.The Castro Family.: Daniel Astrom

What a wonderful time we had with Daniel!! He stayed with us for 7 days over a 12 day period. Dave and Daniel originally met around 13 years ago. Daniel had come to the States as an Au Pair. Someone invited him to our church and he quickly got knit in with a number of friends, Dave being one of them. They became VERY close friends over the year he was here. In 1995, after being here for a year, he went back home to Sweden. He and Dave lost touch (you know how guys are ;o). They only spoke once during the 12 years. I think they tried emailing, but had wrong addresses and they simply were never able to connect. About a month ago, a friend sent Dave his email address. They quickly picked up coorespondance. About a week or two after that, one of Daniel's co-workers informed him that he had signed Daniel up for a conference in Florida. Talk about perfect timing! God was very kind in allowing Daniel to stay with us both a few days prior and after his conference in Florida. While we would have wished to have had his wife and little girl (2 year old, Emmy) stay with us too, it was wonderful to have Daniel here. He and Dave had such a wonderful time together. It was fun for me to watch them catch up and reminisce together. We had some great laughs together!

On one weekend that he was here, we had a bunch of his old friends and their families come over for a cook-out. What a great time of catching up, not just for Daniel, but for us as well. All our old friends that we really never see much. The rest of the time, we hung out at the house, shopped a bit and got to know Daniel more.

Yesterday we took him back to the airport to journey home. We will miss him so! We talked numerous times of him coming back with his family soon. How wonderful that would be! Life in Sweden seems pretty expensive, so we will be praying for the finances for them to come in the future.

Here are some pictures from our time together