My brother Bill and his wife Janet have been here this week.  We went to the Matisse exhibit.  I've never been a fan of Matisse, but it was interesting.  Van Gogh, Degas, Gauguin would have been more down my alley.  But a permanent exhibit of Chihuly was there and it was wonderful.  Probably because I love glass--and his art is so full of light and color.  So I left happy.  

Janet is an artist and of course loved it all.  She went to China as a young girl and redid all of the religious children's books.  They had been illustrated with white, English looking children, so she repainted them so that they could be published with Chinese children.  Huge impact.

Janet and my brother spent their lives in China.  Bill is a doctor and ended up doing his work in Laos, Viet Nam, Afghanistan, Macao--actually everywhere in that part of the world.  He entertained us with harrowing stories of his exploits--getting into restricted areas and treating people who otherwise would have killed him.  There are church groups all over that part of the world due to the work they did of telling people about Jesus--which was very dangerous.  But of course, Bill made it sound funny.  And much of it was.

I have a picture of him "repairing someone" who is lying on a blanket in the middle of a dirt road--with two armed Afghan military soldiers standing on either side of him.  Bill said that you never knew if they were going to shoot you or not.  It was a fun few days.  Becky and Craig, Ann and Dave, Bill and Janet, and me.  Family.

"Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world."  Matthew 28:19  That is what Bill and Janet did with their lives.  They changed that part of the world for Christ.