiked together at Castlewood Canyon, where beauty is met on every side! Ok, this might account for at least 25 of you.
- Sitting at McDonald’s at 1:00 in the morning while our kids pour over their ballots saying, “What?! I did too refute that piece of evidence! Was that judge deaf?!”
- Apple Valley Lake – 4th of July – brownies and milk on the lake every year – already missing 2016
- Eating Esther Bolick’s marmalade cake, which takes about 3 hours to make, made from scratch by someone who loves me. Google the recipe, you won’t be sorry – especially if someone else makes it!
- Canning eight, EIGHT!, bushels of tomatoes for the winter in one sitting. Memory: hot, sweaty, burning fingers, hot, did I mention hot? Time to move off of food memories!
- Birthing baby goats, more accurately, helping a mommy goat that has a baby goat sticking out of her to finish the job. I have to put my hand in where?!
- An Affair to Remember – Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, someone needs to ask Joan Strain about this
- Breckenridge!
- Junior high events – the broken bones, the vomiting, the crying, and that was just the adults!
There were a million more, and hopefully a million to come.
Know that we pray for you and love you.
We are so very thankful that God has placed us in this time together.
ken and julie faulkner 