CHEERS!!!

Luke is home! That long boy barely folds into a MAF plane anymore. He flew from Nairobi to Entebbe where the MAF pilot Laura met him, and then in the Cessna from Entebbe to Bundibugyo, even taking control of flying the plane much of the way under Laura's supervision. This is one of the great perks of being a missionary kid. I got teary just seeing him jump out. He's unpacking some pretty amazing pottery from his elective this year, he has real artistic talent . . . and a great GPA too. Today is an ebenezer, a milestone . . hither by grace. A year ago the idea of sending our child to boarding school was a painful unknown. Now, looking back, we see God's merciful provision in Luke's thriving friendships, academic maturity, and spiritual resilience. We miss the every-day life together, but we also see the refined gold that comes through trial. And interestingly, I believe that having a child at boarding school makes us more normal here in Uganda. It is a point of shared life experience and conversational contact with most Ugandan parents we know, which I would never have realized before. So a thanks today, to God for opening the place for Luke, to RVA for taking such good care of him, to his dorm parents the Gallaghers and his in-country guardians the Newtons, and to two voices in our life who kept telling us to keep this door open and to consider letting him go: Dan Herron and Paul Leary. You were right.