Heavenly Family Reunion

Michigan camp meeting in the United States of America was one of my summer highlights while growing up. My mother owned an eleven-bed rest home, and camp meeting was the only time she would go on vacation. The whole family packed up and went for the week, and to this day, I still have friends whom I met there. The Michigan camp meeting was one of the largest held in the world. It was a foretaste of heaven! I loved to watch the people who attended in their colorful clothing and hear them speak in their mother languages.

The last year the camp meeting was held at that campground in Grand Ledge was 1988, the year after my mother died of cancer. Camp meetings have long been a good way to foster relationships, and building friendships is very important to me.

I recently got to see one of my best friends from Illinois. I also spent the weekend with a couple who were in my wedding in 1979. Lastly, I saw a friend who is a retired doctor who I went to the junior-senior banquet with at Andrews Academy.

It was such a wonderful trip, seeing friends I had not seen for many years. Connections often take place when you least expect them. Once, when our three sons were young, we took them to Disney World in Orlando, Florida, United States of America.

On Sabbath, we went to a nearby church and saw two women who were student missionaries when my husband and I taught at the Seventh-day Adventist Language School in Seoul, South Korea, from 1980 to 1981. What a wonderful reunion we had, catching up on news from twenty years earlier. Another example occurred on the third Sunday in July, when we have a family reunion on my father’s side. I attended it with my parents every year and got to know all my cousins. As we grew older, we decided to keep the reunion going and encourage the younger cousins to attend. Our reunion has been going on for more than seventy-five years, with only one exception, when we had to cancel due to COVID-19.

There is a family reunion that none of us want to miss! When Christ returns to take His children home, He will gather all who have died, along with those who are awaiting His return, and we will never see death again! Redeemed by His precious blood, we will be reunited with our loved ones. What a day that will be! Jesus is coming soon.

Maranatha!

Gyl Moon Bateman