A Family Interview

We were given an opportunity to be interviewed in order to be a prayer focus. I thought some of you all may have the same questions and may be entertained to hear our answers. If you have specific interests you could pop down to the boldface topics or buckle up for the whole interview. 😉 I have included in (parentheses) whom is speaking and in [further explanation or my commentary.] Also I have included in (Italics) pronunciations of some names.

But either way, thanks for continuing to journey with us, dear friends and family. We love sharing this adventure with you.

Questions About Your Family
● How many brothers and sisters do you have? (Monica) We are a family with 4 sisters and no brothers. And yes, everyone has asked me for 9 years now if we’re going to have a boy. Ha!
● What are their names? Rachael, Abi, Hannah, Eden (Matt and Monica are the dad and mom)
● How do you like being a big/litter sister/brother? (Hannah) I don’t know. (Abi) Um.. it’s fine – [Ha! She sounds depressed. Lol] (Rachael) I like it because I get to be the leader and not like to boss around but like I get to sometimes show them a good example of something we should do. (Eden) I don’t want to be in here…. [lol. Referring to this interview.]
● Where does your Dad work / what does your dad do for a job? (Eden) Um…. He works…. I don’t know… (Hannah) He works in Inharrime [In-yar-eem-ee] and he teaches people about Jesus.
● Where does your Mom work / what does your mom do for a job? (Abi) My mom doesn’t really work. (Hannah) She works at our house and she teaches us school work.
● What is your favorite thing to do as a family? (Rachael) We like to play games together like flashlight hide and go seek. (Hannah) We like to watch movies. (Eden) To.. to… to… play? (Abi) Sit in the AC on hot days. [LOL!]
● Do you have any pets? What kind of pets? (Monica) We have a lot of pets. We like to joke that we’re a zoo. We have two dogs, Lady and Shadow. We have two cats, Niblet and Tiger. And we have two guinea pigs, Squeakers and Squealers with up to four baby guinea pigs on the way from Mama Pig, Squeakers.

Questions About Where You Are

Where do you live? Why are you living there? (Eden) In Africa. (Hannah) In Mozambique (Abi) in Maxixe [and she answered half in English and half in Portuguese]. (Rachael) We are living here because God told Mommy and Daddy that we should move to Mozambique to tell people about Jesus.
How long have you been there? (Matt) We will have lived here for 2 years in October. How long do you think you will stay? (Abi) I think we will just stay here and not like move anywhere else to live. But we will visit places. (Hannah) A million years. (Rachael) I’m going to live here until I get grown up and have to go to college in the United States.
How many different places have you lived? (Hannah) America, Africa, um… Spain, Zambia, South Africa, uhh.. New York, Disney World, and Quelimane and Maxixe and we lived in that one place that we lived in where we learned VBS and I turned 5 there… yeah at FPO (Field Placement Orientation) [we visited or trained in each of the specific places that Hannah thinks we have lived – Missionary Kid life, baby!] (Monica) We lived for ten years serving at a church in Ohio in the USA, then we move to our training in Virginia in the USA for two months, then we moved to Quelimane, Mozambique for a year of language school and then moved 16 hours south to Maxixe, Mozambique where we live and work with our People Group.
Who is your closest neighbor? (Rachael) That we know? Yeah so I think it would be Eva and Annie [the closest neighbors with kids]. Though we have neighbors next door but I don’t know their names or who they are [they don’t have kids].
What is your favorite thing about where you are? (Abi) Going to the beach (Hannah) that it has KFC (Rachael) We have friends here (Monica) Life is simple and we’re right in the middle of where God wants us to be. 😉
What is the most amazing thing you have seen or done there? (Rachael) We saw a whale jump when we were at the beach. (Hannah) I got to learn how to swim at the beach. (Abi) Going on a safari with Goga and Gopa [Monica’s mom and dad].

