Bridget

We were told last month that Bridget would be going to Rafiki Village.  Rafiki Village is a US run orphanage whose goal is to have 10 villages in 10 African countries.  They have a village here in Mzuzu that is a beautiful complex on about 80 acres of land.  It is a mix of American and African living.  They have a number of small houses where a “mama” and her 8-9 children live.  On the property there is also a school, a clinic, a vocational school for older girls and housing for the staff.  Their goal is to take Malawian orphans, raise them and educate them so they can return to their country as “leaders” and make a difference.  We became very well acquainted with them because they offered their guest house to our family after our robbery and were a huge blessing to us during that difficult time. 

It sounds like a wonderful place for an orphan to go doesn’t it?  After all, only a small percentage of the orphans here will be given the opportunities that Rafiki allows them.  There’s only one problem—we love Bridget and even though Rafiki is wonderful it is still an orphanage and not a family.  We have been struggling with the decision of adopting Bridget.  As you know we are quite a large family already and we, the parents, aren’t getting any younger.  The turning point was when the social welfare officer told Lisa that no one would be willing to adopt Bridget so she “had” to go to Rafiki.  It’s as if the Lord said, “Yes, there is someone and it’s your family.”  We may be old and we may be tired but we are a family and apparently God wants Bridget to be a part of our family. 

Now you can all finally nod your heads knowingly and admit that we are truly crazy!  Actually we are only trying to do what God calls us to do.  If we only did what we thought we could do then we would not be able to see God work in us when we have no strength—“when I am weak HE is strong.”  Being here in Malawi has shown us just how weak we are but how mighty our God is. 

The next step is to begin the adoption process which requires a home study by the social welfare officer.  The law here states that before an adoption is final the family must foster the child for “up to 18 months.”  Since we have had Bridget with us for 5 ½ months we don’t know how long we will have to wait until the adoption is final.  Please pray for the process to move smoothly.

A final comment—people have told us that we can’t adopt the world and asked when we are going to stop adopting children.  I don’t believe that God is asking us to adopt the world but he has asked us to adopt the children that we have.  He only lays on our hearts those that he wants to be in our family.  How can we deny a child the right to be in our family, imperfect as it is, if that is where God wants him or her to be?  We would be missing out on the perfect plan of God.  How many times have you told God “no” when he asks you to do something because it seems too hard?  If you have, God still loves you but you are missing out on his perfect will for you. 

 

Andy & Lisa

 

Blessings

Today was a sad day for us.  Blessings, who is 14 months old is at the point we need to find a permanent solution to his care.  His mother is blind and made her living by begging in town.  When he was first brought here, she pushed him away like she never wanted to have him around again.  She has now been accepted into a school for the blind, and of course can’t care for a child during that time.  We were hoping she would allow him to be adopted, since she said it was fine for him to stay with us until he was grown.  Today we met with her at the Social Welfare office and she said she didn’t want him to go to another family, for adoption or foster care; an institution (orphanage) would be fine, just not a family.  Of course we find that very strange, but upon further thought things start to come into focus.  If the child goes to an institution, the parent(s) is relieved of the burden of raising them, but when they get out they will still seek out their original family.  Then they can contribute to the wellbeing of the parent.  If they went to another family, they would become part of that family and not return.  So it all boils down to economics and what’s best for you (the parent), not what’s best for the child.  So the bottom line was that there is an aunt that lives about 30 miles away and the mom will take Blessings and drop him on the aunt, who will be obliged to care for him since he is part of the family.  Now imagine what kind of care that will be.  If it weren’t for the knowledge that God is sovereign and over all things we would be very concerned.  We loved and cared for Blessings for 4 months because it is part of God’s plan for his life and we may never know this side of heaven how that plan turned out but we can trust God for it.

 

Andy

 

The Rat

            A couple days ago when my mom went to do the laundry in our pantry/laundry room, what should run across the floor but the biggest rat I’ve ever seen!  Since Jared and I are the rat exterminators around here, we were sent to exterminate the rat. When we arrived on the case, our mom told us that she thought the rat went under the washer.  With that information, I knelt on the floor as Jared lifted the washer so that I could see our ugly furry friend and hopefully “destroy” it with our “all purpose” broom.  Well, I saw it all right and it was the largest and ugliest rat I had ever seen in my life (no kidding).  When I took my eyes off of him for just a second to prepare for the battle with my deadly weapon, he disappeared!  We figured he had gone up in the washer so we tried shaking him out with no avail.  Sorry to say, we had to surrender to the rat, but before totally “surrendering”, I sprinkled some rat poison around the washer so that there was still a chance of winning this battle.

            The next morning, I decided to check the washer again for the mouse and discovered that all of the rat poison I had sprinkled around the washer was gone.  Victory!  The only problem was that the rat was nowhere to be seen.  Sooner or later I was sure that someone would find it do to the smell.  It always seems to be easy to find dead things because they stink very badly.

            A couple days afterwards, Mom noticed that Sarah and Alina’s room had a peculiar smell.  She didn’t think anything of it because this was on the other side of the house from the pantry.  At least she didn’t think anything of it until the next day when maggots started falling out of the ceiling of their bathroom which is just next door.

            Once again the rat exterminators were sent to look in the attic for whatever was causing the awful smell and the maggots.  We prepared ourselves with a plastic bag, Doom (bug poison), and flashlights.  After climbing into the ceiling, we worked our way toward the area in which the awful smell and maggots had come from.  The awful stench was getting pretty strong now (we forgot to bring gasmasks).  Since we knew we were quite close to the spot where the dead “thing” was, we started shining our flashlights around looking for the odor-generating substance.  Then we saw what looked like a lizard’s tail resting on a rafter with maggots and ants all over it.  Upon closer examination, it appeared to be the rat in which we had been after for the past few days.  It was a pretty awful sight since it was about half rotten and smelled that bad.  Well, Jared decided to be the one to grab the rat and put it in the bag (I forgot to tell you that we did bring gloves).  After spraying the area well with Doom we made a quick evacuation out of there and onto the welcoming arms of the family.  Whew, what an experience!  

 

Kris