God's Interesting Ways

A new judge has been assigned our matter. Today’s decision was that since our case is so complicated, we will essentially be starting over again. Our next hearing will be May 23^rd, but in a way it will be like our first. Which is good.

We are bummed that we won’t be home in time to see Paris, Sean or Keyonia graduate, nor to visit BCS or my Mom’s classroom in Forest Hill. However, although the date itself is a bit discouraging, we walked away feeling more optimistic about what the near future holds.. We’ve come so far in the last three weeks, from almost losing our kids during our 6^th hearing, to essentially getting a fresh start. So we really have so much to be grateful for.

If somebody told us last year that we would be relieved at the prospect of starting our court proceedings all over at the tenth month, we would have told them they were crazy. Then again, if somebody would have told us about all the amazing things that God would do in the midst of this drama, we would have told them they were crazy also!

Please listen to a couple cool things that have happened in the last few weeks:
- Eastern Nazarene College students are planning a fall concert to benefit Happy Life Children’s Home. Not to mention that my cousin Tyler’s friends have stayed up. Maybe they played some X-box while they were at it, but they did stay up to pray! Sounds like there are some I Timothy 4:12 college students coming up through the ranks! Who says all Patriots fans are bad people? :-)

- Mom, Dad, and Becca brought over a bunch of Bibles and other materials designed specifically for Pastor’s Caleb’s prison ministry, to give prisoners hope of a fresh start and a better life.Who would have known that will they were in Kenya, there would be prison riots and warder/warden strikes. These materials could not possibly have come at a more critical time.

- Just today we met over the phone a woman with two adopted children who appear to be making headway in pursuing some new adoption-friendly legislation. How cool would it be to provide legal and/or administrative support to the national Congressional Adoption coalition and their partners, who were life-savers last week? (Shameless plug—If we give you more info next week, will you write your legislators and encourage them to prioritize orphan-related legislation? Please? J ) This was so exciting, I almost broke into a dance in the middle of downtown Nairobi!

- In addition to the best group of family and friends in the history of the world advocating out for us, several people who have never even met us continue working late nights to try to keep our family intact. Names like Sarada, Lauren, Kristin, Mark and numerous others will forever be etched in our memory as reminders of His love for us during these stormy days.

So people prayed for God’s will to be done. In spite of the fact we have not secured those critical legal papers that we covet so deeply, evidence indicates that God’s will is still being done. Thanks so much for not losing interest in our kids after we didn’t get our orders last week. As Mama Sundi often reminds me between frustrated grunts, things are so much better than three weeks ago. Hakuna kama wewe, Baba!

Also my brother Brian’s 35^th birthday. Man, that guy is getting up there.

Talk to you this weekend.