Almost Home

I am writing this on the London to Chicago flight, on our way back for Christmas. The first flight from Cape Town to London flew by. We slept almost all of the way. London to Chicago has been quite the challenge. We have watched all the movies we want to watch and we still have 4 hrs to go. It has been a day flight which makes it seem so much longer. Our last 2 weeks have been spent training for business in agriculture and learning about training our minds to have positive affirmations in all that we do.This is part of the grassroots training that we plan to use in Living Way to train others. We celebrated Thanksgiving with all the trimmings. We had about 13 people, 10 Americans, 2 South Africans and 1 Canadian over to our place and we had a fabulous time. We made a couple of turkeys, and sides and everyone brought something to go with it. We also got to watch a football game (it was a week old but that was ok) and then Danielle brought A Charlie Brown Christmas just to help us kick off the season. We didn’t have black Friday, thank goodness, but we did go Christmas shopping on Saturday. We have had a couple of Christmas parties this week and everyone was telling us that we better come back. We got an awesome letter from Khumi, she runs the bag business , and I laminated it in order to preserve it. It made us want to cry. She has been such a light for me and Mike and a joy to be around. We also said our goodbyes to our Zimbabwean friends and gave them a box of traditional “crackers” for Christmas. This is a South African family tradition. You get these cheap gifts wrapped tightly in a tube, then everyone pulls on the wrapper,like a piece of bubble gum, and the crackers make a popping sound when you open it and a silly gift falls out of the package. It sounds so simple, but we know this will make about 24 people who can’t afford gifts at Christmas very happy! We got all of the volunteers sorted before we left and look forward to some new ones when we get back. We both have to have strategic plans in place for 09, so we have been working on this while we fly. By the time you read this we will have already had a pepperoni pizza from Roma’s and been to Las Palmas for lunch (neither of these can you get in South Africa). We have been looking forward to this for a couple of months. We are looking forward to seeing everyone and being at home for the holidays. The hardest part is we left a beautiful summer day to come back to winter. As we land in Chicago, there is snow on the ground. Oh well, it wouldn’t seem like Christmas if it wasn’t cold and snowing.