Perhaps you sometimes get tired of my writing to you all so often, but I have lived my earlier life through a time when it was not possible to keep in touch with people. If we were living in the same place, we would be communicating, and so often I feel like just writing you a few lines in order to stay in touch.
Communications have changed so drastically during my lifetime. I know I have told you that my mother never heard of the death of her parents until weeks after they occured, and the news was brought by a note sent to Koutiala and carried by Malien runner who went to get our mail every couple of weeks. She mourned alone there in that Malien village of Baramba, no possiblility of trips to the States in those days! What a contrast to today when we have SKYPE and phone calls and quick mail delivery and email and Facebook! It is not hard to stay in touch, and yet I often talk to older folks in our community here, who really have very little contact with their kids who live overseas or even in this country. They are just not communicators. I am so thankful for every communication we receive from each of you, so keep them coming. It seems to me a tragedy when families grow so far apart from each other, simply through lack of communication of any kind.
Prayer has always been a kind of communication in our family also, and how thankful we are for that. Every morning Dad and I pray for every single member of our family by name, as we pray together. Often at night, if I am wakeful, I resort to praying for you - and sometimes fall asleep in the middle of the list! You learned to pray when you were very small, and this is a great link of communication for all of us.
My only communication with my parents during the years they were in Africa and I in College in the U.S., was a once a week air letter from them. I always knew that that letter would be in my mailbox one day each week. There was not a lot of news for them to write about and it was always a family joke with my brother and sister and me, that Mom would usually have a couple of menus of meals she had cooked for Dad that week. After all, she had to fill up that space with something! The letter was always just one thin air sheet, typed on one side - that was all that could be sent for the airmail rate. And it was the sum total of the news I had from them during four years - that weekly letter. I too wrote to them and I doubt if my news was much more interesting. My life was lived very much apart from my parents my four years at Houghton College, but we did have that once a week link between us which helped us to know each other a bit. Sometimes I wish I had kept some of those old letters - but what with moving so much in my lifetime, things like that never got saved.
Phone calls were few and far between when you kids were in the States and we overseas. Again, the cost was prohibitive. But when one of you did call, we basked in the good feeling of that phone call for days afterwards! Now that we are living here in the States - and you all are living all over the US and the world - we cherish every phone call, SKYPE call, email and FB entry. We appreciate all of you so much and love the way all of you are committed to "keeping in touch".
Amazing really, considering the many years we have lived apart from each other, how close we all are as a family. We know families here who seldom hear from their kids - even here in the US. And yet a week seldom goes by that we do not have some kind of communication from each of you. We try to keep up our end of that communication also. Communication is the cement that hold families together, it seems to me.
During these years as a family, some communications stand out over others: Cheryl' s unexpected appendectomy, the birth of a new grandchild, Nathan's birth in the midst of bursting bombs in Lebanon, Elin getting engaged to Joel, John's call in the night that Jennie had gone on ahead to Heaven, Mark calling to invite us for Christmas in CT, your conference call recently telling us about the trip you had together planned for us this month in Africa! You are all such thoughtful people and we love and appreciate you so much. Thanks to each of you for keeping in touch!
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