Goodbye Jodi – and Thanks

On Wednesday we made the early morning pilgrimage to take our homeschool helper to the Mexico City airport. After almost six months with us, Jodi packed her bags (she unpacked them again at the airport by the way) and headed home to West Virginia. She didn’t exactly put her life on hold to give us a good start here in Mexico, but it was definitely a detour. Neither was it easy. Taking the responsibility of teaching three different children in three different grades with three different personalities was no picnic.

Jodi moved in and from the beginning worked at becoming part of our family. While we gave a little bit to accommodate her way of doing things, she gave a whole lot to accommodate our way of doing things. Let me tell you it can be tough to learn the Harer way. Living in a family definitely gives one the opportunity to see up close and personal how things really are. So, while there are nice things about our family the pressure of transition and our humanness revealed some not so nice things as well.

Jodi brought to our family a love for learning and sharing. She always had a story or interesting fact to enhance the subject at hand. It was particularly insightful as we read the biography of John Williams of the South Sea Islands, and she shared tidbits about her own missionary family in the South Seas. We will miss all that she did with our girls and how she went out of her way to make things go smoothly for them but she is just that way.

Hopefully she will take with her a passion for the Savior that causes a family to go off on some crazy adventure. Hopefully He will be branded in her brain in a fresh and living way because of our time together. How do you say a proper thanks to someone who gives so much? Why you post it on your blog of course.