Questions About You

How old are you? Matt – 32 yrs old, Monica – 33yrs old, Rachael – 9 yrs old, Abi – 8 yrs old, Hannah – 6 yrs old, Eden – 4 yrs old.
● When is/was your birthday? Matt – May 10, Monica – Jan 19, Rachael – Jan 5, Abi – June 16, Hannah – Sept 5, Eden – July 9
● What is your favorite food? (Rachael) Daddy’s homemade pizza (Hannah) KFC (Abi) Nachos and cheese dip with the salsa (Eden) Nachos and cheese dip (Matt) Fajitas (Monica) Ice cream [I’d like to note that only R and H’s responses can be found in our country, though we can sometimes find/get cheese dip and vanilla ice cream which is a blessing.]
● What is your favorite color? (Hannah) pink and purple and blue (Eden) pink and purple (Rachael) light blue (Abi) turquoise (Matt) Michigan State green or blue (Monica) royal blue
● What is your favorite animal? (Matt) wolf (Monica) cat (Rachael) kittens (Abi) cheetahs (Hannah) guppies – wait nevermind, um… sharks [super random and off the top of her head] (Eden) guinea pig
● What do you want to be when you get older? Why? (Rachael) A missionary mom because I think that it’s important that people around the world can hear about Jesus and have a chance to have a choice to have Jesus in their hearts and if no one goes how can they have a chance to hear? And I want to be a mom because I think that it’s really cool to have children and I really like babies so I think having children would be really fun and cool. (Abi) I want to be a missionary because I want to share Jesus with people that way then they can learn about Jesus. (Hannah) The same as Rachael because I think it’s cool to tell people about Jesus and I want them to learn the gospel. (Eden) I want to be a ballerina and a missionary mom because I want to be like you [she says to me, her Mom] because I want to pick my movies and like do stuff like you do.
Questions About School
● Where do you go to school? (Rachael) at my house (Abi) we don’t go to school we do it at our house (Hannah) Um… in.. wait… we don’t go to school, we do it at our house. You’re our teacher. [referring to Mom]
● What grade are you in? (Rachael) 4th (Abi) 2nd (Hannah) I’m in grade Kindergarten (Eden) I don’t know, Mommy. [Eden is in busy school grade. 😉 ]
● What is your teacher’s name? (R) Monica (A) Monica (H) Monica and sometimes Daddy and sometimes Ms. Elizabeth comes over and teaches
● What is your favorite thing to study at school? (Rachael) Reading (Abi) Science (Hannah) GoPhonics [reading program] (Eden) *mumbles*… [her activity cutting workbook]
● What are you studying in school right now in math? (Ra) mental math, time, division, subtraction, addition (A) I don’t know. I’m learning times. 2×2. [multiplication]

…language arts? (Ra) Is Language Arts Reading? Ok, so in Grammar I’m studying – hold on one sec- [goes and grabs her book — Ha! This child is my literalist] Adjectives!, in Reading I’m studying similes and metaphors, and then in Spelling I’m learning ph words and forms of the sound er. (A) Um, I’m not quite sure. What is language arts? Oh, I’m writing and doing grammar and reading. I’m learning about how to make sentences and I’m learning spelling words and um…

..science? (Ra) Um… we’re learning about mountains and different ecosystems at different heights on the mountains and how temperatures are different at different parts of the mountain and so animals live in different parts. [Mom’s impressed.] (A) we’re learning about pollution [also true]

They wanted to share about history: (Ra)We’re learning about countries around the world and learning about how missionaries traveled to tell people about Jesus around the world. (A) I’m learning about animals from around the world. What we do on Fridays is whatever country we’re studying we cook the food that they would eat and then we eat it. So if we were studying Saudi Arabia then we eat Saudi Arabian food [like we did 2 weeks ago]. (H) We’re studying about India right now and about flags from around the world. (E) I like to watch videos about stories. [We had some friends and family back in the States read us some of our library books, since we don’t have access to English books here, so we could learn about countries and tales from countries all over the world this year. Eden loves seeing familiar faces read to us from new library books.]

