Wow, two complete opposite sides of the emotional spectrum to deal with this past week.

We’ll start on the happy news side of things first, because in this case the sad news unfortunately overshadows pretty much everything else at the moment.

So, the news just came in that Wayne – in his first ever job interview – has succeeded in landing an absolutely jaw-droppingly awesome job at “Pukke”, the North-West University for all you non-South Africans out there.

This is an absolutely fantastic break for Candice and Wayne and is exactly what they deserved. The downside of it is of course that our friends will now be living a good couple of hundred kilometres away in Potchefstroom (and may very well eventually be converted into “egter Afrikaaners” as daily life continues! :P) but apart from that little bit of selfishness from our side, the upswing in terms of lifestyle and quality of living is HUMONGOUS and just to awesome to pass up!

So CONGRATULATIONS Mr. and Mrs. Smith – despite the fact that we are so sad to see you go, we are absolutely thrilled at this monumental opportunity that has been placed in front of you!

Go get ’em! :)

And now for the most heart-breaking thing we’ve had to encounter for a long time.

Damen and Michelle lost their baby, 26 weeks into their pregnancy.

We can only imagine how heartbroken they are and have been keeping them in our prayers ever since. Chantelle breaks down in tears every time she thinks of them, or when somebody mentions their names, and it has really, really hit her hard.

In addition, this terrible tragedy that has befallen our friends threatens to effect our friendship because now Chantelle has gone into guilty mode over the fact that we are pregnant and that what happened to them did not happen to us. So in essence, I’m not sure that they’ll ever be able to share in our building joy, nor conversely, us share out our joy with them, as that dark cloud will sit there over us for some time to come I imagine.

In other words, it may be a while before we visit with one another…

However, that aside, the fact remains that this is the most heartbreaking thing that could ever have happened to people who just simply didn’t deserve it. This unborn child was Michelle’s everything and there is no one who didn’t deserve it or work as hard to protect it as what she did.

This simply breaks our hearts.

So for now, all we can do is pray that God is with them and is able to help them heal and slowly close their raw emotional wounds, bringing comfort to them with his loving hands… :(