T Minus 4 Days

I cannot believe that we are seriously 4 days from travelling?!!???!!! I wake up each morning feeling like I am going to be ill! *wry grin* There is so much to hope I have done right and not forgotten.

I think the biggest thing for me is leaving my three year old for sixteen days! I have to trust God that His hand will protect him and he will be just fine. It is also scary to leave them and be traveling with my husband, so that there is not a parent there - two parents away. We rarely ever are in a situation where if something happened there were not one parent still at home. You know what I mean?

God is bigger than that.

I am realizing that God is working on me with TRUST right now. Majorly!

I have had a few things happen lately and I suddenly realize they are revolve around trust. There was one situation that I won't disclose, but I will say it has thoroughly confused me. I talked to a friend about it today and we both agreed that it came down to trust. Was I trusting God to meet my needs. And I don't think I was.

Then, before this, I have always been not totally trusting when it came to the fact that I am leaving my little ones at a house that has a lake for a backyard - literally 40' from the backdoor! That has hung over me with a shadow of fear the whole time. This friend is so sweet and loving and giving to have offered to take my four children (only three are going), while she is three months pregnant and has two small children of her own! Do I trust God to protect them?

To add to this, I discovered my girls may have been exposed to a serious germ. We are told the child that is ill is not contagious. I asked my doctor about the situation. She said she would wear a mask. I think she is being overly cautious. I don't want to walk into the orphanage and wear a mask!! I believe God is bigger than this. He is like an umbrella. It is my belief that we could go through life fearful of so many things; it is better to truly trust God to take care of us. Yes, do take precautionary measures, but ultimately trust God. And I do!

Finally, tonight I gave permission for my children to take swimming lessons while we are gone. Again, my little ones have never been away from me in someone else's care -ever, so the idea of them driving 45 minutes to another town each day for lessons. You know. Mama Bear just wants to put them in the house and keep them there playing with toys for the next 16 days *grin* I know I can't do that. Reality check!! LOL!! And I know they will have lots of fun taking swimming lessons! So they will go and I will trust God again.

Oh, and the big one I noticed last week. They did an article on us in the local paper. I could have slapped myself up the side of the head when I noticed that they had given our full names, the small town we live in, and the exact dates we would leave and come back. I began worrying - theft!! So then I realized I could take as many precautions as I wanted but ultimately I would have to trust God to protect our home.

So there you go - I know I am in Trust Boot Camp this month! :o))

And to show you the first rewards of this trust, tonight I found out that my friend Erin's husband is on nights for the next three weeks. God is so faithful and good!!! Lately, he has been on casual and he could have been called at any time. This means that Erin will have her hubby home to help her when she needs it. This also means that he will be able to be at the airport with her little ones when we come home. Previous to this there wouldn't have been room to bring her kids to the airport once we had our family in the van for the return trip. Now they can bring two cars!

Now that we have that one taken care of, what else is new?

The rest of the day was spent with running more errands - what else is new? I made up special bags of new little toys for the little ones. I put about seven little treats: slinky, new cars, magnadoodle, puppet, playdough, etc in a large ziploc bag for both of them. This way Erin can give the a new bedtime treat (except the playdough, Erin, that is for daytime *smile*) every couple days. Then when they are lying in bed they will have their little stash of things that stop them from feeling a little homesick.

Then I had to take Austin to the doctor for his mysterious rash. She was baffled. LOL!! She figures given its localized area that he must be allergic to something so we are to just put on hydrocortizone cream.

We went to the second hand shop looking for one last suitcase. Some sweet lady at church offered me a suitcase. I asked her if it was heavy. She put her fingers together and I could pick it up like this! Great, I said. I needed one more.

Well, I picked it up from the church this week. Holy smokes!!! LOL! That sucker weighs TEN POUNDS!!! She must have mighty strong fingers! *grin* Obviously it won't be going! After trying unsuccessfully to find a suitcase I decided to go with the plastic tub idea. I liked the idea, but I wasn't sure about the size. As it turns out, it will be just fine. So I came home and packed the last suitcase. And I even managed to find room to put in a few shirts for Ray and I! :o)

Little Boys Got a Great New Toy

Suffice it to say, my afternoon was packed. Finally, I had my 11 year old do the preparations for a soup/stew we were making with leftover roast beef, while I quickly got ready to go out. I had a coffee date with some girlfriends, since one was having a birthday.

My older son came home in time to babysit and off I went. I have to tell you the funniest thing that happened. I was walking up the side walk and had just stepped up to the door to open it when it swung open from the inside. As I stepped forward this lady stepped out. You know how you politely pass each other in the same doorway? Well, that didn't happen. This lady didn't clue into the fact that I was coming in. According to my friends who were already inside, she had a mission. She went darting to the door and as I came in she BELLOWED in my face.

I about had a heart attack on the spot!!! Her face was 12" from mine when she yelled. I was NOT expecting that! LOL!! She immediately apologized. She had been bellowing across the street to someone, but hadn't know I was walking in. The whole store saw what happened and it was funny.

