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Travelogue 31MAR
I am having an amazing time here in Europe … this is a long email, so it’s going to be my travelogue (spiritual version) for today…

… after four days on the countryside, I am now in the city, it is quiet in my cousin’s flat, we have retired for the evening, and I have no wifi.  I have been thinking about a recent sermon about making a difference and about looking over family history records and writing postcards… my Pastor’s sermon about how one can really be excited about telling people about God, who gives us the best deal in life and for eternity, for free…  Pastor’s sermon’s enthusiasm was awesome and I appreciated it because I really feel that way too… I can’t help but tell people how excited I am, how God blessed me in everything, and (when the opportunity presents itself) tell them about how this expanded belief in Jesus on top of my previous belief in God blew the roof off… so I appreciate in the message where Pastor’s said GOD salvation is free, and how can you not be excited and exclaim and boast (Romans…) about the good news…
And that we can do the obeying part about exclaiming the good news and let God take control over the rest with the people we meet… so the least we could do was tell folks how God has blessed us.

So God really blessed me for this trip… After the first half of my vacation staying with country cousins, they threw me such wonderful lunch in my honor, with relatives from ALL five branches of our extended family stemming from one set of parents five generations ago. They don’t normally get together, so I was so happy to enable the party… so blessed… After the party, I went bowling with my country dozen cousins, and we cried therapeutic tears of goodbye… They treat me like a sister as well as a cousin…

Actually, I cried buckets… They showered me with gifts from day one. I even lost sleep the night before because I was so sad to part ways… I wrote one piece about loss and holy week… but I got thru the goodbyes with their hugs and love… and I will visit again…and we have Facebook to catch up daily…

Now I am in the city with an older cousin, who lives alone after his wife passed two years now… he has a quiet solitary life…  I am glad to add some activity and have the most marvelous host to this new adventure.

Interesting contrast in these two portions of my trip… my first set with those country cousins had great grandma, grandma, grandpa, and moms to four twenty year old sons plus girlfriends, enjoying an active life… they were all devote Christians, and I got to share my amazing Grace tractor trailer gas tanker experience (where I honked my horn to amazing Grace and prayed, and he eventually woke up from swerving all over the road for at least five minutes)… so these country cousins even spoke of me being a good Christian to the whole group at the family reunion….

and this cousin now in my second part of my trip is an atheist (it’s not that he is against others spirituality, it just doesn’t matter to him) … And I worry that him not having God in his life!!!!!!!!!!!
So I am happy to be his guest on many levels…both because he is taking me everywhere, but also to keep him company… to know that he gets to chat with distant and near relatives on our travels too… (he did admit to me that although his wife dying was a tragedy, after fifty years of marriage, that he can really see others who have even more extreme tragedy in their lives.

He sees what an optimistic person I am… and I can tell him, slowly and organically, how God had blessed my life… and we talked about balancing science and God…

It’s an interesting trip/life huh?

PS – when I left for home he gave me an angel necklace for extra wings for my plane – i know a couple of atheists and i am pleasantly surprised that they both believe in angels, hmmm….  nice…