It’s been a busy year. I got malaria on a trip to Uganda and almost died. I could have avoided it by taking a nickel pill and drinking a half glass of water. You can probably avoid some of what’s been killing your joy just as easily.
The Lodge that took us twenty-two years to build burned to the ground, along with everything we loved inside of it. We keep reminding each other we’re sad but not stuck. Memories aren’t flammable.
Carol is still in heaven. I don’t watch baseball, but she loved the Red Sox. I told her before she went home I would wear her Red Sox hat and represent them here so long as she mentioned my name to Jesus when He passed by. I hope she’s keeping up her end of the deal.
The limo driver retired and probably found a great deal on a used yellow truck.
Lex is still jumping big. He won the silver medal in the Rio de Janeiro Paralympics and the gold medal in the London World Paralympics Championships. Adam and I are still skydiving, but he goes more often than I do. Lex is planning on taking lessons and will be jumping with us soon. I know. I thought it was a bad idea too. Last one, best one.
I went back to the wax museum and they had turned it into a hot yoga studio. They didn’t, of course, but I thought it would be pretty boss if I could tell you they did.
I still go to the pizza place, but these days I’m there for the food, not the tickets.
I still play the piano and hit lots of wrong notes, but my friends keep tapping their feet as if I didn’t.
My eyesight hasn’t come all the way back, but I continue to see more each day. I’ve gotten to know the new guy at TSA who took over for Adrian, and Karl is retiring from the attorney general’s office after twenty years of navigating his faith in love.
I haven’t been invited back to the White House, but that’s okay.
Walter still meets people at the airport with his smile. I still get a dozen calls a week from jails and have plenty of prison socks if you need a pair.
I still carry my bucket around when I need to, which is most of the time. I haven’t been to another crop drop, but next time I go, I’m filling my bucket with crocodiles and letting a couple loose in the room to see how fast our church can get up on the tables.
We’re still meeting with witch doctors and enrolling them in our schools. The daughter of the head of the witch doctors enrolled in our high school. Parent-teacher conferences just got a lot more interesting. Oh, and the fingerprints on the cover of this book? I got the witch doctors in our school in Gulu together and most of the fingerprints are theirs.
One of the girls in our safe house in Uganda just started law school. She’s our fourth Love Does student who is on the path to becoming a lawyer. They don’t want to practice law; they want to do justice. There’s a big difference between the two.
Kabi got sick and died unexpectedly. I’m kind of hoping we’re not roommates when I get to heaven. Either way, because he found his way to the feet of Jesus, I expect to be spending a lot of time with him—but I still don’t get it.
I keep asking Charlie where he wants to go, and thankfully he hasn’t said Mount Kilimanjaro again. We did get some news I’m still trying to get my head around. He went in for an X-ray recently, and from what they discovered, it turns out there’s a good chance he’ll be able to be a father someday. I don’t get that either— and neither do any of the surgeons who operated on him. He will be getting another restorative operation soon. It’s nuts.
One thing has remained the same. Every time I wonder who I should love and for how long I should love them, God continues to whisper to me: Everybody, always.
See you on Tom Sawyer Island.
Bob