Seasons are changing…

As we drive around Harare, I see the street vendors have started to sell blow-up rubber duck floaties for the pool and that can indicate only one thing… it’s becoming summer around here. Summer brings for us an eventual end to our time here. Rubber duck floaties become a sad reminder that our time here is almost done. Though I look forward to America and all the “luxuries” it affords us, I am sad to see our time here come to an end. It is, of course, the people we will miss most… Patience, Baba Office, Mickey, Angie and Lin... Ohh! How my heart aches at the thought of not seeing these people every day! In Sanyati, people come and go in your home constantly and though this was one of the hardest things to get used to I have to say that will be what I miss most… Watching as Chloe does “milk time” (not tea time, because the “tea is too hot”) with Patience and Baba Office, having the teams over for dessert night, sharing a dinner with Mickey and Angie and Lin, watching as Chloe gets a ride on Patience’s back, watching Paige and Kate play with their friends outside… ohhh! It will be hard to say goodbye. So hard to think about not seeing these wonderful people tomorrow, like usual… hard to know that we won’t be in the next planning session for ministry here. Life will go on here- it is just hard to know you won’t be a part of it. Patience says “Emotions just mean you’re alive” and by that definition- I am VERY alive lately! Haha! I know it’s time to go though… God has given me peace about it. It is time. The house we are staying in is our temporary home and that was always understood…at some point “temporary” means you need to move on to the next phase of life and that’s what we’ll do. I feel very blessed by God that I got to experience these last 6 months here and that my family as a whole got to do this adventure together. Living in the bush in Africa is hard, I won’t deny, but the lessons it taught me, the experiences I got to have made every moment without power and every gross spider worth it. I will miss you Sanyati. May God bless you and keep you. May He walk among you and shower you with love. I will cherish every moment, every memory… and until I see you again, in this world or the next, we will praise the Lord together for all He has done here. Amen.

Rashel, with love