Child Sponsorship Matters!

Yesterday was an epic day for our church! In the span of about 3 hours, 1104 children were sponsored through World Vision in Nkhoma, Malawi!!! Yes, read that again. Slowly. Outloud. Let that sink in. It's unreal.
We've made a 10-15 year commitment to Malawi through doing sustainable development in Nkhoma, a community in Malawi. We are doing this through a ground breaking partnership with World Vision and Y-Malawi. I couldn't recommend these 2 organizations more!

Here are some highlights to move you to worship…

▪ Countless people took 3, 4, 5 kids to sponsor – one for every member of their family or matching the birth dates of their biological children or adding to their existing partnership with World Vision.

▪ We had 3 separate individuals say they were going to sponsor 100 kids – that’s $3500/month!!!! Unreal.

▪ Last night I was talking to a young adult at dinner who had never considered sponsoring a child. He sponsored one child yesterday.

▪ Others [like Brian & I] decided before yesterday they were sponsoring “enough” children already, but were moved into action to sponsor another one. Actually, some of our friends were one of those families, and ended up sponsoring 3 more kids – they had their kids pick them out.

▪ James Sanchez, our World Vision Rep, said in 18 years of doing this he’s NEVER seen a community respond like this.

▪ Two college girls sponsored a child together. It was so amazing to watch them choose a child together and fill out the packet together. They were all smiles.

The stories are endless. I literally had envelopes thrust into my hands by the handful. I could hardly keep up. I can only imagine where this goes from here. Newsong’s heart has been captured by Africa!!!! Personally, it’s a dream come true. A prayer 5 years in the making coming true! The best is yet to come…

I love our church – our people – more than ever. What an example of what the church is called to do and be - caring for widows and orphans. Today is a day to be celebrated. What’s next!?!?!

In 2 weeks, we are doing another sponsorship drive and we're going to try to get another couple hundred sponsored. Child sponsorship matters. Poverty isn't a statistic; it's personal (Rich Stearns). And for 1104 children, their lives were changed yesterday. And our lives were changed, as well. Nkhoma has more hope than ever before!

God Found Us You

Last week has come and gone, and a referral wasn't a part of last week. Yet it is well in our soul. We believe in ever-deepening ways that God's in control of our adoption. It sounds silly to say because it's so obvious, but it resonates more and more within us...actually mainly me. Brian has an uncanny ability to trust God more with this than I do, believing in God's perfect timing. It's annoying to this wife of little faith, but comforting to that my man has that posture.

Last week, one of my dearest friends gave us this book, God Found Us You. She wanted to give it to me for Mother's Day, but she couldn't wait. Erin gets our process in ways that we so desperately need. It was a gift last week because we know that God's in process of "finding" our babies.

Thank you for your prayers and fasting last week! We have to believe that while nothing happened last week in terms of our referral, God's doing something to connect our 2 children to us. Last week we were bombarded with emails, conversations, and confirmations that God's not only growing our hearts for our kids, but he's growing our communities hearts for our kids. When that day comes, our babies will be bombarded with kisses and love. For that - and so much else - we are grateful.

Also, tomorrow marks 6 months that we've been on the wait list. Who knew it would take this long? But grace has sustained us this far, and will sustain us today.

Prayer Request

Dear Blog Friends and Followers,

I wanted to give you an update on our adoption and some potential really good news for us. As you know, we were told recently that our adoption would now require 2 trips to Ethiopia – the 1^st trip to approve our adoption in court and the 2^nd trip for the US Embassy paperwork and bring them home. This would be hard on a number of obvious levels. Yet we obviously haven’t signed up for our adoption because it’s easy or predictable. We’ve been doing our best to trust God in the process, knowing he knows best for our kiddos and us.

But we got an email from our case manager Friday that explained that families who’ve already received a referral and had medical documents and paperwork submitted to the courts before May 9^th would be exempt from the new 2 trip policy. So I asked our case manager if we got our referral this week if there would be any chance that we could escape the 2 trip requirements. She just emailed me back this morning and said,

“There's only a very slim chance that if a referral came this week, it would be ready to submit before the deadline. We serve a mighty God and He can do anything He so desires, so bring it before the throne and lay it at His feet. It would be something extraordinary for a case to proceed that quickly. Keep it in prayer.”

I think it’s worth keeping in prayer!! I’m going to fast a couple times this week about this request and wanted to ask if you would join us in fasting and prayer? In my mom’s words, “this whole 2 trip thing has never sat right with me and I’ve prayed more about this than most other requests.” Call it mother’s intuition or last nights’ dinner, but all of this doesn’t feel like something to be taken lightly.

At the same time, I really am trusting God with this one. I’m sacrificing my time lines and agendas on the altar so God can do his thing and get all the glory.