Without a doubt, yesterday was the day I have dreaded most this year, and to be perfectly honest, my choice would have been to enclose myself in my office and deal with the pain privately. That will never happen in this line of work. In spite of the fact that every memory of our great loss was and is painful, God’s promise of unmerited, yet immeasurable grace, peace and joy were and are evident in every moment, and I am grateful for encouraging phone calls, thoughts, letters and prayers for my family in the States, my family in Tepic, and for me.

I started the day off at a ladies’ breakfast from which I didn’t return home until almost 1. When I got home, the little rustic table on my front porch was covered with flower arrangements, potted plants and love letters from different people from the Tepic church who had stopped by to share with me. I checked my email and found other letters of encouragement.

I also found an automatically-generated alert from Chase bank that a withdrawal from the work account of more than $400 had been made yesterday, pretty strange since I hadn’t made any transactions in that account for over a week. A quick check of the account online, revealed not only one unauthorized debit withdrawal for over $400, but also 5 other smaller withdrawals, and all of them listed the exchange rate in rupees! The $404 withdrawal was to pay Ryan Airlines in India! God chose an interesting way to take the immediate edge off the focus on my personal pain. To make a long story sort of shorter, a claim has been submitted to the dispute department, and my debit card (which I have NEVER, ever used anywhere but at the ATM at one bank 4 blocks from my house) has been cancelled.

When I finally finished dealing with that issue, I put the finishing touches on a platter of capirotada, a kind of gross-tasting (until you get used to it) and gross-looking (you never get used to that) Mexican bread pudding with raisins, dried figs, candied quince and guava, etc., that is the traditional Easter/Lent dessert, and I quickly reviewed my lesson for our weekly ladies’ Bible study in María Esther’s house. María Esther and her daughter María Luisa surprised us with homemade tamales and hot chocolate to go with the capirotada. The ladies hung on every word of the lesson, shared some very deep-rooted prayer requests, and reached out to their sisters in love that only God can give to people from such diverse and disparate social backgrounds. Once again, I came away marveling at the power of God’s love and Word to bridge differences, transform lives, comfort by His Spirit, and restore vigor in all of us. The Bible study started right on time at EXACTLY 5 :), but I didn’t get home until nearly 9!