This one's just for fun.

I was just going through some old stuff on my computer and I came across this picture from Ukraine. The 12 year old boy on the left was me just 3 and a half short years ago (I know that's difficult to reconcile now that I'm in my late 40s). The woman on the right is Lidia, someone who was absolutely crazy . . . which has everything to do with why I have missed her every day for almost 3 and a half years. Lidia did our laundry for us and whenever we went to visit her and her son, she chased us around the apartment to try to give us hugs and fought with us incessantly over every little thing we said. Of course, as is always the case in these types of situations, when we got to church around the rest of the members she was COMPLETELY normal and showed absolutely no signs of mental instability. This made me come to the conclusion that Lidia was not crazy but rather acted crazy; the difference being that a truly crazy person can't control the madness.

Despite the craziness, Lidia was one of the sweetest, humblest and most genuine people I've ever met. And she will most definitely be one of the first people I hang out with in heaven:)

On a side note, I would like to point out how dirty my pants look in this picture. You can clearly see the outline of my wallet. The truth is, I know they were a lot dirtier than they looked. I remember one time when my companion and I discovered we could write our names on our pants with our fingernails (that sounds so much worse to me now than it seemed at the time). Also, I still wear that belt. The pants are gone, however. And I'm pretty sure that tie is buried in some missionary's apartment thousands of miles away. Hopefully the pants were burned.

Gosh I miss Ukraine~