An update

I know many of you are ready for an update…thank you for your patience…it has been a busy day…Just as promised, our lawyer Maurice came directly to our house after leaving the court this morning. He informed us that the courts are still in negotiations and that until things are settled, they are working on Mondays and Fridays. Today, Maurice turned in our request for legal guardianship of Lael. He anticipates these papers being ready sometime on Monday. Sometime next week we should hopefully be receiving the date for our final hearing legalizing our adoption of Lael. He said that he anticipates the final hearing sometime the first of March. We are praying that it will be sometime before the end of February so that my sister Becky will be here to celebrate with us. We will keep you informed as more details become known! Thank you for your prayers. This is progress! God is working in the details!

Becky and Payton (my 4 year old nephew) will be arriving here for 10 days, 2 weeks from Sunday!!! We are all so excited! I can’t wait to hear Payton express his thoughts about being in Benin…I cannot imagine what he imagines this place to be. He has heard of it for so long, and he always knows that Benin is where we disappear too after our intense quality time visits to America! He and Timo are great friends! When we talk about Payton coming with Timo, he says “I just can’t beweeve it!” And I can't believe that I am going to have 10 days with my sister! This will be such a great time!!!!!

Our water supply is very low. Laurance told me that she heard on the television that the electric and water company are having a new generator installed in Cotonou and that we will have these shortages of power until the 16th of this month when the installation is complete. This is different than last fall because they are not turning the water on at all and the power is off most of the time. In this region the water is powered by the electricity…we can not have one without the other. Because we have a generator we are able to power our house most of the time. However, we can do nothing about the water situation. We are going to have to get real creative about how we obtain and use water.

Yesterday afternoon I got to talk on the phone to 2 of my very best friends…I cannot tell you what a burst of positive energy this provided for the rest of my day! I have still been soaking up the conversation even today…and I think they mostly just listened to me! What a blessing friendships are! God has placed in my life such dear precious friends and I am so thankful!!!

This week Randy has been working through the book of John with the village of Aflantan. They started Sunday night and they finish tonight! It has gone very well and he has been very encouraged. I know he will share more about this in a future post.

Just in case any of you think that our house is calm and quiet and that things are always in perfect order….they are not! I wish all of the pictures that we post could include sound! Our house is LOUD…sometimes I can hardly hear myself think. Most of the time every one is laughing and having a good time. Our kids are ages 8, 3, 2, and 1. Lately, there seems to be constant discipline taking place, reminders about staying on your bed, not throwing things in the house or at each other, talks about being kind and how important it is to help take care of each other and why we need to care when we hurt someone and the list goes on and on. Parenting never stops…it is exhausting, inconvenient, rewarding and fulfilling! I am so thankful for the precious 4 that have been entrusted to us. They are such a source of JOY to us every day!

I mention all of this because I was thinking about tonight at the dinner table and how crazy the noise seemed to be. Randy and I were trying to have a conversation and we realized that between our kids talking and the generator running, we were practically shouting at each other. I stood up to go and get something and felt something hit me in the back of the neck. Maybe Jonathan had been trying to get my attention and this was his last ditch effort…what hit me in the neck was his spoon that was full of guacamole. I was so stunned that I didn’t know if I was supposed to be mad or be laughing. I looked at Randy and decided in that moment it was best to laugh! He already was!

This makes me laugh out loud even now!