Day 5: another level

I thought I was going to take a break from blogging tonight – I really did. A morning in Korah, an afternoon of rest and relaxation to build team unity and gear up for the rest of the week…not much to see here, right? Wrong.

Did I say God changed our plans yesterday? Ha! It turns out that it was only a glimpse. Well, a glimpse and a foreshadowing of what he had in mind for today. It was at a whole new level.

Background: one thing I didn’t mention yesterday was that Mark and Melissa’s sponsored child had been hard to find for the first two days, and we were getting a little discouraged about getting their home visit in. As we should have expected, it was all God’s timing. Our friend Denae located him shortly before we were ready to leave for the day yesterday, and so we planned to visit this morning.

We planned to do that, but what we didn’t plan for was to pull into the community and see a huge dump truck tipped over to the right, with a bunch of cement mix spilled out! It was right in our path and right near our meeting area, so it was not safe to have kids around it. And we had to face it – we’re kid magnets. So the audible for this morning was to concentrate on the home visit and then get out of the way while the staff worked on clearing it all up.

Fortunately, we were scheduled for a free afternoon so after the visit we could go back to the plan – lunch, a travel-related errand, some souvenir shopping, and then back for dinner.

The home visit was an awesome experience, as it always is. I think that half hour may have been worth the trip over here all by itself. 

As we darted around Addis seeing the city this afternoon, we had some great conversations with our guide and translator Luam. She has been awesome and, as Melissa pointed out later, she probably doesn’t even realize how important her job is to the Kingdom work going on here. And then tonight, we had a great time of worship, discussion, prayer, and fun as a team. Another great day!

“Great” is inadequate. We could see God’s sovereignty playing out as it has all week, beginning with our flight challenges. How? If we had found Lingeru earlier in the week, we would have visited him yesterday and been left with an empty morning today – the timing was perfect. Also we ran a little behind getting to Korah this morning, a fact that helped make sure there were fewer children around when the dump truck tipped. It seems obvious to me that everything about this week has been carefully orchestrated by the Father. We have a team with a perfect blend of talents, gifts and personalities for this unique week in the summer program here.

I’m not sure when I’ve ever seen God’s hand intervening in such easy-to-see ways. But it is awesome, and I am grateful.