Nice Surprises

I forgot to tell you about the friend I ran into last week. I was shopping at Costco and here comes Melissa Locke and her youngest daughter up an aisle. Her name is not Locke any more and her daughter is the youngest of six children. Melissa and I were classmates in middle and high school. The real surprise about running into her is that she lives in Papua, New Guinea where she and her husband teach. I have only seen Melissa one other time since high school. It made my whole day to see her.

Yesterday I had another nice surprise. When Rocky and I took Aliya on her graduation cruise a couple of years ago we met a nice German man named Kilian. Kilian was on the cruise alone so we invited him to join us for dinner one evening. Since then we have sent letters and holiday cards back and forth. When Rocky and I got home from work yesterday there was a message on our answering machine from Kilian thanking us for the Christmas card we sent and wishing us holiday cheer. It was so nice to hear his voice, I only wish I could have been home to take his call. This is the photo taken during our dinner together in December 2005: