Light of Togo

We returned last Wednesday from our 5 days in Boston with my cousin and his wife. We had a really wonderful time, and we hated having to say goodbye to Ryan and Janelle. But, it is good to be back home and have things almost back to normal.

Here’s some highlights of the trip.

Riding on the Swan Boats was a very special experience for Tiffany. She has a memory of riding the very same boats with her grandparents when she was just a little girl. Joshua loved it, especially getting to see turtles, a couple swans, and all the ducks swimming along side of the boat.

The Holocaust Memorial is truly a sobering experience. It is located just off of a busy street along a pedestrian walkway. When you approach it, all you see are six very large, very tall glass towers. Once you get closer however, you realize that on each glass panel of each tower are literally thousands of seven digit numbers, each one representing a person killed by the Nazis in the WWII concentration camps. Then, the reality of the Holocaust starts to sink in and you can see visually the enormous number of people who were murdered. To me, the Holocaust is an example of just how evil man can be, and the fact is that all humans are capable of doing such horrible things and worse. We somehow think that we are better people than the Nazis because we haven’t done what they did, but the Bible tells us that we are all corrupt, evil, and “desperately wicked.” Praise be to God for His restraining grace, and most of all for His saving grace!

As you can tell from the photos, Joshua had a blast at the children’s museum. It almost made me wish I was 5 years old too so I could do all the fun stuff with him!

The Plimouth Plantation was a pretty neat place as well. They have attempted to replicate as accurately as possible the normal everyday life in the original settlement of Plymouth. The people who “live” there actually act out their part as if they are really from the 1700s. Asking them questions about email, TV, iPods, or cameras will only cause strange looks and confusion. Most of the actors have even mastered the accent of the European settlers of that time.

Although we did lots of fun things, the best part was definitely just spending time with Ryan and Janelle. Ryan, along with his brother, Adam, have been my closest friends for as long as I can remember. It was a great time of encouragement and edification, and we thank God for giving us the chance to get away for a little while.

It seems that ever since the summer started, we have been going non-stop. In all the busyness though, we’ve managed to take advantage of the sometimes nice weather and do some really fun things together. I fully intended to write blog entries about each one of them as they happened, but blogging often has to take a back seat to other things.

So, here is a whole summer of fun wrapped up in one long blog post. I have included two different kinds of photo slideshows that I’m experimenting with so please let me know if you have any difficulty viewing them.
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Today I had my last tutoring session with Suzanne until September, and tomorrow Tiffany will have her last one.  Suzanne takes off the months of July and August for a summer vacation, so for the next couple months it will just be Tiffany, me, and a pile of French textbooks as we work through some of the finer points of French.  While we plan to take advantage of the nice weather, we certainly don’t look at this time as a break from French.

Lately it seems that we have had more opportunities than normal to speak French in very relaxed situations with various friends.  This is one of the most useful ways to “study” for us right now because we are able to put into practice what we have been learning.  It is very encouraging as we are both beginning to form longer and more complex sentances.

We are looking forward to having my parents with us in a few weeks.  They will be here for one week, then a few weeks after they leave my cousin and his wife will be visiting for five days from Australia.

I have been notified by several people that I am ready to preach in French.  I was previously unaware of this, so I’m really glad that they have let me know!  I have a message ready, and the date is set for July 20th.  It should be…hmm…what’s the right word for it…interesting.  I’ll let you know how it goes.