The Past Week

What a whirlwind the past week has been! Last Sunday morning, Ray woke up sick. Her symptoms mimicked her illness from a little over a month ago. You know the one that landed her in the hospital for 5 days?! Nothing hurt. Just a super high fever. I'm not even going to mention how high, lest some of you mothers might faint. Let's just say, that her doctor said that she gets the award for highest fever that he has seen this year....by over a degree. Yikes! Anyway, similar to before, no aches or pains, just a super high fever accompanied by just feeling awful, as you can imagine. This time, we pumped her as full of fluids as we possibly could from the get go, and luckily we narrowly missed hospitalization. Praise the Lord for that though, because she would have most likely still have been in the hospital on Christmas. The doctor confirmed that it was indeed another severe UTI. He set her up with an appointment with a pediatric urologist at Texas Children's Hospital, since no doctor around here will do the bladder test that she needs done, under sedation.

By Christmas Eve she was finally fever free, but still felt yucky. She is just now almost back to normal. Poor girl was sick.

And now little brother is sick. He got a snotty nose that progressed to a full blown cold. He now has fever and just looks plain terrible. I can tell the poor little guy feels rotten. Add to the equation the vote that was supposed to take place mid-week last week, and needless to say, I haven't gotten much sleep for over a week. Josh got up at about 7:30 this morning and took over sick baby duty, so that I could get a few hours of sleep. I slept like the dead for 3 hours straight. I could have slept until noon, but I was afraid at what I would find when I emerged from my bedroom.

The past week hasn't been all bad though. In fact, in spite of the sickness and stress of the vote, it has been a very good week. The good news about Daniel's country not voting to close, in itself, over shadowed any other problems that we were facing.

The vote news was not the only good news that we received this past week though. I don't know if you have taken a look at Daniel's grant through Reece's Rainbow lately, but it has grown ALOT in the past week. And when I say alot, I mean like, took an $11,000 jump! Yes, seriously, I do mean

E.L.E.V.E.N

T.H.O.U.S.A.N.D

D.O.L.L.A.R.S.

Josh and I spent a couple of days with our jaws on the ground and at a loss for words. We have trusted from the very beginning that God would provide funding for our adoption. He promised to provide, if we would just obey him and walk by faith in the direction he called us. Even though we believed that he would do it, it is only human nature to question him at times. I found myself praying things like, Uh, God. You know how you said you would provide and all? Well, we are getting closer and closer to traveling time and we are still about 20,000 dollars short. I'm just wondering when you were planning on provided that, because I'm kinda thinking sooner would be better than later.

Silly me, so quickly forgets how he has been faithful to provided for every single step of our journey thus far. Why in the world would he stop providing now? Oh, me of little faith. In a matter of just a couple of days, the amount of funds we needed was more than slashed in half. We are right at $8000 dollars away from what we need for our adoption to be completely funded. Josh and I continue to marvel at all that God has done in our lives in just over two months since we commited to adopt Daniel. We've lived a lifetime, and it's been amazing. It hasn't always been easy, but I wouldn't trade this journey for anything in the world. We have been able to sit back and just watch God's hand at work in our lives. That, my friends, is priceless. To know that we are in the center of God's will for our lives, and that he is using us for his good pleasure, does not hold a candle to any other victory that I have accomplished on my own.

I want to thank all of you who have chosen to be a part of this journey with us, either through donations, prayer, encourgement, or some other form of support. It has been overwhelming to see God's people rally together. I LOVE how God has used each and every one of you in your own unique way. This is not just our journey and our story. For each of you who have joined with us in your own way, this is now your story too. God has used you to fulfill his command to care for orphans. We just can't thank you enough.

Ok, I'm going to run before I start getting emotional. Hopefully, I will get a chance to post some Christmas pictures soon.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart to those of you who prayed so fervently about the vote. God has heard our prayers and is acting on the behalf of those little ones!! Thank you, Lord!!