Our son David left town yesterday, off to Bali to spend a week in a timeshare condo there with a friend from Canada. His time with us was short, but very much a blessing. It is so good to see family from home. Only those who live and work overseas away from family can really understand what a joy it is to spend even a couple of days in the company of your children when you haven’t seen them for ten months.

Not that Dave is much of a child these days. Watching him and Pam walk side by side down the sidewalk was a giggle. To think that this strapping young man was born at less than six pounds and was birthed by a woman he now dwarfs is hard to process without some degree of wonder. Truly life is full of surprise and delight.

Dave is such easy company. He was basically happy to do whatever we wanted. Want to see the Aquarium? Sure. Want to check out the mall? Why not. Want to play of game of cribbage? Yeah, that would be great. Whatever. It made entertaining him very relaxing and enjoyable. Just for the record, and so we get it recorded for posterity, Dave not only beat us both at crib, he skunked us by a pretty comfortable margin.

Shelley, a colleague, was kind enough to cover two of my classes so I could spend most of the day with my son. We did check out the aquarium and our timing was good enough to catch them feeding the turtles and sharks. We got to Times Square, the enormous ten-story mall in the heart of the city, and Low Yat, the six-story digital gadget mall. We ate lunch at an Irish pub in KL’s Soho district and watched the lights come up on the Petronas Towers from the SkyBar in the Trader’s Hotel. We had a good day.

Pam and I like our life in Malaysia. We are doing some good and making a difference in the lives of the people the Lord has called us here to serve. We would, frankly, go anywhere He asked us to. We were even willing to go to the far corner of Pakistan, at the edge of the Himalayas. But He sent us here instead, and we are happy that He did. But gosh it is so wonderful to see our children, even if only for a few days, and just to bask in the joy of their company and touch once again their lives that are so intertwined with ours. It makes living here possible.