This next week was just a whirlwind of things that needed to be done. In order to make the trip back home we needed to renew Mieke’s passport since it had expired in August. I cannot thank the US government enough. We went into the federal building in Boston on Monday morning and I went in at 3pm again to go pick up the passport. We’re so thankful they were able to help us so quickly.  Next thing was that DH didn’t get the actual physical green card yet so we needed to go to the INS offices in Manchester, NH to get a stamp in his passport. Again they were extremely helpful and we walked in and out of that office in under an hour with the stamp stamped in. Another reason why I love the USA. :-)

Ok, so we left for S.Africa on the 3^rd of December. Arrived on the 4^th of December at 10pm and got home and went straight to bed. Next day, 5^th was my birthday and it was also the day we went to the funeral services to look at my mil. She...well, it was ok, a little emotional but O.K. It definitely went a lot better than I thought. I just wanted to get it over with...

it was around 4pm by the time we left there and then we went to a restaurant, buffet-type restaurant where we met up with my 2 brothers and their wives and my 2 nieces and my grandmother and it was nice. My fil and sil went with us, so we had a nice dinner, chatted, got a chance to catch up a little with everyone.

After that we went to my fil’s house and we stayed there for the remainder of the visit. The last day in S.A we went back to my parents’ place and slept there the last night. Luckily I got to see them every day since they came to visit every day!! I was so thankful about it. It feels very strange being in S.A and not being with my parents...I have to be honest and say that those 8 days were the longest days in my life. I cannot explain it but it felt like every day was just dragging on...maybe it’s normal, I don’t know...I’ve never lost a parent-in-law before. It’s just sad and even now, writing about it, makes me a little sad too but like I told or tried to explain to my daughter, a funeral is not so much a sad event but it should also be a celebration of the person’s life.  I’m keeping my focus on that fact and also on the knowledge, the hope and the faith that she’s in a better place, with Jesus, and one day we’ll be together again

The memorial service was held on Monday, the 8^th of December. We flew back the 11^th of December, which technically was the 12^th since it was after 12am. Which is another thing that I messed up since I kept looking at the date with no regard to the time and so when we got to the airport, the ticketing agent explained my mistake, that we were really suppose to book in on the 10^th around 10pm for a take-off at 12am, 11^th of December. ...Arrggghh, apparently this happens a lot, can’t say that I’m surprised! It wouldn’t kill them to just make a special note of the strange time and reminding people that they’re really flying the day before the one they’re thinking of. Anyway, luckily we got some seats, the plane was quite full and she cut us some slack by not making us pay the $200 per person fine for a change in date/time. I can only thank God for this, and of course I did thank the ticketing agent as well :-)

So, we arrived home on the 12^th of December around 5pm. Going through customs was a lot less stressful since we have green cards now :-) but when they heard we were returning from “Africa” all our bags was scanned after we got them off the carousel. There wasn’t anything in that interested them and I’m sure they were checking for biological agents of some sort. While on the plane I was reading a newspaper and it was filled with articles about the cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe, so I’m sure the scanning was just some sort of precautionary step they were taking...but I’ll tell you, standing there and waiting for our bags...there are a LOT of people who bring food into the country that are forbidden. Now I’m sure the food is for there own use etc but it’s specifically forbidden and you fill in a form saying you don’t have any food....boy are you in some BIG trouble when they scan your bags and find things like...cookies, salami, fruit!!! (shaking head)

Ok, so we got out of the airport and found out that our ride wasn’t able to come pick us up anymore. I was figuring out a couple of options, taxi (very expensive) or bus. I’ve seen some Boston Logan buses in Nashua before, so we hauled ourselves over to the information and found out that there is indeed a bus that could take us all the way to Nashua, exit 6 (our exit) or 8. So we waited, and boy was the weather a shock!! Imagine coming from almost 100F to 28F!! Haha, DH was still in shorts. It was cold, it was freezing, the wind was icy and blustery.  But the bus finally came (it was late and I had thought we had missed it and would have to wait about 2 hrs for the next one to come) and we got on it and it was smooth sailing from then on.

We got off at the next stop to buy the tickets and it was about $12 pp opposed to who knows what had we taken a taxi instead. I don’t think our bags would’ve fit in a taxi, to be honest. So I made a phone call to a friend of ours and he was so great. He came to pick us up and took us home. Then we learned that there was some widespread damage due to an ice-storm the previous day and that a LOT of people was without power. I was praying very hard that we would have power because I was exhausted and having to go home and deal with bags and no power would’ve probably pushed me off the edge :-) God answered my prayers and we were of the lucky few who had power. It looked as if we may have been without power for about 26hrs but luckily it wasn’t severe enough to cause damage (like broken water pipes).

The next day I had to go to the church so we could have the dress rehearsal for the Christmas pageant and DH made a stable and manger for the play. It went well. One of the little boys refused to wear his costume and on Sunday we had the play. It was good. Everyone seemed to enjoy it. The kids had a blast and I’m thankful that it went well. We were still exhausted but happy and thankful that we had power. A lot of the people in the congregation was still without power.

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