Bolivian Reunion at Smith's House

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Geo: 34.5936, -83.3583

We slept in until 7;30am this morning. Benji fixed everyone some sweet rolls that Bill just had to heat up. Very good. Looks like 17 year old Benji has his father's cullinary skills. Way to go.

We all sat around the living room and just sat and told old stories. It was great. It reminded me of sitting out on the country porch or even after a big meal during the Holidays.

I had asked Beverly if we could invite Gary and Nancy Lengkeek to come over along with Joe and Barb Royer. The Lengkeeks were missionaries with South America Mission from 1978-1990 in Bolivia. He was our field director. I remember telling him that we did not name our son after him, but instead of our dear friend, Gary Beekman. The Lengkeeks have since worked with OC in Colorado and in Guatemala and now they are nearing retirement age and they currently work with adventures in missions. Its a short term mission organization.

Joe and Barb Royer also came. They are dear friends of the Smiths and us. Back in 1995, they traveled down to Bolivia to visit with Bill and Beverly. They visited an orphanage and came back to our house where they were staying and said, "We're going to adopt George". Mind you, the Royers were already empty nesters - their kids were already out of college, and here they were going to start all over again and adopt. I told myself that they were crazy and that "warm feeling" would go away. The warm feeling did not go away, and 6 months later, they came down to finalized the adoption (they actually stayed with us for a couple months in the process of adoption. They also adopted another little boy from Colombia. These boys are now 20 years old.

We had a great time with both Royers and Lengkeeks, Smith and us. We laughed so hard at times and we cried at times too when we were all sharing our life stories. We talked about everyone in the book, McCunes, Libolts, Ramseys, and other names we hadn't heard for a while.

Bill bar-b-qued some ribs out on the grill. Delicious.

After the fun laughs and all, we got a group selfie.

In the mix of everything, Denis Garcia dropped by. He is a Guatemalan friend that we know through Eric G. He stayed for about 3 hours, then he had to leave to go back home as he is pursuing his Masters at Clemson. The Smiths have a friend named Pieter from Germany who arrived last night and is staying a couple weeks.

After the delicious meal, the Royers and Lengkeeks returned home and we all went to Jessica's Soccer game at Toccoa Falls College. Her team lost.

Glenn was replacing Beverly's garbage disposal the last time I checked.

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