Give Thanks...For Good Friends, And Time

 A friend posted a photo on social media earlier today. The photo shows my friend along with other friends gathered together for an Easter meal. The meal was held thousands of miles away in a small country in Northern Europe.

And it sparked a memory.

A memory that took place almost forty years ago to the day...

Easter weekend, in Denmark.

Thirty-eight years and two days ago I sat in the house of my friends Bjarne and Ulla and we sat down for an Easter meal. It was my second Sunday in the country and my first time eating a meal not in our apartment. As a LDS missionary we travel in pairs, two-by-two, always together. My companion (as we call each other...) was Elder Richardson. He passed away due to covid complications a few years ago. Sad.

Today, however, the missionaries sharing a meal with Bjarne and Ulla and others are the Ellises. I first met Brian Thirty-eight months and eight weeks earlier in Provo, Utah where a group of strangers met and together we learned how to preach the Gospel, speak Danish (or speak as good as ten weeks of instruction can allow...). I've kept in touch with Brian and Bonnie over the months, years, and decades. 

It's now time for the Ellises to return home...interesting. I shared my first meal in the country with the Jakobsens and my other friends shared their last meal in the country with the Jakobsens. Though things change due to time, some things remain the same. The kindness of the Jakobsens is one of those things.

I'm grateful I know the Jakobsens, the Ellises, the Richardsons, and so many others like them. I'm thankful I kept a daily journal back then (and continue today...) so that when I saw a photo taken in the twenty-first century I could look up and remember a dinner date that occurred in the twentieth. 

Also, something I'm sure hasn't changed...the food was most likely excellent.