Hello from Cape Town, South Africa!

Thank you so much to those of you who prayed for safe travels and sent messages of encouragement. You guys are such a blessing!

The Lord certainly answered prayer, and we have had such a sweet reunion with my mother- and brother-in-law so far.

Read all about our arrival in Cape Town here

I’m also sharing lots of photos over on Instagram and Facebook if you’d like to follow along!

For those you are new to the Five Minute Friday blog link-up, you can learn more about it on our link-up page.

 

This week’s Five Minute Friday prompt is: RESTORE

 

restore

 

[Tweet “Join the @5minutefriday writing community as we write on the prompt, RESTORE!”]

 

Setting my timer for five minutes, and . . . GO.

 

Before leaving for Cape Town for the summer, I asked the FMF community which words you guys would like to write on. A number of you suggested the word, “RESTORE,” and I loved it. It’s a word so pregnant with hope and reconciliation.

But every time I thought about what I would write for this prompt, this verse from the book of Joel came to mind:

“I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten . . .” (Joel 2:25a).

We’ve been away from Cape Town for five and a half years. That’s five and a half years that my husband has not seen his mother or brother. Five and a half years that my mother-in-law has not seen her grandchildren.

I lived in Cape Town for ten years before moving back to Michigan with my South African family and three kids. During the vast majority of those ten years, my mom had cancer on the other side of the Atlantic. Yet God kept us in Cape Town.

Now my mom’s gone, and we’re living in Michigan at a time when my husband’s mom is healthy and well and desperate to see her only grandkids.

Shouldn’t we have done it the other way around? I wonder this sometimes.

Of course I don’t have the answer, but I know God does. He did it this way for a reason, and ultimately as it says in Acts 17:26, God determined ahead of time the exact times and places where His people will live.

I would never say that the past five years in America would qualify as years the locust has eaten. Never. They’ve been beautiful, fruitful years, filled with the Lord’s kindness and goodness. But as far as South Africa is concerned, they have been lost years.

But now we are back, and we sit in the backyard doing jigsaw puzzles with Ouma as if no time as passed.

STOP.

***

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Read more about my first ten years in South Africa in my memoir,
A Place to Land: A Story of Longing and Belonging

A Place to Land

ORDER YOUR COPY HERE

 

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