See You Soon, Beautiful Friends!

As those of you who are my friends on Facebook already know, I am planning to come back to Portland for a few months.  This is unexpected, about a year earlier than I had anticipated being back in the States, but there are many good reasons for this timing.

First and foremost, my bestest friend, Annie, is getting married!

Annie and I have been kindred spirits since an infamous Last Thursday event where we sat waiting for Thai food for ages, and speculated about the "Garnish Boy" who was probably gumming up the works in the back.  That first dinner was followed by several planned and unplanned road trips, lots of dinners (many involving chicken), more coffee than I can easily remember, curling, Buffy, hotels, family reunions, rodeos, LOTR, house boats, Bernie's, all-night Harry Potter vigils, neck ties, airports, kick ball, vampire teeth, fro yo, and various other things I cannot mention due to the public nature of this blog.  In fact, she's been such an important part of my life that I cannot believe I've never done a tribute to our friendship here.

I even had the incredible privilege of baptizing her a couple of years ago.

We have spent lots and lots and lots of random time together, doing things that probably no one else would think at all interesting, except maybe one person...

Karyn has been a great friend for not so long as Annie, but if God sometimes got bored and doubled up on certain aspects of people's personalities, I'd believe that Karyn and I are essentially spiritual doppelgangers.  From the beginning when Karyn first came to our home community, she and I hit it off.  She and I share a compulsion to tell utter strangers extremely intimate details of our lives, so we had shortly shared pretty much everything that no one would ever want to know about us.  I slept on her couch many times during my last year in Portland, and took some hefty walks with her at weird hours of day and night.

During this past 13 months that I've been in Tanzania both of these amazing friends met awesome guys, fell in love, and got engaged.  I've mourned the fact that I missed getting to see two of my dearest friends falling head over heels, got the news of their engagements over Facebook, and have never ever met either of their fiances at the same time that I completely rejoice that two of my favorite people are so happy.  I have decided that it is essential that I be present at their weddings, so I will be coming back to Oregon to be a witness at each of their happy days.  I love these girls, and I'm so excited to be present for the first step of their lives as married women.

Annie and Karyn, I love you and wish you so many good things.  You are wonderful, and I can't wait to see you in just two months.