another helping of good-bye with a side of hope

I don't care how often we do it, I don't think I'll ever get used to saying good-bye. Over the past 5 years saying hello and good-bye have become a regular and normal part of our life. You would think that with years of practice it would get easier but it doesn't.
We left family and good friends in CT to move to MI in 2004. We knew no one when we arrived yet when we left in 2006 we left behind a community of friends that felt like family. It was hard to leave. Then we moved again from CT to SC. This time we knew a few people from the SAM office before we arrived but by the time we left for Peru God had, again, provided a network of friends and church family making our good-bye that much more difficult.
Here we are in Peru and in 3 days we have to say good-bye. Only this time we are staying put (at least for 6 more weeks) and Scott and Meghan are leaving for Huaraz. We met Scott and Meghan the week we arrived in Arequipa, they had just arrived, too. They live 3.5 blocks from us and have been with us through this crazy adventure of language learning/cultural acclimation every step of the way. We have never been here without them and the thought of that is strangely sad. We are so blessed and grateful that God crossed the paths of our lives here in Arequipa. We know God has a purpose for them in Huaraz but we also can testify that he used them right here to minister to us. We are all going to miss them so much.
The gray cloud looming over us is saying good-bye . . .again, but every time special people exit stage left the silver lining of hope around that gray cloud gets bigger. God has shown us repeatedly that he loves us enough to provide for all of our needs, including friends and community. So even though we will make sure to travel to Huaraz to visit the Dillons we look ahead expectantly to who God will bring into our life next and how he will use us to minister to them and vice versa.