Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Reflections on the Promise

Our family is together again in Chattanooga TN (actually Ringgold Ga but close enough). Ian and I enjoyed our cross country trip and he is quite a good traveling companion.

I have been reflecting on my relationship to Christ and, during this Christmas season, his coming to earth and several thoughts are swirling in my brain.

#1. Would I recognize him today? A mute point I guess since he has come and gone, but imagine a hick coming from West Va to DC or NY and saying what Jesus said, or maybe from south Alabama coming to Atlanta and doing the same. What would I think of him and his sayings. Wendell Berry has a nice essay about Jesus and his sayings and I think his point is well taken when he says that we are so used to the idea of Jesus as Christ that it is hard for us to actually hear his words. I spiritualize, I rationalize and I run the danger of being inoculated against the power of his words.

#2. Is my relationship with God more important than his promises to me? This came up as I was reading the Heb 11: 17-19 account of Abraham sacrificing Isaac. Abraham's faith journey involved a lot of waiting and then every now and then a zinger from God like this one. What am I willing to surrender to God for our relationship. This also ties in to thought #1 when you consider Lk 12:49-53.

Both of these tie in to my mulling over our plans falling through with language study. I trust all will have a good Christmas.

We will continue to keep you up to date

Stephen

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Plans Changing

You may be wondering what are the next steps for us now that we are not making it to the language school in Quebec this January so this is the 411.

The immediate plans are to spend the holidays with our families scattered from Ringgold GA to Lewisport KY to Dice KY. These form an almost equidistant triangle in the Southeast. There may be some opportunities for us to speak there as well but we are not sure yet.

We will then return here and I will continue to work at the Blackfeet Community Hospital. We will then resume a lot of the activities we were involved in before we tried to relocate and will add hopefully a French tutor to help us out.

We will also finalize (hopefully soon) the adoption of Kathleen and shore up her documents (passports, legal guardianship etc). What we need to do for that is to finish a home-study by a social worker and pass a background check......

We do appreciate everyone's prayers over the past several days and especially the past 72 hrs. I must confess that it was quite the emotional and physical drain on Anna and I.

To put it all in perspective we again are relying on God's perfect will. Whether or not this delay was an attack by Satan on our plans, a gentle "lets wait a bit" from God, just the result of our decisions and actions, or some combination of the above matters little at this point and our response is to model Joseph and David. Joseph's statement to his bro's in Genesis 50:20 where he states "You meant it for evil but God meant it for good" reminds us that God is sovereign and can handle both Satan's attacks and our incompetence. And David's response to God allowing his child to die in 2 Sam 12:20. We learn David got up and worshiped God....He also ate and bathed but we were doing that already...

So like Paul we will forget those things behind and reach forward to the things which are ahead and press toward the goal of the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (phil 3:13,14).

Thanks again for your prayers

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Perseverance

For you have need of perseverance, so that after you have done the Will of God you may receive the promise Heb 10:36.

The adoption is not going to go through by the time we need to be in Quebec and even though the school officials were willing to give us a week's delay it does not look like that will be enough time.

Therefore we are going to stay in Browning a little while longer. While we were mullling this over today our children watched Veggietales "Sumo of the Opera" and the Heb vs was the vs for the lesson. Neat uh?

So why were we pressing so hard in the first place?
#1. We have looked forward to going overseas for so long that we are aching to get there and delays are well delays
#2. The physician there in Impfondo desperately wants a pediatrician and needs a pediatrician to help him out at the hospital
#3. There is more medical work than any one person can do there
#4.We did not until recently get a sense from God that He wanted us to stop.
#5. We were expecting God to clear a path so dramatically that we would know that God and only God put us in Quebec.

And there you have it.
On the plus side we do still have a job here, and we will have opportunities to build bridges with other churches here and continue working with the Blackfeet at the hospital here.
We are even looking into some French language tutoring opportunities here.

Continue to pray with us and persevere in that regard.
We c0vet your prayers.

Saturday, December 8, 2007

Jumpin Jehoshaphat

Yet another follow up.
Anna and I keep coming back to the 2Chron passage where "we do not know what to do but our eyes are on you" and that gives us some comfort, of course as a kid I never wanted to be Jehoshaphat.

First I must say we are encouraged by several people emailing back and sharing anecdotes of their own forays into faithful walking. We appreciate them all, and are actually humbled by them. To put their stories together with those who walked by faith in the Bible causes me to see flashes of God's tapestry and it is awesome.

Anna talked to an adoption specialist today and there is a glimmer of hope that we can get something done by the first of the year and still make it to Quebec. Small slimmer.

Step one: we need a home visit and background check. We started the latter about 3mos ago actually because at the time we were looking at doing foster work here. I talked to a Dept of Family Services lady today and all we need are fingerprints and that is done. Now we need a social worker to inspect our home. This is a little funny because the state of our home is horrendous. So for step one we need the home visit to be done.

Step two: we need to find a judge to who will hold a special session after the 17th so we can have an adoption proceeding.

Step three: beg parole de vie to let us in a wee bit late.

Three steps. Easy.

In response to this, we are postponing the truck moving day and will wait and see if we can get a home visit from someone soon. The two organizations who routinely do this are backlogged and are not really a viable option.

If we don't get a social worker to meet with us this week, we probably will not be able to make it to the language school this winter and we will stay on in Browning and search for alternate ways of language study.

