Open Arms

Open Arms
...caring for orphans and adoptive families...

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

What a blessed Life! Utterly amazing!

What a week it's been! The past two weeks really have been packed with friends and family, ups and downs.

Our sweet friend, Ziwase, came to stay with us for a week between her college graduation and her marriage to Tony Osimbo. We met Tony and Chichi (Ziwase) when they came to a small group meeting at our house last summer. We discovered that Tony already knew our son JD from Bethel Christian Camp years earlier. Tony is from Kenya and ChiChi is from Zambia. We had a great time watching her prepare for her wedding day. It is so amazing how we all end up where we are and how we have the privlege to be a part of each others lives.

Our contact in Ukraine had to depart the country suddenly upon learning of her grandmother's unexpected death. Please be in prayer for her and her family during this time. She will now remain in the States throughout the summer raising support and sharing about the orphans there in Ukraine.

Personally for us that means we no longer have communication with the children. We are so thankful that the Lord allowed us to share our hopes and plans with the older boys before she came home to the states. Hopefully they can be encouraged until we make it there.

We began redoing our pantry/laundry room last Friday, but halfway thru the mess we realized that the wedding party would be dressing at our house on Saturday morning so we needed to put all the "mess" up until next weekend!

On Saturday we received an email from our contact at immigration. It appears they are waiting on one form from DSS in order to finish processing our paperwork. She tried to be encouraging regarding the time frame, even wished Carol a "Happy Mother's Day". Carol wanted to say that all she wanted for Mother's Day was completed paper work, but instead told her that we would be patiently waiting! This is where we must trust that everything is in His timing and His control. We cannot make this happen.

In fact....It is totally and completely beyond our ability to do the task set before us, therefore we have decided we will not strive for it, but we will rest in Him who is able.

Mother's Day yesterday was really nice. Children (bearing gifts...always nice) and grandchildren running/crawling around (Josiah (1yr old) even played the harmonica, I'm sure he'll be as good as Dylan one day!), extended family over to spend time with Grandma, chicken on the grill, and even our special "adopted" daughter from church, Jenn, came and hung out for an evening of movies and popcorn.

What a blessed Life! Utterly amazing! We're just deeply missing our other children.
Please continue to pray with us to bring them home soon.

James 5:16-17 (the Message) ...The prayer of a person living right with God is something powerful to be reckoned with. Elijah, for instance, human just like us, prayed hard that it wouldn't rain, and it didn't — not a drop for three and a half years. Then he prayed that it would rain, and it did. The showers came and everything started growing again.

With Love,
Steve & Carol