Farewell Nana.

Yesterday Nana passed away. She is now safe in the arms of Jesus. After battling pneumonia for a couple of weeks she finally took some rest. She was 86 years old.

We have been expecting the call for the past 10 days. Everytime we talked with family she was getting worse and it became a matter of days. It has been a hard week. We have asked God to let her live just a few more weeks so that we could be in NZ with family when she finally did need to go home but then we realised she was suffering and prayed that she would go quickly and painlessly. Now we are left to grieve in a place where no one knew her and with no family to share with....just us.

I guess for us the hard thing is that our boys don't really remember her. They were both so little when they last saw her. Isaac announced the other day "I wish I had known her more" and that broke our hearts. She was a woman of faith who, along with her husband, prayed faithfully for her family everyday. She wrote us letters regularly and never forgot the boys birthdays or Christmas. There was always a NZ bank note tucked into a card somewhere.

Her funeral will be on Wednesday (NZ time) so we are going to have our own celebration/memorial service at the equivalent time here in Ecuador. We wish we could be home with the rest of the family but will make a special trip, when we do arrive, to her garden to visit with her. That's her special place.