Who is your best friend? (Matt) Monica (Monica) Matt (Ra) Kelly [local national Pastor’s oldest daughter] (A) Gildo [Jill-do] [our guard who plays with the kids] (H) Eva and Annie [two missionary kids we have schooled with and are returning to the States in November] (E) Eva and Annie

Questions About The Previous Week
● What was something fun you did this week? (A) We went to the beach on Hannah’s birthday with Gildo. (H) I learned how to swim on my birthday at the beach.
● What was something you had to do this week that you didn’t care for? (Ra) I had to take a grammar test. But then I got most of everything right. (Matt) Stand in lines and drive between government offices to start the rabbit trail of paperwork for our yearly country visas.

Questions About Activities
● What do you like to do for fun? (E) Watch a movie. (A) Play games

Do you prefer to spend your time inside or outside? (Matt) [I forgot to ask him] (Monica) outside in the shade (Ra) outside (A) outside (H) outside (E) outside
● Do you like to draw? What kinds of things do you draw? (A) Yes, I like to draw with markers and the pictures that I like to draw are mountains, rainbows, people, forests, flower fields. (H) I like to draw with sharpie markers [“Ha! No way!’ says her mom.], wait no the markers that Rachael has that I never get to use. I like to draw with markers. I like to draw persons. Rainbows. Houses. Animals. (E) Persons, grass, sun, fairies, sky, and…. Persons, girls.. And I like to draw boats and… leaves… and….. Starfishes and…. Toasters… [LOL]
● Where is the most exciting place you have been in the past year? (Ra) Safari in South Africa and saw all kinds of animals. (A) South Africa because of the big bouncy trampoline park and the foam pits. (H) Bouncy Place [South Africa] (E) The foam pit place with a lot of trampolines and we get to jump in the foam pit. (Monica) Madrid, Spain in the freezing cold winter – AHH!!!! (Matt) Kruger Safari park

Questions About Hobbies

What is the best toy that you have? (H) I don’t know we have a lot of really good toys. I like play kitchen a lot. Oh wait I like rice bin and playdoh and water colors… (A) Playdoh because I get to pretend I’m making a bakery (Ra) My books (E) playdoh and rice bin (Matt) the trampoline (Monica) the Wii
● Do you like to read? (Monica) All of us love to read/be read to, in fact a lot of our allotted crate space with the IMB was filled with English books. Haha! Priorities, people! 😉 We each enjoy reading and have our allotted space on our hallway bookshelves with our favorite reading material. Matt and I enjoy taking turns reading Christian missionary novels to the girls each night before bed. We just finished Amy Carmichael and are starting into Gladys Aylward. We read the “Christian Heroes: Then and Now” series by YWAM and have been reading our girls to sleep since Rachael, our oldest, was 11 months old. The girls absolutely love this time and often beg for one more chapter if they’re not already asleep. Matt and I, personally, are attempting to read the Chronicles of Narnia in Portuguese and I am currently reading “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist” on the side. Rachael is reading the Chronicles of Narnia in English and she is reading through the rest of her historical American Girl doll books in order to hand them off to Abi when she’s done. Abi is reading the Moana chapter book right now and has completed the Princess in Black chapter books recently. She also has enjoyed reading Elephant and Piggie books almost daily to Hannah and Eden and is looking forward to starting the Magic Tree House series soon. Hannah is reading beginner reading books and both Hannah and Eden are constantly found on the couch with various picture books in their hands throughout the day.
● What is your favorite book? (Ra) Chronicles of Narnia (A) Moana [chapter book she’s reading]
● What is your favorite song? (Monica) “Loyal” by Lauren Daigle and “First” deluxe remix by Lauren Daigle (Ra) “I will Trust in You” by Lauren Daigle (A) Adele songs ‘Hello from the other side’, ‘Set Fire to the Rain’, ‘Rolling in the Deep’, ‘Someone like You’ [Can you tell we like Daigle and Adele? Haha.]
● Do you like to dance? (Monica) The girls all love to dance and are often found in all-out dance parties in the living room complete with dramatic, jumping entrances. 😉
● Do you know how to play any instruments? Which one(s)? (Matt) nope (Monica) guitar (Rachael) ukulele (Abi) ukulele a bit and (H) and (E) drums [in a wild rhythm]

