Guest blog by Katie Forbess
I have an eighth best friend. That doesn’t mean that I have 7 other friends before her it just means that since we have been friends since fifth grade, other friends have come and gone as being BFFs. We learned after a while that we couldn’t play that game and remain friends. We would just forever be 8th best friends. She has known me through middle school, high school, college and beyond. We have celebrated good times and weathered storms together. We are very different – from our appearance, to our family life, to our careers and basically from our head to our toes and inside out. Yet, she has always been one of my biggest supporters and I have always been one of her biggest supporters.
She was present at my baptism. My daughter’s middle name is her last name. I love everything about her. Although she has witnessed my transformation from what might have been called a lanky country girl to an International babe ;) she still loves me. I realized the depth of her love one day very recently when we were looking at a picture of my daughter and she was saying how much we are alike. I said, except she is so much prettier than I was at that age. My friend replied very quickly by saying, “No, you have always been beautiful. Beautiful and photogenic are different things.”
Katie Forbess is President on the Board of Directors for Iron Rose Sister Ministries. She is Michelle’s right-hand woman, her Barnabas, and her partner in crime. Katie and her family were missionaries in Cochabamba, Bolivia, for seven years. They currently reside in Hot Springs Village, Arkansas.