A butterfly flapping it's wings in South America can effect the weather in Central Park

Image from Trey Ratliff - stuckincustoms.com

We received a great update today regarding Xiao! Apparently one of the larger adoption agencies who works a ton with China has a family matched with Xiao. We received a call today from our agency with the news.

It was presented to us as a "not so good" update. We however are totally stoked! Our intent was to advocate on this little boys behalf, share his story with others, bring awareness to HIV+ babies in China, and get people praying for him. Us becoming the forever family for him was really way down on the list. So as I look over the reasons why we blogged about him and shared his story, I can say, check, check, check, praise God! 

I think we often feel like if we aren't the ones to resolve an issue or step up and simply just do it ourselves it won't get done. I think this discounts what God is doing with his flock and our role within His larger community. I have no way of knowing if anything we did had anything to do with Xiao getting matched with a family, but that doesn't hamper my enthusiasm for what God is doing and what the power of prayer may have done from those who read about him and simply included him in their prayer time. 

I often think of this in term's of Edward Lorenz's butterfly theory which is always covered in chaos theory:

A butterfly flapping it's wings in South America can effect the weather in Central Park

 As a part of God's larger community, it's not a stretch for me to apply this notion from chaos theory to my spiritual walk. My small prayer in Alabama can effect the trajectory of a little boy in China in need of a loving forever home. Now that's something I can get excited about!

Living on the edge

With the girls out of town and some moderate temperatures, it was a good day for the boys to get out and explore. We ended up at Ruffner Mountain checking out a few of the trails. It ended up having some terrain I was a bit nervous with as can be seen with D hanging his legs over, and yes it was straight down from there! F kept crawling on his knees to stick his head over and look. I couldn't hang out at this spot too long needles to say.

It was good getting them out to get dirty, throw rocks and sticks, pee in the woods, and generally let their inner caveman out for a while. You should check out the slide show and see how primitive they got.

We topped it off with burgers and shakes and I think I saw one of them loosen their pants and collapse in front of the TV. The girls are still gone so the inner cavemen can hang around a little longer I suppose.

Can Doing God's Work Screw up your Kids?

I can honestly say this is probably not something most Christians ever even wonder. I think most people I know would say of course not, how could that be possible? I bet if you ask a missionary though, you'd get a response like, "Well.............." If they were being honest anyway. Very few of us are ever put in a position of even thinking about this. We are never pushed to think perhaps there is even a chance of us doing something that might not be in the best interest of our children or even thinking God would ask us to do this.

This had been weighing on my mind a bit lately (more as to why in a bit) when I received an update from a missionary family our church supports. Within it was the following:

It was one of the harder letters I’d ever written. The gist of it was this: “Boarding isn’t working for your child, despite all the support you and we are offering.  You need to make a change.”

Let me clarify what a “change” implies: For a bush missionary whose child doesn’t “make it” at boarding school, almost everything about life must change. It may mean bringing that child back to the bush/village and homeschooling them, which may require one parent giving up part or all of his/her ministry. It may mean the family needs to move to a different location where the child can be a day student – giving up home, ministry, church, and friends. It may mean a return to the home country, giving up all the above as well as “Africa”. Whatever the cost, letters like mine are among those missionary parents hope never to get.

You can imagine, then, why this family’s humble and open response brought tears to my eyes. The gist of what they said was: “Thank you for sharing this. What should we do? We are praying for God’s wisdom and help in meeting our child’s needs.”

Seriously? I mean, I can't quite fathom having to wrangle with God on this. Here this family is doing what they believe God called them to do in the middle of stinking no where Africa for a people group they've been lead to, and it's wreaking havoc on their child. How could this not be screwing up their kid, and their family? Just think if they end up leaving and this kid knowing he/she is the reason their parents had to stop doing what they thought God wanted them to do. Holy smokes, that's heavy!

I had been thinking on this just a bit myself because I have been spending a decent amount of time organizing some missions opportunities for our church and I found myself telling my little boys, "no I can't play right now because I have to get this trip organized and some information out tonight!" I immediately felt bad about it, but then told myself this is what God has asked me to do right now, surely it won't hurt my kid's feelings too bad. Will it?

Please don't think I'm at all comparing my few Sunday afternoon and evenings of short term missions planning instead of tossing the football in the yard or playing the Xbox for the umpteenth time with my boys anywhere near this families struggle. It just got me thinking as both events occurred within the same week and as I dive more into short term missions, orphan/adoption advocacy, another adoption, and other generally "Godly" endeavors on top of my regular work a day life.

I don't have any answers other than God has my family and this missionary family in His hands and His grace is so overflowing that it will be ok, I hope, it will, right? So how does one balance God's callings and kids?

C'mon man, this is crazy!

Do you ever find yourself asking, how did anyone live without the global connectivity and speed of the interwebz? I mean, coordinating a group outing by actually calling everyone on their home phone is so 2007, right?! I even recently pondered, how in heaven's name did missionaries actually get anything done in terms of communicating their activities, vision, and fundraising? How did anyone ever plan a short term mission trip for crying out loud with a missionary in the field? Are you serious, pick up the phone at some predetermined time to call half way around the world to have a sketchy conversation at best and try and organize something? Or God forbid have to do it by writing letters back and forth! How did God mobilize his armies and people around the world? How did He do that without all of this technology? I mean, seriously? C'mon man, how did all that stuff actually get done?! I seriously want to know how Moses created the first flash mob to make a run for it out of Egypt?

Just this week alone I've coordinated a mission trip to Honduras in 140 characters or less, Skype on my cell phone connected to a public wireless access point, and a crap load of email blasts. This alone was exhausting, I'm on the verge of carpel tunnel. I think I'd have to take the pencil to my eye if I had to have written everything i've digitally composed this week with said pencil!

Annnnd, we received a most amazing update on our advocacy for Xiao. Through the last blog post and a few emails from that, we received the following from someone on the ground, in China!

Last night we spoke to a US family living in Xi'an who are willing to bring him into their family as a foster child (and in this way we can get the right investigations done, get their immunisations done to international standards, and get them on ARV's (which they almost certainly are not on when they are in their orphanages)

Seriously, how crazy is that?! Now I'm not saying just because I was killing time surfing Google+ late one night in bed, and emailed an article to Melissa about a boy in China with HIV being neglected, then wrote a blog post about it, which had Melissa bumping around the interwebz for all things China, HIV, orphans, etc... to then run across someone on the ground there, who she emailed, who read our blog, who posted some feedback on our blog with another contact, who we emailed, and then began digging a bit, is why Xiao might be having a family to foster him... but C'mon Man, this is craaaaazy!

What an amazing example of how all things we create, dream up, build can be used to God's glory and to accomplish His mission. Keep praying for Xiao and we'll keep blasting emails, tweets, FB posts, and blog posts until we know he is where God wants him to be.