Cousin Friends

We met in 6th grade, two little girls, when my family moved to her lifelong little town. We declared ourselves to be BFF, and I gained sisters as we became part of one another's families. We weathered the wacky years of junior high together, then high school and different colleges, then stood by one another as we each married our high school sweethearts (my marriage was to her cousin, cementing us all as family happily ever after!) They headed off to seminary and the wide world overseas, while we settled down to enjoy married life in Atlanta. Little did we dream that our turn to feel the call of missions work overseas would come just 8 years later. But it did, and now we share memories of time together in some far-flung places- Italy, France, India, Thailand. When we have these times together, the cousin kids just play from dawn until dark and the 'grown up' cousins just talk and laugh and laugh (Chris has made me laugh in a unique way ever since that first French class together all those years ago), and we have some great adventures. So thankful for the grace of God that has woven our paths and our hearts together.

A few more pictures from our recent visit and road trip to the beach...

Don't miss the children's hut in the background, surrounded by staff in orange shirts...those kiddos were photographed and fawned over completely!

Cousins in a cave

These two kayaked across to 'monkey island', where, much to Asa's chagrin, the monkeys frolicked on their boat but declined to jump on his back!

He just gets more handsome.

This was a cave that we worked hard to reach- a rocky, sweaty hike, then a jaunt across a beach filled with mosquitoes like a plague- "don't stop or they'll swarm!", then another steep, rocky, rain forest-y, somewhat treacherous hike made more exciting and slippery by a well-timed monsoon. Soaked to the skin and thankful for no injuries, we arrived in what was one of the neatest places we've seen- two underground caves, dripping with limestone, that are really giant sinkholes- it was hard to capture the grandeur in photographs, but it was amazing! The monkeys we saw swinging through the trees on our return hike were the icing on the cake, then we hired a boat to take us on the return leg from the beach...adventure complete.