Don’s youngest son and his wife have created an oasis in their back yard. The part of the family that is in town and had not tested positive for Covid met there on Memorial Day. All contributed to a wonderful, salad-themed meal.

Kate and Jenn came up with a trick to play on us. Rod grilled burgers, then put them on a plate, the “veggie burgers” separate from the “meat burgers.” They did look different. We garnished our meat burgers with tomatoes, relishes and lettuce, and enjoyed every delicious bite.

Then Jennifer admitted they were all veggie burgers – just different brands. They pulled a fast one on us and we never caught it. And I would gladly eat those again!

Lots of chatter back and forth. Don and I put a puzzle together with four-year old Patrick and his mom. We hadn’t seen Kate in a couple of years, and she regaled us with one story after another … I think she’d missed being with the larger family!

We expected friends from Texas to arrive that evening and had told them we’d be home around 8:30. Stopping to pay an enormous price for gas we needed the next day, we got home around 8:45. There in our driveway was their SUV. They beat us by just a few minutes.

Eager to get inside to greet Joe and JoAnn, I opened the garage door and pulled in, closing the door as Joe exited their car in the driveway. A minute later, JoAnn was at the front door. The directions we’d given to enter the house if they got there before we did hadn’t worked.

I couldn’t believe I drove into the garage without noticing the two were seated inside their car in our driveway!

Tuesday we lunched outside on a gorgeous day at Capitola Beach, walked about, then drove a lovely area of the coastline before coming home, making dinner, and playing games together. Joe and JoAnn left very early the next morning but we had a delightful time catching up with these dear friends, sharing needs and praying together. We have served together at Rancho Santa Marta, Mexico for quite a few years.

Don and I toured Treasure Island with a group of Villagers on Thursday. The 480-acre Island was built from landfill and Bay mud for the 1939 World’s Fair. Only three of the original buildings remain. The Island features lower-cost housing for police officers, firefighters, and teachers–rents in San Francisco are simply too high for many. Most of the buildings are being razed, to be replaced with more housing – from high-end to homeless shelters. I found myself hoping those rebuilding would also add trees to prettify the flat, dry space. We had a great view of both the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate from one stop. After a lunch at Max’s at the Opera in San Francisco, we went to the Museum of Modern Art, where we saw a huge, portable mural by Diego Rivera, husband of Frida Kahlo.

Rivera returned to San Francisco in June 1940 to headline the main fine arts exhibition of Treasure Island’s Golden Gate International Exposition. He worked on a scaffold in an airplane hangar before a live audience to paint The Marriage of the Artistic Expression of the North and of the South on This Continent, commonly known as Pan American Unity, his last mural in the U.S.

The work measures twenty-two by seventy-four feet and weighs over thirty tons — portable only because Rivera didn’t paint this fresco on a wall, but on ten steel-framed cement panels. The MOMA Rivera exhibit is open to the public free of charge until 2023.

And today we voted. That is a privilege and responsibility!

I’m grateful that, in the midst of concern for those we love who suffer, of chaos and pain in our world, God still gives moments of delight with friends and new experiences.

What do you value most about your friends?