Questions About Spiritual Things
● Do you like to read your Bible? (Monica) we all read our Bibles daily. Matt and I are reading through the bible in 90 days and I often play a dramatic reading of the audio bible as a soundtrack to cooking/cleaning. Rachael is currently doing a guided kid bible study through the book of James, and Abi, Hannah and Eden are doing a kids reading plan through the book of John. We are also reading and memorizing Scripture with out daily homeschool Bible time. Right now we’re working though the sermon on the mount in Matthew ch 5 and 6. We’re also memorizing Matthew 11: 28-30.
● Do you have a favorite Bible verse? (Monica) Oh man, it’s hard to pick. Romans 10: 13-15 or James 1:27 or Philippians 3:8-11 (ooo, this one’s so good and so much to chew on) or my all-time favorite Philippians 3:12-14. No way I could pick just one. Hehe. (Ra) John 3:16 (A) John 3:16 (H) Deut 6:5 (E) Matthew 5:14-16 (Matt) Romans 10:13-17 [He also struggled to nail only one Bible verse down]
● What is the funniest name in the Bible? (Matt) Melchizedek (Monica) Habakkuk [it sounds like “Have a cookie” when said in Portuguese]. (Ra) Bartholomew [hope I spelled that right]
● Do you pray to God every day? (Matt and Monica) We pray daily. =) (Ra) At meal times and I also pray when I do my Bible study and sometimes at nighttime after Daddy has prayed if I have something that Daddy didn’t mention then I’ll pray more. (H) Yes. We pray at every meal.
● What types of things do you pray for? (Ra) against bad dreams, at bible study that God will help me understand and learn how to use what I learn in my life, at meal time I thank God for the food that we have to eat and pray for those who don’t have food and I pray if someone’s sick then I pray about that. (A) I pray for Mommy and Daddy and Rachael, Eden and Hannah, Gildo and Eva and Annie. I pray about that we would have a fun time and that we would learn a lot in school.
● When you think of God, how do you picture him? (Ra) A kind and loving person and someone that when I get to heaven I’ll run up to Him and give Him a hug and it’ll be like I’ve known Him all my life. (A) I picture Him in heaven with me.
● Why do you think Jesus decided to come and die for our sins? (Ra) Because He knew that God loves us and that while we were still sinners He loves us and doesn’t want us to be separated from Him and to never be with God because of our sins. (A) because He loves us.
● Do you tell other people about Jesus? (Matt and Monica) yup. =) (A) yup, I tell Gildo and Evo [our guards]
● Who have you told about Jesus recently? (Matt) Jessica, our people group in Chemane, youth at a youth camp we got to work with (Monica) the children at church on Sunday. I’m also trying to reach out to our unbelieving guards. (A) yup, I tell Gildo [Jill-do] and Evo [EE-voo] [[our guards]]

Did I miss something you want them to know?

(Monica) I am not even sure if that’s possible. Hehe. You were wonderfully thorough. But we’re always open to share more should anyone else have a question. We covet your prayers and are so thankful for this opportunity to serve together here in Mozambique. That’s right, we’re serving together with you all as you pray alongside of us for the salvation of Mozambicans and Americans and the whole world. May His glory fill the earth! May His name be exalted unto the heavens! There IS no one like our God, for sure. May we never be the same, thanks to the Cross!

September 7, 2018 4

Zambian Zeal

The day after that Portuguese “I Do” we ran off to a training in Zambia.

