A Cup of Comfort for Couples Read Online Free PDF Page B

marveled that life just couldn’t get better. And each day proved them joyously wrong.
    Then, these two people who so savored living alone agreed they would live together. It was only as obvious as eating and breathing. “We have two wonderful places to live in, we love each other, and the rest is just details,” the man said.
    He introduced her to Tanzania, East Africa, where he had worked with HIV/AIDS for years. Unsatisfied to be simply a tourist, she asked the universe to steer her toward something important to do. The very same day she met a local woman busy stirring a pot of ugali in an outdoor kitchen, and the two talked. The woman met her new friend’s sister, who invited her to see her village school.
    Ever the adventurer, the woman climbed onto a crowded, rickety bus and rattled 10 miles south of Dar es Salaam to sprawling Mbagala, where they got out and walked through dusty lanes where tourists never go. “ Mzungo ! Mzungo !” small African boys shouted at the white woman. Babies looked her way and burst into tears, goats brayed, and eyes followed until they stopped at Fatuma’s tiny home, where thirteen tots danced to the beat of a goatskin drum in a dingy room without toys or books.
    The next day, the woman returned with school supplies and asked about the hand-high outline of cinderblocks in the yard.
    â€œMy dream is to build a real school,” explained the middle-aged, divorced mother of four.
    â€œLet me help,” her new friend said.
    When the couple married in Oregon and again in Sweden, they asked for school donations in lieu of gifts, and the cinderblocks grew higher with each visit. Fatuma named her new school Bibi Jann Day Care Center in honor of the woman ( bibi being Kiswahili for grandmother). Eventually, the school grew through grade five and evolved to become Bibi Jann Children’s Care Trust. AIDS orphans and the grandmothers raising them would come together under GRANDMA-2-GRANDMA to create goods to sell, and STUDENT-2-STUDENT began to educate the children, with sponsors worldwide for both programs. The journalist became a philanthropist/ social worker/fundraiser.
    Together at last, the man and the woman would enjoy eight American grandchildren, four Swedish ones, and some two-hundred African children who know them as bibi and babu . Together, they would travel the world, plant gardens, create homes in both their countries, and work to remedy the cause and effects of a terrible disease. Together, they would grow into contented old age and ever-deepening love — a love spread over five decades, three continents, and two centuries. A love worth waiting for.
    â€” Jann Mitchell-Sandstrom

The Anniversary Gift
    â€œI can’t get out of the car!” I yelled.
    â€œOh, dude, I’m sorry.” Jeff walked around the back of the Explorer to the passenger side.
    The gash from my C-section ached as I maneuvered out of the open car door. I slid between our car and the one right next to us. Its tires sat on the yellow line.
    â€œIt’s over the line!” I grumbled.
    â€œI know,” Jeff said. “Kel, I could move our car.”
    â€œWhere?” I said. “The parking garage is full.”
    He shrugged as I inched my way out, taking his hand. Happy anniversary , I thought. Tears threat-ened, but I held them back. I had cried every day for the last thirty-two days; I did not want to cry today, our tenth anniversary.
    Ten years, married to the same person. A milestone. We had planned a trip to relive our honey- moon in Mexico, had made the reservations a year in advance, only to cancel them months before the trip.
    â€œIt’s safe to say you won’t be going,” my obstetrician, Dr. Clark, said at my first appointment. “This pregnancy is high risk. There’s anywhere from a twelve to fifty percent chance something could go wrong.”
    I nodded, frowning. I both wanted and feared this pregnancy. My oldest son,