The Sun Still Shines

Yesterday I took Caroline, Camila, and Marta to the park for a few hours. Amazing what the girls can come up with when playing with their dolls...it was an overcast day...kind of how I was feeling. I tried to get into a good book and listen to one of my brother's sermons on Ruth...just kind of checked out...thinking about Isabel and Silas at home...wondering how their first day back at school went...I had 2 days of feeling the blues...Caroline has been very mellow since Isabel and Silas have left. It's just quiet, dinner is quiet, playtime is quiet...everything is quiet...I was looking forward to this...but, it was an unfamiliar feeling...for the first time, I longed to be home in the "chaos" of life...

And then today came...a wonderful day...the sun shining bright...I've been able to put home out of my mind, and key into Caroline and Marta...as much as Caroline wants to travel to MI, I know she is really enjoying this one on one time with me...especially when Marta is down for a nap. I am so happy that my 2 new daughters love to go on adventures. They don't care how far or long they are in the stroller, they love being outside, and are up to go anywhere! This is good...because I'm not one to just sit home everyday. I was able to soak it up today...getting a good walk in (trust me, I've been walking a lot...but, I think we have been eating more...the 3rd time around in Colombia and I LOVE their food (ok, except their hamburgesas), and still not sick of it)!!!

It's funny, I was thinking back to when we landed in the Bogota airport. With Isabel and Silas' adoptions, this experience was a bit overwhelming...3rd time around, although in a foreign land, I no longer feel like a foreigner (Ok, so, I still talk like a foreigner, and I definitely dress like a foreigner-lets just say, in general Colombian women are not the most modest of ladies). God has blessed me with wonderful friends here! I was taking it in today, the noise of the big city, the giggles from Caroline singing "La Mariposa" in the stroller, pushing the stroller down the"bumpy" sidewalks...I was trying to remember the things we've experienced on this venture...Navidad with Tia Isabel and Carmen, Girodot, John driving in crazy Bogota, Caroline's intense temper tantrums, Silas' panic attacks, the piojo saga...it all feels like a life time ago...but, what is so clear and fresh in my mind are the faces of the children, the battered, the sick, the "institutionalized"...that is fresh, so fresh in my mind, like I was just there...I pray they remain fresh when I return home, that I never forget...I have never experienced the presence of God like I did at the orphanage and in the barrios...and then it dawned on me...of course, not...it's because God was there, I could see Him in their faces...dwelling among the "least of these." And where God is, my heart wants to be...we are called to serve the least of these...yes we are!!! And I pray when we return home that I never forget, I don't want to get so comfortable in the "day to day" routine of life that I forget...Matt.25:40 "The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me." This is gospel!!

I continue to pray that we are here as long as God desires each of us to be (even if my time clock thinks differently), and if I need a day to be reminded of God's truth in my heart, and if Caroline and I need a few more "special talks" and moments, and Marta and I a few more laughs and discipline moments (she is a total stubborn stinker, I've never had a little one like her...into EVERYTHING...her favorite, the toilet, today, not only her hands her face and hair were wet...she's quick...it was so disgusting!!!)...then this is where I am suppossed to be. Our papers are with the judge (since Monday) waiting for our final decree...he is allowed 10 business days, but, I have a feeling it will not take that long, we are known to be in a good court...so we are on the final leg of the journey...