We spent two wonderful weeks learning, growing, praying and praising our Father for His Word and His work. Through studying some great passages and applying it to the Bible as a whole, we talked through, prayed through and strategized further evangelism focus among the Massinga, Maxixe, and Chopi bodies of believers in Mozambique.

(Uncle John and Aunt Wanne we’re there! 🙂 )

The girls all enjoyed a GREAT kids program in which they all got to be together (huge bonus for kids that normally do life together).

The lake conference center was gorgeous and had some really cool neighbors not so common in all parts of the world. 😉

[wpvideo GlEIDT8A ]

(Impalas alert, but they’re really camouflage)

We took a quick hop to Johannesburg, South Africa on the way home for routine doctors appointments and then after nearly three weeks of July had passed, we returned home to Mozambique.

(We ran into our Moz supervisors in Joburg. 🙂 )

Despite some normal air sickness (Sigh) and some flight delays,

we all had a safe and happy travel, returned feeling refreshed and are further focused in how to better support the furthering of the Gospel here in Mozambique.

July 30, 2018 0

Chopi Update

Through the grace of God, we saw the first evangelical church launch among the Chopi (show-pea) body of believers. What better way to launch a church of 30+ new believers than to baptize most of them?

Our city church came out to support and launch the first Chopi church service. They’ve been there all along this process, faithfully sending at least one member down to the weekly Chopi Bible studies.

Before baptizing one new believer, he brought his old witch doctoring items handed down from his father and burned them as a powerful testimony of Christ’s newfound freedom in his life.

Then we trekked the 2k’s to the river and rejoiced in 21 baptisms.

[wpvideo BERGMICx ]

(Check out Eden cheesing big time as my happy freeloader. Hehe.)

2k’s back to the church tent and the celebration was on!!! Complete with the new believers’ first Lord’s Supper.

[wpvideo PhHNdBU6 ]

Then came a post-service feast.

Please continue to guard your Chopi brothers and sisters in your prayers as they take off on these first steps of the adventure of Sunday morning church services. And as for their wonderful hearts? They’re already bringing to Matt a desire to press out to the next village with the Good News. We love their urgency, “Now that we know the truth, we have to go and tell them too because they don’t know yet!”

Thursday Bible studies are still going strong (even when we have guests, the girls and I are still heading out 2x a month for the Thursday study times) and now that Sunday services have begun, Matt is no longer doing the study on Mondays. So that puts our Chopi visits at Thursday’s and Sundays instead of the previous Monday and Thursdays. With Matt’s Monday time now open, he is looking to start a new work among other Chopi in another village.

We will keep you posted as God opens more doors, so please do join us in pounding the throne for the salvation of the Chopi people.

July 25, 2018 2

Fluidity

I wanted to inform everyone of a recent change in our departure timeline. And before anyone loses their cool, no we’re not leaving drastically earlier or later than anticipated.

After talking over the IMB’s sending timeframe with the Mozambique staff’s receiving timeframe, we are altering our previous April departure date for Richmond to July 2016. Our dear trainers in Mozambique get the privilege of watching their son graduate seminary and visiting with family for a few months so we are happy to have a few more months of preparations while they visit and return to Mozambique.

This delay in orientation and departure will NOT delay our board vote on January 19 and our February 23 commissioning.

[Now I’d like to take an aside to remind you that despite our strong candidate status, the board is voting, people, to delegate some of the 2016 year funds to our departure and salaries. So, again, if the board says “no”, we no go with the following plans. 😉 So please do know that we’re not trying to be arrogant in any way here in this process. We will be praying for January 19th big time, and hope you all will join us as well. But we have been given the green light to speak openly about our candidacy and our unofficial timeframe.]

