Pack horse-ing around

We have 2 days left in Seattle. It's already been a wonderful week of life and friendship and packing stuff.

One last NU faculty friends dinner

Grandkids and nephews

One last visit with the tribe

We'll be taking back less than we'd hoped but need the priorities we'd earmarked for the year. What's in the suitcases, beyond our clothing?

• equipment for teaching and working abroad.
• a few books for teaching, reading, and art - oh, how I missed English books! We were library hounds and now we have to purchase online books that are not blocked. That's tough on me: W loves to read online. I read like mad while in the States.
• household / hospitality items that are too expensive or not available in Bandung. We host foreigners and Indonesians educated abroad, so we stock up on items we'd do without for ourselves.
• walking shoes. We've worn the soles off our shoes. If we could find them in Jakarta, they'd cost $100s a pair. Here, Sierra Trading Post had them on clearance @$30.
• my Bernina sewing machine. I missed missed missed it. I'll cover the utterly worn furniture left in the house, saving $$$ and having a creative outlet. 

Goodbye to my brother and sis-in-love 

Nephew and his grandma 

One last church service together,
Miss K standing on a chair back and hugging Oma

What else?

• DIY household items - sink stoppers, drains for the showers, hooks, oven knobs, etc. - that were permanently "out of stock."
• a few favorite foods and Trader Joes teas. Yes, we're packing some big bars of chocolate.
• a slipcover from our Seattle home. It fits the Beddinge sofa someone gave us in Indonesia. God brought a big smile to my face, unbelievably sending us the exact IKEA sofa we knew, no longer available in the USA market. (Instead of buying new furniture, I updated our Seattle LR by getting slipcovers on clearance over the years. Now I just need to get one home to Bandung.)
• a few trusted makeup and hair products. Nope, I can't get it there or I refuse to spend $$$$ for find equivalents in a country with few blond heads. We're also bringing some things requested by fair-skinned coworkers.
• canvas drop-cloths from Home Depot = slipcovers. I'll use Sharpee markers to "decorate" fabric with the upholstery weight cloths.
• Sheets and bedding donated to us here. Some sizes are only available in Indonesia at high-end expat stores. (Again, it would be $$$. Nope, not doing that.)

How will we fit it all in? We don't know yet. God always provides, though.

We say goodbye to our Indonesian kids,
studying in the States and living in our suite

I haven't cried during farewells, but I remember tearing up a week or two after arriving. I think that will be the case when we get home. I'm a delayed responder. 

Do you cry on the spot or later?

Read more:

*Shout for joy, you heavens; rejoice, you earth; burst into song, you mountains! For the Lord comforts his people and will have compassion on his afflicted ones. See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me. Isaiah 49:13,16 NIV

*And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything
according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever
we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him. 1 John 5:14-15 ESV

*Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Romans 12:12 ESV

C. S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain

Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness. For about a hundred years we have so concentrated on one of the virtues—“kindness” or mercy—that most of us do not feel anything except kindness to be really good or anything but cruelty to be really bad. Such lopsided ethical developments are not uncommon, and other ages too have had their pet virtues and curious insensibilities. And if one virtue must be cultivated at the expense of all the rest, none has a higher claim than mercy. . . . The real trouble is that “kindness” is a quality fatally easy to attribute to ourselves on quite inadequate grounds. 

Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment. Thus a man easily comes to console himself for all his other vices by a conviction that “his heart’s in the right place” and “he wouldn’t hurt a fly,” though in fact he has never made the slightest sacrifice for a fellow creature. We think we are kind when we are only happy: it is not so easy, on the same grounds, to imagine oneself temperate, chaste, or humble.

You cannot be kind unless you have all the other virtues. If, being cowardly, conceited and slothful, you have never yet done a fellow creature great mischief, that is only because your neighbour’s welfare has not yet happened to conflict with your safety, self-approval, or ease. Every vice leads to cruelty.