August 13: Seeing Fort Worth

In cutting south from I-40 to Fort Worth, we were retracing my journey of twenty years early, with the same goal: A visit to college friends Kelly and Becky Sharp. Kelly and Becky were both active in Campus Crusade in Brown. Kelly was a year ahead of me, and led the Bible study I was in. Becky was my classmate. They were married right after her graduation. Last time I visited, they were living in a small apartment, establishing Texas residency so Becky could start Medical School. Now, she is an established internist, and they have just built a comfortable house in one of the last forested sections of Fort Worth, which they share with their two daughters.

Since we are big zoo afficiandos, Kelly took us to the Fort Worth Zoo, where we fed the birds in the parakeet enclosure,

and checked how Christopher measured up to the Lone Star State's indigenous birds of prey.

We then had a wonderful lunch at Papadeux Cajun restaurant, with portions of shrimp and catfish so generous that we took a picnic for the following day. When the waitress heard we were driving all way to Memphis, she packed the leftovers in high quality take-out tubs, and threw in an extra loaf of bread, picnic forks and napkins.

That evening, we had dinner with New Life Bible College alumnus Stas Yermolaev (class of 2001), who is now a student at Southwestern Baptist Seminary, and met his wife Julia. We were joined by our former Senior translator, Olga (nee Sidorova) and her husband, Arthur Alard. Both are students at Dallas Theological Seminary. They plan to return to Arthur's native Cape Town, South Africa, and minister as church planters. Their departure from Texas will have to await both their graduations, and the birth of their first child, an event expected early in 2009.

This was also the day we got the air conditioning fixed on the Miata, which made the rest of the drive much easier on Julia.