In the meantime, this few month delay is actually quite a nice blessing in allowing us to:

Finish the homeschool year at a gentler pace.
Have more time to visit with friends and family.
Have more time to visit with neighboring churches we have been blessed to partner with in the past.
Rally more prayer support.
Be ambassadors for Christ and encouragers of others’ mission-mindedness here on State soil.
Celebrate Matt’s 10 year anniversary with the church.
Enjoy the full Awanas year.
Participate in VBS this year.
Gather more supplies in preparation of moving across the world.
Celebrate almost all of our kids’ birthdays for the last time for a while Stateside.

We are BEYOND ecstatic as things are coming more into fruition regarding God’s purpose for our family and are BEYOND thankful for your continued love, prayers and support.

God is good, all the time. And all the time, God IS Good!!!

December 10, 2015 0

The Beginning of the Back-Story

Growing up I didn’t really give much thought to the genders of the kids I wanted to have. I started out wanting to have 16 of them at about age 3 or 4 years old. Then the number dropped to 12 for a while going through elementary school and fell into the back burner of Jr. High and High School’s shadows. In college I knew I wanted to have a good number of kids. I have always adored them and find it quite natural to be in their world. I surrounded myself with kids growing up from helping Moms to play in the other room with their kiddos so they could accomplish tasks independent of kid needs when I was too young to babysit at 9 and 10 years old to babysitting, nannying, going on a few vacations with families and even running church nurseries.

When the idea of a career field came into my world, I naturally gravitated toward an early childhood education teacher. I had helped in teaching environments from the home to Vacation Bible School to even a few tutoring environments. I just love kids. They’re my normal.

In college my early childhood education window opened as God opened my worldview to His heart for “the least of these”. It began in the form of foster care, one branch of forgotten children. Suddenly He taught me how teaching goes so far beyond the classroom and even the very basics of worth, love, and trust need to be taught before a child can move on to enjoying and asserting themselves in Math or Reading or being vulnerable in a challenging subject. I suddenly had a heart change, resulting in a change of my major to Social Work. I began t see my fringe kids in the daycare in which I worked in a totally different light. No, not every case is a social work case, but my eyes were opened to those foster children coming through my afternoon Kindergarten classroom that were “a little more rough around the edges”. I enjoyed being a “secret weapon” substituting in more challenging classrooms. “Who’s name do I need to know?” I would ask the lead teacher of the classroom and then try not to single those kids out for poor behavior problems, but provide structure, consistency and special love to those children. It was cool to see their behaviors change a bit. Nope, I’m no miracle worker, but loving structure goes a very long way in a child’s chaos.

When I met my husband he was one of seven kids, now one of eight with two adopted siblings. He ate, slept and breathed kids, bring the second in the pecking order. Granted, he was one of those kids for the longest, but with parents who consistently ministered to children through foster care since almost as far back as he can remember, his heart and arms were just open. That’s one of the things that drew me to him. See, some can call that being a “family person” but I believe God made my “family man” into so much more through walking with others in their deep hurts and struggles. Barb and Rodger, my in-laws, did a wonderful job of sheltering their children’s innocence while also coming alongside of these really hurt little children in the foster care system. They protected their own blessing while also taking on some pretty tough cases. Their family motto? Christ is more than enough. And that was tested. And it was challenging. And they lost a lot of sleep. And walked in a lot of hard pairs of shoes. And they still have no idea of the impact they had in some of the children’s lives that came through their home for the 18+ years of foster care their family offered.

I joked with Matt that I wanted to have eight kids of our own when we were dating and engaged. His eyes nearly bugged out of his head a few times when he realized I kept repeating the same number… and it wasn’t a joke. He reminded me of how nice four sounded. Hehe. I told my friend and sis-in-law, Ellen, one time that I planned on starting at 8 so we could compromise at 6 kids. We both laughed since Ellen kept talking about a dozen children to her, at the time, new husband. Poor Ron and Matt. Our providers. They must have lost some serious sleep over the thought of feeding so many little mouths on a single salary – you know, since Ellen and I had plans of being stay at home moms. Don’t we sound awful? Hehe.

