Full-circle

For those of you waiting on the edge of your seat for an update from us, it will just have to wait a little bit longer. I can say, that our container is loaded, our apartment is painted and mostly cleaned and our landlord will do a walk-through on Monday. Please pray he isn’t picky – we could really use our deposit…

Really, what I wanted to talk about was an experience we had today. We attended the funeral of our friend, Anita. Anita was in her early 30s, she was Croatian, but was born in Germany and she was married to a wonderful African man named Obinna. Anita attended our small group and we got to know her a little over a year and a half ago. It took us a while to find out that she had just received a kidney from her mother and she was going to dialysis 3 times a week and that the cause of all this was Lupus. 6 months ago, the kidney she received from her mother had to be taken out because her body was rejecting it and from then until last week, her body continued to give up and she remained in the hospital. Her husband was a mighty prayer warrior, and although God didn’t heal her body on earth, she is now rejoicing with her new body in heaven. Today was her funeral and we were surprised to see people standing outside the doors of the chapel because there was no more room. Our small group sang “Soon and very soon” as we watched Obinna in his chair, slumped over and mourning the loss of his bride and Anita’s mother, sobs racking her body. It got us thinking about how this was perhaps a fitting end to our time in Germany. We experienced the birth of our daughter here and now we’re experiencing the death of a friend and the death of our life in Germany. We are in mourning for both today. It does tend to hit you hard how short your life is when you witness the death of someone so young. And it made us all the more encouraged in some regard that our life is too short to waste and we need to follow God’s leading. Even though we will miss Germany, our friends, our neighbors, our life here – we are assured that we are following God’s will for our lives and that makes the mourning a bit easier.

Please join us in praying for Obinna and Anita’s mother. I cannot imagine the sorrow that they are feeling at this time.

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