Farewell, Paul

I went to my second city, Detroit, this past weekend to have one last hurrah with my friend Swanger before he leaves to spend a year in Kansas City.

I call it my second city because we have made some new friends and got close to Swanger's parents while there.

This weekend, in particular, was special!!!

It was my intention to go up there and spend as much time with Aaron as possible, doing all of the things he needed to do to get ready to leave. Goodbyes and all. Aaron had made plans to see certain people all weekend, but even his plans changed and we ended up having an awesome time.

We arrived on Friday evening. We had to have Thai food at Aaron's favorite Thai restaurant. The dish is called N3 with tofu and chicken, carrots, and crushed peanuts served mildly spicy. I never had tofu or this dish, but anyway, I loved it. We then went to Swanger's friends' apartment where we worshipped and ministered to each other. We stayed up entirely too late, but it was good.

The next day, we got up and went to Dearborn. For those who don't know, Dearborn is the highest concentration of Muslims in the U.S. As we drove through Dearborn the whole environment changed. There was arabic writing on billboards and signs, and mosques placed here and there. We went to a place called Family Bakery where we ate chicken shwarma(excuse the mispelling), lentils and rice, spicy potatoes, and hummus. Exquisite food. We then went to another bakery where they sell middle Eastern pastries, but found they had nothing to sell on that day. They directed us to a place down the street called Shatila.

Shatila is a bakery known for it's pastries and ice cream. The interior was beautiful with marble and gold and brown and red colors. We decided to order. Some of us ordered pastries, others ordered ice cream. It was very good and we felt like full little piggies, so we went back to Swanger's parents house where we were staying.

Because Aaron's plans changed and we didn't feel like going with him, we stayed at the house and invitied our good friends the Donnelly's over. Scott and Cheryl arrived and we ordered pizza. We watched a little TV and migrated into the Dining Room. Dave was listening to Neal's(Aaron's dad) music collection. As we listened, I suggested that we have a soul train and just boogey our butts off to celebrate Swanger leaving. Well, what ensued was crazy because we didn't have a stitch of alcohol in us, yet we partied harder than ever. And made a funny video.

It is one of the most memorable times with Swanger and I cry everytime I think about it. I love that we could send him off with such a fun experience. The last experience for a while with all of us together. We made total jackasses of ourselves, but it was worth it.

The next day we went to Swanger's church and watched him lead worship for the last time with them. His whole worship team honored him by reading a scripture to him and praying over him. His pastor had prepared a slide show for him, but it was delayed for technical errors.

As the worship team prayed over Swanger, it made me cry and see him in a whole new light. I realized that Swanger was like Paul to me. He came and visited every so often and spoke truth to me. He has witnessed me in some dark times, seen me hurting, seen me happy, rebuked my negativity, and most of all shown me love. He is now headed for a new journey and I am happy and sad for this. I don't want him to be so far away for so long, yet I know I will see him again. I will hear from him and contact him. I will miss him. I will miss getting excited when I heard that he was coming down to see us. Now, he will be the one to get excited when he hears that we are coming to see him.

Farewell, Aaron. I love you and I will be praying for you. I can't wait to hear about this new adventure and hopefully get to share part of it with you. You are my brother!