Thriving!

I want to write to my Mom, and my sister and my sisters in law and my nieces and my friends Nancy and Margie and Pippa and Sharon, and I really wish I could write to Margaret and, and, and...it's time to blog, so here I am.  When you've got a lot to tell, a blog is a wonderful help.

I came back yesterday from my first real, over-three-nights ladies' conference!  Many months ago, my friend Hilary Ker invited me to this ladies conference.  I was immediately interested and excited.  It was a missionary conference intended to refresh North American missionary ladies.  I just wanted to meet all these other missionary ladies, and make friends, and hear their stories.  Of course, I had to check with our preaching/touring schedule to see if it would work, and Paul came back with a disheartening, "I don't know." So he prayed for guidance, and the Lord guided with a clear yes!  Yippee!  It was on the schedule. 

Hilary and I don't see much of each other, in spite of the fact she lives a mere kilometer or so away, but when we passed occasionally, we'd point at each other and say, "October!" as we were going to be roomies at the hotel, so figured we'd have plenty of time to catch up. 

Glorious!  I've been living with my three big guys in Muizenberg, and missing my girlies in Heaven and in Maine, respectively, so this was a great time of fellowship, or rather, girlowship.  Or something like that.  I warned the ladies that large overnighters with girls make me think of my boarding school days back at DCA and I might start acting like a high-schooler again. 

The worship times were sweet, kind of tear-jerkers sometimes, in a good way.  I had sort of forgotten I could be moved so much by music.  It was precious. 

We had a speaker who has been a missionary in Bolivia, Ethiopia, Spain, and now Ireland, so she was REALLY experienced and could empathize with just about everything.  She is Sarah Wetzel, and she gave us her book which I am reading as fast as I can so I can put it in my book club.  It's called Growing Down, and is good stuff. 

 I like the reminder I'm a work in progress!  This retreat did some good work on me. 

 The singing was a delight!  Just the right volume (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  That's remarkable for me!!!)

Every morning, our table was decorated with flower and American chocolates.  The Reese's were/are my favorites.

 Hilary Ker was my fun roommate. 

 The hotel had a gorgeous pool complimenting the amazing view of the Atlantic.  Sunsets on that side are special to us there because we have a mountain in the way of sunsets on our side of Cape Town.  The sun never "sinks into the ocean" it just goes behind the mountain without much fanfare, so it was fun to see it "sink" for a change.  We were only about a half hour from home, if there was no traffic. 

The food needs a mention.  NINE all-you-can-eat buffets in a row!  Temptation Ally.  It was delicious. 

Here's a peek at the hotel where the conference was!  But for me the highlight was meeting the ladies, both missionary and volunteers, and hearing their stories, and getting to know them.  That's a little slice of Heaven when we'll get to spend time (or eternity!) getting to know all kinds of followers of Jesus through all the ages.

After the conference, four of us buzzed over to an ostrich park.  We met and fed Tom Thumb, the world's smallest full grown ostrich

We got sit on a real ostrich too. How'd you like to do that for a living--people sit on you and take your picture.  But I guess there's not a lot of jobs out there for ostriches and some of them end up in a package at the grocery store, so maybe this one's not so bad.