So close, and yet so far
Rachel Perkins and Nkosinathi "Nathi" Gama, live half a world apart, Perkins in Chicago, Gama in the Kingdom of eSwatini, a small nation in southern Africa that many Americans still know by its former name, Swaziland. Perkins, a second-year seminarian at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, was expecting to pick up Gama, her boyfriend, at O'Hare International Airport Saturday, a joyous Thanksgiving reunion after months apart. Then everything went horribly wrong. Now, the two are back to living 14,000 miles apart with no idea when they will be able to visit together. Saturday, Perkins, her parents, Terry and Karin Perkins of Janesville, Wis., and another seminarian, doctoral student Rev. Francisco Herrera, went to the airport to pick up Gama, the first person she met in country during her volunteer Young Adults in Global Mission year in Swaziland with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America from August 2018 to July 2019. As soon as her YAGM year was up, Perkins r...