Long lost ... (ex)students

Yesterday, a high school classmate found me on Facebook, sent me a want to be friend email. After my confirmation, all of a sudden, there were hundreds of Facebook links showed up. I found some long lost friends from all over. What the new technology can do nowadays!

The most interesting link is the Facebook of Christine Nguyen, my dearest God daughter from whom I haven't seen or talk to for a couple of years.

We got connected in a few hours. After that day, there were a few more showed up. They were Kim Nguyen, and Cathy Trinh. When I saw their latest pictures, i recognized how old I was. It's been more than 10 years since they were sitting in my Confirmation class.

There are few more I haven't connected yet, but I hope it would be soon.

I remember it's just not too long ago. They were all around fourteen or fifteen, obnoxious, noisy, emotional, and ... impulsive. And now they are in their mid and late twenty's. Many already graduated and have their own lives. A few are still in school for higher educations. Most are working and supporting themselves if not helping their family here and there.

It brought back all the memories. The two year programs we spent studying, and growing together in our faith and in Christ. I found some of the more than ten year old pictures I took for them in their retreats at Big Bear Mountain. They look so different now.

I was sitting here in my living room with the heater running full blast. The temperature outside dropped to the low twenty. The sky was gloomy, just like then up in the mountain. We normally booked our retreats during the weekends of earlier winter. The weather at Big Bear were usually cold and gloomy.

I remember one year I was on one of the retreats when the bus we were on, ran into a ditch, and got stuck. It was cold, wet, and really windy. The sun started going down quickly so everyone had to get off the bus and walked almost a mile in that condition to our camp without much of our luggage before it was getting dark.

Some years that we were lucky enough, we would have seen SNOW. For these kids, who grow up in a warm weather of Southern California, snow is something you don't see often, if not at all.

Oh, well, there's a saying that good things go by fast.

Fortunately, at least I have something to remember when I retired, right.