a miracle happened already

i have had so many blessings this week already, i couldn't count them if i tried. i first want to have a shout out to the main people helping care for thomas, phoebe, ben, and abigail -- thank you fredericks! you are simply the best! thank you amy decker for taking on 2 15 year old eating machines! thank you hoffmans for being brave enough to take a small army to kings island for three days! you guys all rock :)

okay, another shout out to tim moss, my travel planning companion extraordinaire! if it is possible to put together a crazy intense itinerary involving two countries in two weeks, we did it! and i think we did a darn good job, but i will get back with you in about ten days on that one :)

and a final shout out to gerard sefuku. a rwandan who God put on our path last may, right after we had gotten home. he was the piece of a puzzle and we are both so thankful that God led us to each other in an unexpected way. he has been a Godsend providing hotel rooms and a car/driver for some special trips we have planned. he blessed us totally...

if you are new to reading this blog, i hope you can go back and read the past posts. there are only a few because i am a lame blogger. some of this might make more sense...

we are combining two things in this trip: rwanda and ethiopia. i can hardly believe we are able to do this. see, when we went to rwanda in march of 2010, God changed me. He broke my heart on march 3, 2010. i fell in love with africa and its people. i fell hard. the very first day there, we went to visit a hospital and went to two home visits. we met ambrose, a man who had his leg amputated. and we met a woman whose husband had died, she had HIV and was raising their children in a falling down shack. if i knew then that God was going to take us back a year and a half later to visit with ambrose with his prosthetic leg and the woman in a new house (thank you TriMedx Foundation!) because we would be adopting two kids in ethiopia, well, i wouldn't have believed it. because it would have been too incredible to be true. but God is incredible and that is exactly what He has done. i remember it like it was yesterday, sitting in an outdoor restaurant the night of the third with greg and tim (and ben and sam), and none of us being able to speak words because there were none. the tears just dripped on our plates. that was the day the poor and orphaned had names. even though we had adopted before, it was never about the orphan. it was about me. finally, we would be doing it for an orphan.

i am supposed to be going to bed in one hour and fifteen minutes for a 3 am wake up, so i am going to make myself stop typing soon. but i have to document this because it made my heart, once again, really see how God hears our prayers. how He knows the desires of our hearts. how He answers in ways i never would expect....

for the last few days, i have been praying that greg would fall in love with ethiopia. i mean really really love the people and place. he has been a lot of places, but i wanted this one to stand out. he calls about two hours ago to let me know he had arrived safely. his next words were 'and i've already had a little drama.' he tells me how he gets to his hotel to check in and he goes to get his wallet and can't find it. for those of you who know greg, this isn't surprising (think back to china of 2004 when he couldn't find the $7,000 that had fallen out of his money pouch ... and ben found it under the seat on the bus we were on.... 'nuf said). he goes through every pouch of his backpack and satchel. nowhere to be found. the hotel staff start calling the airport and taxi services that bring people to the hotel. they take him back to the airport. the hotel had called them and they had all the taxi drivers going over the parking lot to see if it had fallen out. they tore apart the taxi he had been in. they let him through security with his passport to go to lost and found. a guy is standing there with it. he asks how much money greg had in it. $300 and still there. as he was walking back down the corridor, he said there was a plexiglass wall and the workers and taxi drivers were watching him trying to get a read on whether he had found it. he shoots them a thumbs up and he said they literally started jumping up and down and squealing! he said he had never seen people so excited to have someone find a wallet. he gave his taxi driver some money because greg felt like some of the drivers thought he might have taken it and greg knew he had not. when he got to the hotel, the staff surrounded him with hugs and the security guys jumped over his little booth and hugged him. he said he couldn't believe the joy everyone had because of finding his wallet.

and who found the wallet in the parking lot of the airport? a little ethiopian girl :)

so i'm thinking ethiopia has already made an amazing impression on him....thank you Lord :)