Our Summer Vacation - The Adoration

     We went back to the US for Christmas to see St. Matthew, our 2 ½ month old grandson. A 1 ½ mile walk from our homestead to the main road, 1 hour khumbi to Manzini, 5 hour international khumbi to OR Tambo airport, 9 hour flight to Munich, 9 to Dulles, and there He was, with his mother (our daughter). She had rented a house in Annapolis, Maryland, and her husband, our son and his wife, and my sister joined us. Christmas was a low key affair; good food and good times with family.

Holding that little boy, feeling his little body, seeing him look around and then smile when we drew near. Oh it was so very, very good, and so precious. And good to be with our family. But over in a flash!

     The long trip back was very smooth, but so sad. And then as soon as we arrived we hit phone and computer problems. We seem now to be slowly, arduously getting past them, but it certainly is trying our resolve. And how we miss that darling little boy and his mother. He had changed so much by the time we arrived from the pictures she had sent us, and then even in the 5 days we were with him, we hate to miss the intervening time with him. Our bodies hardly know what time zone they are in. It was nice to be heartily greeted back by our Swaiz family.

      We go Friday to a nearby game park with the excellent student from the refugee camp for whom we have become mentors; he got into the only public high school in the country offering the more advanced “A level” or “matric” courses; we will pay his tuition to that. We hope to spring him from the no-opportunity limbo in which refugees here are trapped.

      Then next week we go to Cape Town for a week, and back to Johannesburg to see the world-renowned Apartheid Museum. Then school starts. Onward.