Surprisingly enough we are coming to a place of peace with this and are along for the ride. I never thought the rollercoaster was starting so soon.

Thursday, December 6, 2007

Which Bible Character would you prefer to be?

The update.
First of all I must say it is ironic how much we have been talking to lawyers lately. Given my vast repertoire of lawyer jokes I have to appreciate how much I am looking to them for guidance right now.

The immigration lawyer today made our choices sound grim regarding Kathleen. He said we could maybe get by with a power of attorney type of thing but we could also be detained at the border and worse Kathleen could be put in foster care while they sort things out!! This is not good.

So we got a name of another immigration lawyer who is a friend a daughter of one the docs who work at the hospital. We call him tomorrow.

I also talked to another lawyer tonight who is the ex-wife of another colleague (It turns out the world is inundated with these little suckers). She unlike our original consultation think we can get the adoption done in MT and that we should involve the mom of the child ASAP. The bio daddy has resisted this in the past saying he is not sure where she lives. I did a google search tonight and found her......or someone who lives in the same town she does and has the same name.......

So anyway more facts for the next step......
Tomorrow we call the immigration lawyer. I think the bottom line is that we are going to have to have legal custody of Kathleen before we can get across to Canada, but we will see.
We will also call another lawyer (do you know how hard it is even now to not make lawyer jokes?) who is the local authority (ie the person we should have gone to first) and see if she can work out something. This may involve starting the adoption proceedings and then filing for temporary custody Kathleen based on her not having a place to live and being able to keep her that way, or an out and out adoption.

To top it all off Wayne J, the Parole De Vie site administrator emailed us tonight to let us know that the apt we thought we 'd scored we did not.

So do our circumstances determine God's will or does Gods will in our life determine how we respond to our circumstances?

Anna and I are sure that God wants us to be missionaries, we are pretty sure He wants us at Parole de Vie this winter and He is the one who place Kathleen into our laps, and now we pray and go from there.

I could pretend we are Nehemiah and as in 4:9 of that book pray and prepare to fight.

We could pretend we are Gideon watching God whittle our forces (ie time) down so that we know that it could be only Him who made it happen that we end up in Quebec.

We could pretend we are Jonathan and his armorbearer in 1Sam 14 who attack a garrison on the premise that God's work does not depend on earthly numbers.

We could pretend we are Abraham and God is watching us fail in trying to fulfill his promise to us.

I certainly hope we are not Balaam mounting his donkey against God's wishes......and we have searched our hearts to make sure that is not the case.

The point I guess is that on each of the above's journey of faith they didn't know at the time either.

I am confident that God will place us where He wants us in His time.

Please continue to pray Col 1:9-11 for us.
thanks

There is no time to explain...let me sum up

Those words were uttered by Inigo Montoya as he pleads with the Man-in Black to help him exact revenge on his "father murdered these twenty years" and they also kickstart the final sequence of the Princess Bride. A very good movie with a lot of quotable lines and advice.

Tonight for me though these words are an introduction to asking you to labor in prayer for us tomorrow at 3pm eastern and 1pm mst.

You see, there is no time to explain...let me sum up.......We are trying to adopt a 4 yo child, the mom is mia, and the dad asked us if we would adopt. The necessary steps will not be completed by our Canada due date and there is a great deal of uncertainty as to whether we can legally take her across the border. As a family (ie Anna and I) we are extremely reluctant to split our family up if we cannot take her across.

If we can't we don't do school this semester which pushes back language training and our arrival in the Republic of Congo.

Therefore join with us in praying that we may be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all wisdom and understanding and that we would walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might according to His glorious power.......

pretty cool prayer uh? Well Paul prayed it first in Col 1:9-11, but if you can't remember to pray all of it that first part about the knowledge of God's will would be nice.

thanks

Saturday, December 1, 2007

Roller Coaster


This picture illustrates our feelings right now. A little bit anxious, excited and we are trying to decide whether or not to just put our hands up in the air or hold on tight; whether or not scream or go silent; and where we wish we maybe hadn't eaten the funnel cake and the cotton candy just before getting in line for the ride.....Well you get the picture

We are gearing up for the move to Canada. We don't have the papers in hand but based on our contact at Parole de Vie at this point we can plan on it being granted.

We have also tentatively secured an apt in Sherbrooke QC and are in the process of securing that.
We still have a lot up in the air like not knowing where the younger kids will stay while we are learning French or whether or not I can do some locum tenems work across the border or what the exact legal documents we need to get Kathleen across the border with us.

In the next few weeks we will pack and leave for Ky. Anna, Isabelle, Caleb and Kathleen will fly to Anna's family, Ian and I will roadtrip it. I will quit my job next week. We will load up a truck 2wks from now and will unload it in Ky. Then about 10days later we will load about 1/2 of the stuff one more time to go to the Canadian border. We want to make it there around the 2nd of Jan. But before that we have 4 speaking opportunities in 2 churches (our home church tomorrow and a church in Kalispell Mt next week).

So no sweat right?

One of the good things about the roller coaster is that the riders aren't in control of where the ride takes them. They just need to enjoy it. Same thing here I think, God is in control He knows every twist and turn and unlike man made roller coasters this ride won't give us whiplash, or go off the tracks. All we need is to go with the ride.

Thanks again for praying and helping us enjoy this ride