Friday From the Heart: Good-bye To Arlen

Another Central American little brother returned home last month to his country of Honduras. Arlen moved in with Mom and Dad a year and a half ago and became part of the family quickly. His soft and gentle voice and quiet demeanor endured him to us and to the children who were excited to have another Spanish speaking "uncle" around!

Arlen is a blessing to our family. He surely showed up all of the biological Bushlack children on Sunday nights with his servant ablilty to quietly slip into the kitchen and clean up every dish from the large family gathering. Smiling he would load the dishwasher as he listened to the activities and would sometimes smile or laugh along with the multiple conversations that would take place around him. He took his share of teasing and jabs from the siblings as he became another family member in our hearts.

Wanting to leave him with something meaningful from his visit here, I remembered this spring how during our Thanksgiving holiday the two of us sat in the living room in the midst of all of the activity talking about my current cross stitching project. Arlen loves to know the details about things and always asked about what I was doing.

After our large meal when we all retired to the living room I had picked up a cross stitch project that I had started and was doing work on it while everyone talked. We probably sat for thirty minutes talking about how I know what color and place to stitch the x's.  He looked at the pattern and followed a few stitches as I demonstrated. When the time came to decide what to send him home with, I knew it had to be something cross stitched.

Last spring our whole family was blessed to be witness to Arlen be baptized and proclaim his love for Jesus. With that in mind I thought a present to celebrate that part of his time here in the United States would be awesome. I searched online for the perfect pattern. I saw a great pattern with the names of Jesus beautifully displayed and thought he would like it. In different shades of blue I felt it was perfect.

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I got online to buy and download the pattern only to find out there is a version in Spanish! His own language! Can something be more than perfect? I was so excited to get started! I posted awhile back about stretching out some thread I was trying to use up. I took some filament that had a silver sheen to it and added it to the blue in the "Su Nombre Jesus" part in the middle. Read more about that adventure here: Making it Stretch.

I was more excited to finally give it to him when we gathered to celebrate our little brother's time here and send him off with all of our love. We love him and wish him God's best wherever his goes!