39 Years, 50 1/2 Weeks To Go

Abby and I have had a ton of joy playing with the kids. They smile a lot and are ticklish and tackle each other (Silas uses the Sumo approach, but Mercy usually wins). When they laugh, cuddle, and smile I often think about how my family and friends back home will love meet them and how their lives will be filled with so many more smiles as they are held and kissed in the days and years to come. We are so so so thankful God put them in our family, even though I'm still getting used to wiping the foulest smelling butterscotch and pistachio pudding off their rear ends at all hours of the night.

That's the fun side of our trip.

The other side is one of waiting and waiting and waiting. On one hand, I know the end will come. We'll go home eventually and this will all be in the past and it's all good. But on the other hand, it's easy to get discouraged or ticked off when paperwork is promised to be done and then it turns out to not get done. So we wait here largely confined to the guest house. It's not hostile or super unsafe in the streets, but it's not Mr. Roger's neighborhood either. It's not really the best idea just to meander around in the streets because we stick out so much and people come up and try to ask us about them in French of Lingala--and I just say "ING-LISH", and they laugh.

Thus, we're kinda stuck here, just hanging out.

So today I thought about Israel. I was eating Ramen noodles for the second time today and it occurred to me that the Israelites waited 40 years and ate the same stuff as they awaited to go home to the promised land. It's really hard for me not to complain. Even at times when complaining isn't coming out of my mouth, it's definitely going on in my head. I'm pretty sure that if I was an Israelite, I would have been struck down in the wilderness. I think I would have been in the first batch to get struck down. I'm about 39 years and 50 1/2 weeks short of the Israelties, and here I am with my "Woe is me" attitude.

Home is a great place, and I long to be there and by the grace of God we'll be home soon. I can't wait to see that other little girl of ours and for her to meet her brother and sister! But for now, we must wait.

We did get to leave the guest house for a bit today to go to an orphanage called Georgette's. There were thirty or so kids there and we got to give them some gifts and play games with them. It was a highlight for us. A sweet woman who was in charge welcomed us and we prayed together and the kids sang, and then we enjoyed playing checkers, legos, soccer, and catch with them. We looked around the orphanage and saw that they have some major needs. The word "orphanage" it may conjure up an image of a big building with lots of little dorm rooms, but this was more like a 6-7 room concrete block building, with rebar across open-air windows, concrete floors, block and mortar walls, and just a few bunk beds crammed into a few rooms. One room had colorful paint, and there were two tiled bathrooms, but there's no running water. We hope to use some of the money that some of the folks from church have donated to meet some of their needs.

That's all for now, time to try to sneak into bed without waking up the kiddos next to me---so far I'm about 0 for 10!

Andy