Meals with Missionaries! Meeting and first meal. . .

We had some dreams and prayers come true in the month of April! We got to meet in person a missionary couple from Latvia ... face to face!

I have corresponded with Kim in Latvia (many readers and email list members will instantly recognize her:) for around eight years now. In that time, we have prayed, shared, connected, concerned, ministered to and received encouragement from and the list could go on for eight more years.

One thing we haven't done is to meet in person and one of the times we discussed it online, Kim mentioned that we might not meet this side of heaven but one day we would. What she said stuck with me and I honestly felt that meeting face to face would be nothing short of a GOD thing.

The glory and honor and praise are HIS and HIS alone and HE got them here during thier six months in the United States! The itinerary for them is almost non-stop (quite literally) and they are traveling for entire days at a time between destinations so it is a big gift to have them make good on the plans they made to make it here.

They left here on May 1rst but the presence of Christ pouring through this beautiful couple still touches our hearts.

The first time I saw them ... I was instantly struck with how it did not seem I was meeting them for the first time AT ALL! They looked, sounded, spoke, and just WERE everything I felt I already knew they were. I guess our communications through the years were genuine enough to warrant that kind of first meeting.

Our soon to be D-I-L and teenage daughter planned, shopped, prepared, served and cleaned Bruce and Kim's first meal in our home. It was so nice!

Mexican Lasagna
Tossed salad
Desserts in stemware glasses (Bottom layer: broken up pieces of sugar free angel food cake. Next layer: ice cream sweetened with Splenda. Next layer: sliced strawberries and bananas and all was topped with whipped cream.)
Ice tea


I wish I had pictures of how pretty everything looked and to capture all the smiling, talking and laughing that went on but we were too in the moment to think of it, I guess!

Our family unit was here - my husband, self, teen daughter and eight year old son - and our college age son and his fiance. Our next to oldest son and his wife stopped by and we all enjoyed getting the visit started.
I will share our meals and some of the memories we made in a series of sorts so the blog posts aren't overly long and easier to digest. Still smiling as I type . . .

*The spelling check doesn't seem to be functioning on this site right now and I can't figure out how to add the right grammar mark on fiance ... so please forgive that and any other errors!*