One week to go ...

While the mangosteens ripened at home, 

my Dad sent funny pictures of growing up. The piano was in my bedroom.

Note: my reluctant pupil (Norm) and I were too small for the bench 

so we had to sit on a book.

W and I played around with the grandkids at the park

and fed them junk food.

Sunday, we drove across the state to a conference. 

Each morning we walked at 6am, enjoying the beautiful sunrises of Coeur d'Alene. 

Sunsets were amazing, too. (This pic of our resort by Eric Fromm.)

What a great time, cheering on presenters and speakers.

We visited with people devoted to serving Indonesia and other parts of the world,

and hung out with those we've missed over the past year. 

The new network leader encouraged women

to act and not to wait, to do what was at hand or create new things,

and then to watch the doors of service open.

We celebrated Mel's retirement from a long-term job 

with his family and our dearest friends.

Our Jakarta pastor preached the ordination service - 

and among those charged with living out their calling was

our good friend Terry G.

We drove back to Seattle under a glorious sky.

I was so happy to enjoy a Thursday morning coffee at Third Place Commons, 

one more time.

We've begun packing to return home next week. 

The process is never easy or pretty but we are excited to go back.

Read more:

*For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. Job 19:25 ESV

*For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. Psalm 139:13-15 NIV

*May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones. 1 Thessalonians 3:12-13  NIV

From C. S. Lewis: The Weight of Glory

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn: We must play. 

But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists 

between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian

neighbour, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat—the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.