Passion for Paraguay

Happy Birthday, Anahi Anahi turned five this week. She arrived in our lives after a long wait and a season of challenges, in ministry and personally. On a personal level, we had struggled with infertility for many years. In ministry, we were pioneering the ICCI Bible school and walking alongside a struggling church as interim pastors, as well as shouldering other ministry responsibilities. The adoption process we'd begun as a result of our infertility was going nowhere, to the point that we were ready to give up. The paperwork seemed endless. Stamps, copies, legalizations, interviews, background checks, and so forth. We were getting tired of the countless trips lasting 10 to 12 hours to the capital city for meetings and interviews. We were stretched emotionally and financially to the max. But one phone call brought a new season into our lives. It came on a Monday morning at 10 a.m., on July 18th, when the director of the adoption agency called us with probably the best ne...

I began to occasionally journal in my last year in high school. One of my professors challenged us to keep a log of lessons we learned as we took his, bible and ethics class. Although not very regularly, I kept a journal to this day. Here is an entry from last week: It's 9:45 p.m. We are moving into spring in only one week. Today temperatures reached 95 degrees. Forecast tells us it will be a hot summer. Farmers are worried; prices are at a two-year low. “I finish my day tired. I was very busy today. I just helped Nancy put Anahi and Nicole down to bed. We packed Mark's bag for a weekend camp. After getting the kids out the door to school this morning, I spent about 3 hours networking on Skype, and 4 hours with unscheduled guests, attending the cable repair man, crawling into my ceiling to connect some cables. I worked on some papers and forms on the computer, and studied some for my exegesis course, which I teach in two days.  The internet went out two times for ...