October 6, 2014

Make New Friends...

October 6, 2014

Again, I am behind on the blog, but yesterday was a good day that I will treasure.  When I was in Girl Scouts a very loooooong time ago, we used to sing a song that said, "Make new friends, but keep the old; one is silver and the other 's gold."  Those words were true then and they are true now.  Sometimes, as we get older, it seems harder to make new friends, but I sure treasure some of the old friends I have.

Yesterday (Monday), one of those friends came to visit.  Her name is Donna.  She and her husband moved away from here several years ago and I doubted they would ever come back to visit again.  They are now living a very long way from here.  Donna and her husband didn't live in Brownsville a real long time, but she is one of those people that as soon as I saw her, I thought, "I sure would like to be friends with her."  That first impression was correct.  She and her husband were in our Sunday School class for a while but then moved out close to the island and started going to a church closer to their home.

Donna came to work for me at the office for a while.  We were both dealing with some challenges in our lives at that time and we could spend hours talking about those, talking about our children, about quilting, about cooking, (we both have some good dessert recipes and the ones she shared with me are awesome!), and about our love for the Lord as well as His unending love for us.  We helped each other with some tough issues and some fun projects.  We both love taking bird photos and love visiting South Padre Island.  I don't know how much work we got done when she worked for us, but we both had a great time working together.  I think she worked 3 days a week for 4 or 5 hours each of those days.

When they lived here, they did not have any grandchildren, but they kindly listened to our stories about ours.  Now they have 3 grandchildren who all arrived within a 10 month time span.  Those cousins are going to have so much fun growing up together.  Donna is one of those people who made me want to be a better person, to walk closer to the Lord, to study the scriptures more, and just to live out those things I knew God wanted me to do.  She and her husband had done mission work in several countries and are good, loving, fun people to know.

Her husband had to come to Texas this week to take some continuing education classes and they added some days to their trip and returned to the southern tip of Texas to visit.  Once I knew she was coming yesterday I could not believe how excited I was.  We just picked up the conversation where it left off a few years ago and talked for several hours straight!  What a delightful day.  What a blessing to be able to hear her, to hear her special laughter, to hear the aches of her heart, to hear the sadness as she shared her heartfelt concern for others who have struggled. One of the best things about our visit, was that we didn't even really ever talk about my deafness.  It wasn't an issue.  She reads my blog and knows what is going on, but it wasn't a hindrance in our visit. I had to have her repeat a few things, but I did that when she worked for me years ago.

That visit just made my day - or my week!  The rest of the day was filled with accounting chores at the office.  I finally got the statements sent to our customers.  I went by Mom's house.  For all the rain we have recently had, things are drying out again.  It doesn't take long.  I went to bed early and then woke up early.  I had been a very good day!