Girls Day in Marrakesh & Change of Plans

While the boys biked their 80k with the team, SJ and Mom had a girls day and visited a few shops, found some nail polish, and stopped along the way through the medina alleys as SJ was asking lots of questions and wanted prayed to ask Jesus into her heart.

SJ in front of one of the many mint stalls

Girls day - celebrating SJ praying for Jesus to come into her heart

Beautiful sights along our morning outing

The guys took longer than originally planned, so the girls were a bit annoyed when the were finally picked up 2 hours after the discussed time.  However, our guide from the previous day insisted he take us to a market outside of town that had good prices.  We enjoyed visiting this place with him and looking at the many styles of rugs that Morocco is known for.

How they look at 2PM after biking 80+km

We returned to the city as we wanted to go to a church that mom had learned was near our apartment.  In the meantime our best friend Ray’s dad’s health was declining rapidly so our family huddled together and called him.  It was a quick but difficult phone call and then we headed to worship.  We were late and the reality of being far away during these hard times and the phone call we’d just had made it all the harder and yet more important to praise God.  Time and time again on this trip, we've been blessed with the gift of worship to put us back in proper perspective.  It was a very small church, simply decorated with cotton balls hanging from the ceiling and pews, but they sang some of the same songs and in the same style of our friends in Swaziland and it was beautiful.

Simple church was decorated with cotton balls

We went for a nice non-Morrocan dinner afterwards to celebrate the boys bikeride accomplishments and SJ praying for Jesus to be her Savior.  Here we updated the kids on the situation with Ray's dad.  What are we called do we asked them?  "Ray needs us, we gotta go home" says one of our children.  Very sweet, but at this point Dad looks to Mom for verbal assistance as getting us all home just is not feasible, nor the most helpful solution.  Mom patiently and expertly steers the conversation towards what would really be helpful and that just Dad is going to head home to be with Ray.  Initially, the kids had a shocked look on their face, but to their credit, they very quickly got it and agreed they could step up and handle the situation.  It was quite touching and proud parental moment - afterall we are in Morocco and no one really showed any fear!

We also explained to the kids that before we went on this trip we’d agreed that if Ray’s dad’s health declined to this point, that we would return to MN, and that Daddy would be leaving to go be with Uncle Ray and his family.  The kids completely understood and agreed that Dad should go and we discussed that the ticket we were looking at had him flying out the morning after next.  

However, once we got the kids to bed and started looking at the details of getting to an airport, we realized that it would be best to fly out the next evening so dad bought the one-way ticket home about midnight.  Once we started calculating train times, knowing that Morrocon trains are notoriously late, we realized that Dad had to leave at 10:00 the next morning.

We rose early from our solid hard bed and began repacking our bags as Dad carries all of the family toiletries and a few other things that we spread out as we travel.  We woke the kids up with the news that Dad was leaving in an hour, different than the plan we'd sent them to bed with, and everyone scrambled as we also wanted to send Dad home with a few souvenirs and items that we didn’t feel we needed anymore as we travel.  We prayed and in a whirlwind said goodbye to Dad.  The reality of everything was sobering but sweet as we all just ached being so far from Ray and knowing he was hurting.

The younger kids struggled a bit as they tried to process what these days without Dad were going to look like and they didn’t know how to express themselves, but overall the kids were great helpers for Mom the rest of the time in Marrakesh.  We again realize that its in the toughest of times when we come together best.