Mari Sunshine...

Mari and Me in Lima, Peru

How do I begin to describe my new friend Marietta or Mari Sunshine???
 I guess I could begin by saying when I met her it was like finally finding a long lost friend…

She has the most amazing heart for God. Her smile comes from deep within her soul and you feel the rich warmth from that inside your own heart. She has a  profound love of people and you can see it in everything she does.

While we were on our mission trip she would cry with, hug and reach out to anyone in need. I’m so lucky God put her in my path. People come into our lives and sometimes we don’t know the reason right away, sometimes it may take years to figure out why, but not with Mari she came into my life to help me become a better Christian, friend and person. I was blessed to just have met her, but to get to call her my friend makes me wonder what I ever did in this life to deserve that honor.

With Mari and me on that Mission trip I can tell you there was never a dull or boring moment. Our exuberance about everything we approached on that trip was pure joy.

Sometimes we would joke about things and we weren’t sure if the group realized we were joking. One time we both were asked to give our testimonies and I said I’m not doing and she  said I’m not either and we started good naturedly bantering between ourselves. We were just playing around but later that night we got asked what was wrong? We were both like with what? And they said us arguing and I laughed and so did she because we NEVER had a cross word between us.

We did realize after that we had to be careful because not everyone in the group GOT our humor.  Now Hector  got our humor and  he used to tease us both he called Mari Boss lady and of course me Burbujas (Bubbles).

He used to tease her all the times and told her one day that as long as her husband did what she wanted it was all good. We both laughed at that one. She could not figure out why Hector thought she was the boss lady? I think he just liked to tease her...

 



  Hector and Boss Lady

One of my favorite memories is when we had just gotten done doing the Cake and Cat food skit. We were looking for a place to get rid of that mess.

You see there are dogs that just run loose everywhere over there and we were afraid that if those dogs smelled the cat food they might come up to where we were doing the street ministry and that would not have been good! Imagine if you can 20 or 30 hungry dogs wanting that cat food Yikes!!!

So she and I started looking frantically for a place to dump it and it had to be far enough away not to cause a disturbance if the dogs got to fighting over it! We finally found a place but we were worried about the potential fallout from that! LOL :) "Bubbles" had almost gotten attacked once and did not want a second encounter with the dogs of Peru.

Mari and Me at Miraflores

Nothing but heaven itself is better than a friend who is really a friend.

-Plautus