Updates and general business

Wow, we have had a busy week and it is only Thursday! A good busy though, a busy full of little people who need and deserve love and as usual, a ton of our adoption paperwork. The update is this: we received our date for fingerprinting from immigration, it is not until the end of April though. I was a little disappointed with the date b/c I was hoping for you know, yesterday for the fingerprinting but alas it is all in God's hands anyway. Will (BJ) called immigration early this week and they informed him not to expect to have an approval letter until mid-June. Once again, slightly disappointing b/c we all know what I was hoping for, yesterday. But, again it is all in God's hands, that is my mantra these days, over and over again, it is all in His hands. We are praying and believing that our paperwork will be assigned to the most efficient immigration case worker known to man and we will see our approval letter much sooner than mid June. So, please pray for this nameless, wonder of all wonders, our case worker who is going to turn out our approval letter like it is their job, because it is in fact their job and they are going to do it beautifully! Thanks for praying with us for this wonderful case worker. I am still cranking out paperwork all the time, right now as we wait for the immigration letter I am focused on grants. So, that is that with our new girls. The other excitement this week has to do with some adorable little people who we were blessed to spend time with. I blogged about them earlier this week, their family was in a tight spot and a woman from our church who is nothing short of a saint took this family of 5 into her home. We have cared for the two older boys off and on this week to give some relief to our friend. Last night I brought the two boys (2 and 1 years old) home with me from church and they spent the night here. After baths, medicine, bottles and the whole family praying for them and over them (during which the 1 year old kept trying to hit his brother and Gracie) they were off to bed. They slept beautifully, not a sound all night; however I woke up off and on and found myself praying for them. Early this morning I packed them up and went to pick up their mom and baby brother and then I dropped them all off with a wonderful ministry that provides families with a place to stay to help get back on their feet. Their mom will be provided with job training, preparation for her GED, WIC, etc and the boys will have a safe, clean environment to be in. It is run by a network of churches who open their churches up to allow the families to stay there with a host family in the evenings. Then they spend their days with the Family Promise ministry working on life skills. Wow!! It is an amazing ministry and I think we all need to prayerfully consider supporting these types of things with our time, energy, money and prayers. They are about the "business of their father" that is for sure. "That which you do unto the least of these you have done unto me." He is so clear about our obligation to care for the least of these around us, He provides no disclaimer or guidelines, He never says, "help them if they are clean and sober" or "if they have submitted a certain number of job applications" or "help them if they are deserving," He just says help them. No qualifications, no exceptions to the rule, just care for them. It is us who decide someone is not worthy of our help; by which we imply that we are worthy of the grace and mercy He showed us which we know is not true. So, why do we freely take God's gifts for us when we were not even slightly worthy of them but then withhold them from others b/c they are addicts, convicts, etc and therefore should be cast aside, left under a bridge or living in their car. Jesus never would have turned them away, NEVER. The Bible does not speak of drug addicts, convicts, dead beat dads, life long welfare recipients because that was not the terminology of their day; they used terms such as tax collector, sinners, women of questionable virtue and so on. But, the message is still the same, love them all; those of questionable values, those that our society considers unworthy of love, those that repeatedly choose a drug over their children, and the list goes on and on. Jesus' message is still the same, care for them as you would care for yourself. In fact, Jesus was so clear with this message that He revealed himself to be the Messiah to the woman at the well, do you know who the woman at the well was? A Samaritan and a woman who had been married 5 times and was living with a man who was not her husband at the time of her meeting with Jesus Christ. He did not turn his back on her, walk away, refuse to converse with her, instead He told her that He was in fact the Christ and offered her living water (John chapter 4.) He showed her unconditional love, her sins were not hidden from the world like we so often try to hide ours, no, all of society knew all about her. She was the one that all the other women gossipped about at church potlucks, at Bible studies, in the lunchroom. She is the one that we all want to believe that we are nothing like but in fact we are one in the same, sinners in the need of a Savior. And Jesus was just that for her, a Savior. While we were busy turning our back on her b/c she was of an unsavory character He was busy building a relationship with her. If we are being honest with ourselves then we must admit that we were all the "woman at the well" at one time in our lives and He came to us and ignored our ugly, overwhelming sins and extended all that He is to us. So now, we are cleaned up and playing the part of a good Christian and maybe, just maybe forget that we were that woman at the well and we turn our back on her. They do not look like us, act like us, talk like us, think like us, they often make horrible decisions that bring pain into others' lives; often times nothing about them seems right, the way they smell, the way they move, the way they speak or don't speak and that is exactly who Jesus was talking about. You all know what I mean, they make us uncomfortable, they make us hold onto our children and our wallets a little tighter but instead of turning away for them it is time to turn towards them. Take them out to lunch, speak to them, pray with them and you will find that they are the woman at the well, that they are in fact me, you, all of us before Christ came to us and extended us a cup of living water.