God's grace, my boys and the river: Friends for life

After Heath and I had been married awhile, we decided that we needed to find a small group with young couples like ourselves that were going through the same milestones as us. We had currently been in a young careers small group, and even though those people were dear friends, we felt like God was calling us to step out and connect with new people.

We found a group that was full of young couples, recently married, and only a few had already started having babies. We grew to love this group of friends very quickly. As the months and years passed by, we all became our own close family in a way. We were there for each other when we lost grandparents, parents, had our first babies, went on mission trips, and for some even took the steps and became missionaries. It was during the time that we were all preparing to go to south Asia on a mission trip that I believe we became so close, especially spiritually. We walked through a study together over the period of a couple of months, and we were able to really bond with each other. We learned each others weaknesses, strengths, and hearts, and really, once you've been to a third world country to share the love of Jesus with someone, you become friends for life.

There's one couple in particular that we have stayed very close to. Even though in the past year, the Lord has put more distance between us, we have stayed close. Bryan and Jennifer are some of the most faithful people that we know, and we've been so blessed by their friendship over the past five years or so. We went to visit them and their precious Hannah last weekend to catch up, fellowship, share a meal, and just be together. We live about an hour apart, but we were more than willing to make the drive to see their new place and, of course, them! They have a beautiful pond in their front yard and living at the pond is a duck named Donald. Cash, of course, wanted to feed "dat duck."