Trust and service

Never did I imagine, that I would have the opportunity to travel 1/2 way around the world, work with an amazing group of people who selflessly devote their time to save the lives of thousands of orphaned children in a country so affected by HIV/AIDS.  Last June, I spend 2 weeks doing work that would forever change my perspective on humanity and what the world around me is supposed to look like.  

June 2013 will be my 2nd opportunity to travel to Zimbabwe and work with ZOE, Zimbabwean Orphan Empowerment Program, to distribute goats, chickens, rabbits, sheep and now pigs to children who will be able to build micro businesses and also feed themselves and their families.  

Tanya, the director of AFCA, mentioned she was returning to Zim to follow up on the progress of the last year, and immediately my heart was saying "go".  I managed to talk my husband into being OK with it.  As I got more excited about going back, problems arouse with funding my training.  I hesitated to book my trip, disheartened that the money wasn't going to be there for me to go.  Tanya, with her amazing faith, told me to go on faith and book the trip.  So I paid for the ticket and prayed.  I was told that ZOE would need about 1700.00 to fund the trainings that I would be going on, so now I had a goal.  

I started raising small amounts through my photography, believing that God would provide.  Again, how small my faith.  Tanya applied for funding through a program called Spark Change for Youth.  It was a voting contest for your favorite charity, the winners then were able to get a matching donation from Microsoft up to 100,000.  AFCA won enough votes to participating in the matching funds.   Once the donations were able to be accepted, it was just a matter of hours and all 100,000 was matched.  AFCA had raised enough money to fund not only my training, but several other projects.  And to top things off, Microsoft added another 100,000 to be matched .  Tanya posted a plea on Facebook that AFCA needed only 1000.00 to be the top recipient and would receive a bonus for raising the most money. Again, God is faithful and a donor pledged 1000.00.  All in all, AFCA earned 60,000 for the projects they support through Central and Southern Africa.  Thousands of children and families will benefit from the generosity of so many and Microsoft's matching donations.  

So in just a few months, again, I will have the amazing opportunity to see the hand of God at work in Zimbabwe and work to do a small part in being the hands and feet of Jesus.  

TIME....where does it go?

I am pathetic at the blog thing.  What the world?  Time goes by so fast, before you know it, winter is over, spring is on its way.  Weeds are already popping up in the flower beds... Whats up with that?  Seems like we just had Christmas!  And when I look at my blog it was just Christmas!    Time flies, kids grow, wrinkles appear overnight.  Lucky for me my oldest daughter is a hair stylist and keeps me from looking old AND gray.

7 years. 7 years, WOW.  That is how long ago it was that God impressed on my husband's heart that our family wasn't complete.  I, on the other hand, had known that for some time  (lest I say years...)  but he wasn't on board until I released my grip on what I wanted and turned it over to God to show me what He wanted.  And viola... we were on our way to foster care training, CPR training, homestudy, interviews, child proofing our home, etc. We prepared ourselves for a 3-4 yr old little girl, being that we had all girls home at the time and knew we couldn't have older boys for lack of space...Little did we know that God had already chosen our children and had everything under control.  6 months passed until we got our approval letter, stating we were an approved foster care home, noon on a thrusday afternoon.

2pm the phone rang and on the other end our placement coordinator called asking me if we would accept  5 and 1/2 month old twin!  I laugh out loud in disbelief at how small my faith really was.   By 6pm our family had grown from 7 to 9.   Did you catch that?  We began our foster care journey 6 months before we got the call to add the twins to our family, 5 1/2 month old twins.  Timing is everything.  God's timing is EVERYTHING.   He knew the children that would join our family, he was putting in place what needed to be done, at just the right time, for just the right purpose.  9 months later on 7/7/07, our youngest was born, soon to join  her older siblings and too become a part of our forever family.  1 year and 11 months. all 3 were adopted.  We are now a family of 10 plus a son in law and 2 beautiful grandchildren.

Time...goes so quickly.  But if we commit our time to the Lord, trust His will in our life, we hopefully surrender to His timing