When I got home I gave the kids dinner, took Ray some dinner at the job site (the poor guy is putting in 16 hour days right now trying to get as much done as possible before the end of Saturday.) Then Sandi and I talked by phone.

We are so incredibly blessed. There I was stressing about the money. Then I was at peace. Then I prayed for direction. Then Sandi called me. Then after that we have had the largest donations!!

So tonight Sandi and I were talking and we are both so pumped!!! You know, when I was 21 years old I had just come home from travelling in Europe for a year. I met a girl in a store and she was going to Mexico to work in an orphanage with her youth group. I was so jealous. I had met Ray and there was no way I could do that. I had always loved children and the whole idea was so wonderful.

God knew my heart. I always wanted to adopt. I have always wanted our family to go on a missions trip. And I have always loved the little children - especially the little needy ones. If you go back in my blog to the beginning you will see that at Month 1 of our adoption process, I was saying that I knew that this adoption was about a lot more than our little girls. I knew that God was calling us to Africa. I didn't know if we would go, but I knew that He had given me (us) a new passion - the African children.

This feeling has never gone away. When we knew we were imminent to travel I began campaigning for donations. As time went by I got more and more excited about how much we could collect, what we were collecting, what we could still collect.

But I did not have the direction for the giving yet. I prayed and asked God to show us where we were to spend the money we had.

Then one day Sandi called me. Her sister had just partnered up to open an orphanage. Four children would be arriving next week. I got excited. We began talking nightly. Immediatley, we were planning what Ray, Colt, and Dane could build while we were in Ethiopia: bunkbeds, shelves, benches.

Then Sandi and talked again tonight and I suddenly had the idea that it might be more time efficient if we could just buy the bunkbeds. How much would they cost? $300 per, plus the mattress. I said I would have to ask Ray's opinion, but I knew that making a safe bunkbed would take more time than we might have budgetted. It made sense to buy bunkbeds. A few minutes later, he came in the door and I tossed the idea of buying bunkbeds, versus building them, at him.

He immediately said he had already been thinking about this idea. So, at that moment, we made a committment to Sandi to buy five sets of bunks. Thanks to the money that we have saved, plus the donations from our kind friends and family, we will be able to do this. We have told Sandi that we can commit to buying everything that they need to set up ten children in the orphanage.

This does not include the medication, of course, or the monthly living expenses. It is the school supplies, multivitamins, sheets, blankets, pots, pans, toys, dishes, everything that they will need to securely establish a home for ten children.

We are so, so excited to see this happening!! Thank you to all you have donated through our family!!!

Sandi is calling Meg and asking her to order the bunkbeds and mattresses and when we get there we will have to figure a way to get them out to the orphanage.

Here is another neat twist. Not that long ago, Ray was saying that he would love to build a house for a needy family in our town. As nice as that thought was, my heart being in Africa, I said to Ray, "There is a safety net for needy families in Canada, but in Africa your dollar can go so much farther and do so much more." He agreed with me, and that was the end of it.

Also, Dane (15) didn't really want to go to Africa. He outright told me that he did not want to see the sadness, the poverty, the pain. I told him that he could not be an ostrich. I told him that if he felt the grief, then he would be touched, and then hopefully he would make a difference as he grew up.

It would have been cheaper (by about $8000) to leave the boys at home. But I wanted them to see and to do and to feel - sadness, anger, but most of all - love and happiness, while in Africa. I wanted them to see the joy on the children's faces and know that no matter how little they ate that day, these children could still get up in the morning and be happy and thankful for what they had.

Well, God knows Rays heart. And He knows my heart. And He knows Dane's heart.

God has blessed us abundantly by allowing us to be the first people to see this orphanage. We will see it at the very bare bones state that it is in. We will then have the amazing joy of going shopping with carts and boxes and coming back with supplies and seeing the rooms come alive!!

It is funny because Sandi was worried that we would be aghast at the state the orphanage is in right now. Quite the opposite. We have the once in a lifetime chance of seeing an orphanage *before* it is established!!!

Ray *will* get to do his "Extreme Home Makeover" to some extent!!! He will be building whatever they need that he can accomplish in three days. We are praying for super speedy workmanship, ready supplies, good prices etc.

We were talking tonight about whether or not the house needs paint. Perhaps, we can paint while we are there. A fresh coat of paint does a lot to freshen a place up.

This new orphanage means that ten children who had no hope will now have a home!! I am so happy that Meg has had this amazing opportunity and listened to God's prompting and that through everyone's generousity we have managed to have this money and supplies to help.

I hope that people that read this blog will consider donating to Meg's Orphanage - FAYA. This is a home where up to 30 HIV positive children will NOT have a bleek future anymore. These children will now have a future!!! Praise God!!

So stay tuned!! Exciting times are on the way. So fun!!!!!!