Mother’s Day

Mother’s day is celebrated the last week in May here.  Joel always likes it because he gets a warning from the American Mother’s Day reminding him to prepare.  This past Mother’s day was unexpectedly a blessing to me.  Usually on Mother’s day the women of our church head out to a village to meet with the mothers from another church.  This year the details of that didn’t get worked out so we ended up staying in town and meeting at our church with the women of our two churches.  Our family had obligations in the village to attend a wedding out there so I was not able to stay after church for the meal and devotional.  However after we had eaten at the wedding and were heading home we passed by the church to see if people were still there.  To my pleasant surprise we got back just in time for games.  We played charades and a game with singing.  By the end of the time I was laughing so hard that tears were streaming down my face.  It was so good and so healthy to gather together as woman and just laugh.  However as I was heading home I started tearing up about something different.  4 years ago I could never imagine wanting to hang out with people here, enjoying myself well doing so and not coming home exhausted.  So much has changed and I was just praising God.  Praising God that he has given me a group of women who want me to be around, care about me, and who will laugh with me until tears are streaming down our faces.  It was something I could have never imagined as the culture and language barrier seemed so large, but now I fully treasure it as the gift it is.