A Priceless Reunion

As mentioned in an earlier post, I recently began a Facebook account. Through this, something truly wonderful happened a few weeks ago…I was able to find Lara, my best friend from elementary school in Cape Town. The day we connected, she told me that she was planning to travel to the Washington, DC at the end of June…This past weekend, to be exact. I was estatic. I sure didn’t have to mull over the decision very long. A mere 5 hour drive to see my long lost friend? What was there to think about? I was on my way!

A few days before I planned to leave, I was talking about the trip with my friend, Pam. She was like, “A girls' getaway weekend trip to DC…I’m there!” So, the two of us set off (kid-free!) on Friday evening. On Saturday morning, we stopped for some shopping at a HUGE mall just south of DC and then drove another hour up to Bethesda to see Lara!

Even now, nearly a week after our reunion, there are simply no words to describe what it was like to see Lara again…after 18 years. In a nutshell, it was simply an amazing blessing! But, it was so much more…Despite the many years that had elapsed since we had talked and the many life-changing events that had taken place in each of our lives, it was like we could just “pick up where we left off” and talk…laugh…and cry together…remembering so many special memories from our childhood.

Lara had been my lifeline when we first arrived in South Africa…way back in 1981. She was asked by our teacher to be my “buddy” and help me get around my first day of school at Pinehurst Primary. Well, our friendship started there, and soon we were inseparable. We remember having countless sleepovers (complete with reading Archie comic books and having “midnight feasts” until the wee hours), playing field hockey together, building tents and “ghost trains” (like haunted houses) that we forced our parents and siblings to go through, eating the delicious sausage rolls her Gran would bring after school, riding our bikes, going on “holiday” together, and just finding any opportunity to giggle and be mischievous together. She was the sister I never had…but one that I tearfully had to leave behind when our family moved up to Johannesburg after my 6th grade year. We kept in close contact through letters and visits until I graduated from high school in Jo’Burg and moved back to the States to begin college.

Here we are around age 9 with my parents at the “Scratch Patch,” a place where we dug through gravel to find semi-precious stones.

Here is a picture of Lara and I the last time we saw each other in December 1990.

And, here we are today.

Lara is married to her sweetheart, Casey, and has an 8 year-old daughter, Emily. They live in a beautiful cottage on over 2 acres in the English countryside. How I would love to visit her there someday!

Growing up as a missionary kid, our family moved many times. Until connecting with Lara, I hadn’t been able to keep contact with a friend who knew me from such a young age. I feel like a little piece of growing up years has been put back in place. Lara, what a blessing to have you back in my life again!