I worked as a foster care and independent living (transition program from foster care for older teens) case manager as my internship and for a year of my launching board off of college. I wanted to have a baby, but God wanted me to raise a few other kids first. When my car died from all the case management driving, I knew I couldn’t sustain at case management 40+ minutes from the office. The hours were long many days. Too long to start a family. Matt was doing his internship for school. I missed seeing him. It was our first year of marriage.

I switched to individual and group therapy at a program designed for children who had failed out of multiple preschool/daycare settings due to behaviors. We saw every kind of case there from the lack of parenting to the product of broken homes to foster care cases. I had chairs thrown at me, was called everything under the sun, and had so many scratch marks and even a few bite marks while being spit on. Some of these kids entered our program with utter wild in their eyes. They had all the authority. Many of their parents had given up or they had failed out of multiple, multiple foster homes… and they were only 4. I had the group kids who were older. 4 years old until 6 years old when they aged out of our program. Some of the things these kids had been through would bring even the hardest heart to tears. Such innocence stripped. And all was left was a hurt, hurt frail child who hid behind aggression.

And there in that daily environment, God blessed us with our first child.

(Continue on to: The Continuation of the Back-Story)

May 19, 2014 1

Seeds Planted in the Heart of a Child

It began with our prayer life. We were discontent with our contentment. You know how it is… that comfort we Christians find when we find ourselves in a country free, for the most part, of persecution. Free of excessive judgement. A country that, for the most part, just lets us Christians live our lives. Yep, we’d gotten comfortable. And so we forgot about them.

Sure there was a lot on our plate when the boys came. There was a whole host of new adjustments and likes and dislikes. But still they remained forgotten.

A while into the boys’ stay, the oldest boy motioned to the wall, “Who are they?” That was the first time we had remembered for a while.

They came up in casual dinner conversation. A prayer here and there.

And then it became more regular. We read the Word more. Our prayer life became more disciplined. We were discontent with our contentment. The boys had gone home. Things had slowed down and it was time for life changes. A return to serving outward, since there was less inward need.

And they came up on the prayer board again. Our Wednesday regulars. And we began to pray for more open hearts, more open arms, and more direction in loving them.

Then I found her at the kitchen table. Out of the blue. She had three piles of pictures to color. And she asked for their names: Lidia, Tofic and Valentina. Her Kindergarten script wrote each name awkwardly and lovingly on each of their handful of colored papers. Glued on strips of paper with stamp-like stickers of states they would never know… she doesn’t even know. She thought of the colors she used. What they might like and not like. And she frequented back, verifying name spellings, some times calling out letters from across the house. She was creating her masterpieces. And she was making them individually for our World Vision sponsor kids.

She sat there contentedly, diligently for over a half hour. The day progressed and she had to move on to other tasks. She stacked her work neatly in piles and hid them wisely from our rambunctious toddler. And later during her free time she chose to get them all back out, coloring in the parts she left off. Spelling their names over and over again. Collecting envelopes and folding each of her gift pages. An awkwardly placed piece of tape held the envelopes together… they were bulging with her love.

So we followed the lead of a child today. A child with a big heart. A child who, unbeknownst to herself, was an answer to our Wednesday prayers. Open hearts. Open arms. More direction on how to love Lidia, Tofic and Valentina better.

We worked on our envelopes together. Assembling our love into a 6×9 package. We tried to think three of four months ahead. That’s when they’d receive our mail. It has a long distance to travel. They live so many worlds apart. Tofic’s birthday would be right around the corner. Eden would be here or close to here. And by the time we’d receive word back Eden would be close to four months old. It’s almost unfathomable how time will change us. And yet we’ll be the same. Praying our same Wednesday prayers.

She asked if she was the reason we were assembling our envelopes tonight. “Not the reason, but the encouragement, dear Rachael. You were a great encouragement to us. And you encouraged us to send something from our hearts too. Thank you. ”

I’m thankful that our God works in gentle ways…

Through the seeds planted in the heart of a child.

March 4, 2014 0