TALK ABOUT THRILL RIDES . . .

FROM THE SUMMIT TO THE VALLEY . . .AND BACK

 

Ever had your heart go from being crazy excited to completely broken and then back to restored hope and excitement in the span of about three days?  That’s where we’ve been this week.  

As many of you know we have been excitedly preparing for Alina to come and spend 5 weeks with us this summer and all seemed to be going well until we found out that she broke some rules that caused her to lose too many points (their system for determining privileges in the orphanage) to be allowed to come.  The good news is that Alina is safe and that she is back on track – our hearts long to meet her and to have the opportunity to show her the love of Christ through a family that will receive and support her.  Needless to say that news was devastating – many tears and some really difficult feelings were expressed.  Emma said to us that “we just didn’t pray enough” and Eliza remarked that her “heart was broken into a million crumbs.”  We have been reeling from this series of events!

We went from the summit of that mountain to the valley below in the course of one phone call. 

Then what came next was totally unexpected and somewhat confusing.  New Horizons for Children told us of another little girl who had been hosted last summer with her brother, that was longing for an opportunity to return this year.  Her name is Elizaveta (we aren’t sure exactly how to say it).  She is 10 years old and while it wasn’t our initial plan, we are welcoming this new opportunity to love this sweet girl and we are once again heading to the summit!  We'll post her picture ASAP.

NEXT STEPS

First we need you to pray!  Pray that Alina will continue to walk in obedience to the rules of the orphanage system and that even now she will encounter someone who can show her the love of Christ in a tangible way!  Pray that Elizaveta will have an open heart and will be just as excited to come as we are to have her be with us.  Pray that all of the final planning and adjustments go smoothly – government paperwork, airlines, and other stuff needs to happen quickly. 

Second, we have been given a matching gift of up to $1,000.  That means that for every dollar you give we get two dollars toward our hosting fees!  We need to do this in the next ten days.  That’s an average of $100 per day and we are simply trusting that God will lead some of you to give in order to meet this goal.  All gifts given through the link on this blog are tax deductible so please use the link above and go to our active.com site and follow the prompts (we know it has Alina’s name, but it’s too late to change that part).  If you’d prefer to write a check you can do that too, just contact us (email, phone, Facebook, Twitter, skywriting, carrier pigeon, etc.) and we can tell you how to make sure we get the credit for the matching gift and hosting fees.

Finally, we have several items that we will be trying to send back with Elizaveta when she returns to Latvia.  More on that later – we’ll post an update or two this weekend.

Thanks for checking in!

Frank and Gina