We're going to Vietnam! Praise our God!

We though the day would NEVER come! But today, we heard news that we will be traveling to Vietnam in less than two weeks!

This is such a huge answer to prayer, so I am going to brag a bit about this wonderful God that we have. From the time we first heard of Matthew, we prayed that his paperwork would be processed quickly and smoothly. You can see earlier posts how our dream was to be with him by his birthday. But as you can also see, last week looked pretty grim when we heard that we would most likely be traveling in June or later!

I cannot begin to tell you how hard the last few weeks have been. There have been few times in my life that my faith has been stretched like this. Our whole lives have been hinging on this event. I have felt physically exhausted and sometimes even ill with this wait. I don't expect anyone else to really understand how stressful this is because I certainly didn't expect it to be this hard.

I don't think there is anything that we have prayed so much for. I would sometimes be discouraged, but then the Lord would bring verses to my attention to not grow weary in prayer.

We were also encouraged by all of you who prayed. I have gotten emails nearly every day sharing with me that someone is praying. Praise God for your faithfulness on our behalf!

We were really praying for nothing short of a miracle. There are so many families that have been waiting months longer than us. My heart goes out to them because it is so hard to know your own child is in an orphanage and have no idea how long until you can simply hug them and tell them you love them.

For the past few days, I have prayed, "Lord, your will be done; however, I know we are asking for a miracle, but we would love to celebrate Matthew's birthday with him." As trivial as a birthday may sound, and as trivial as this prayer may seem in the bigger picture, the Lord sometimes delights to simply give us the desires of our heart.

I will never look at prayer the same way. Prayer is not a "genie in the bottle"...do it hard and often and you have a divine Santa Clause. But God tells us to pray, and He tells us that there is nothing not worth praying for. Prayer is powerful, and God delights in our petitions. Remember the parable of the Persistent Widow, Jesus told this to his disciples "to show them that they should always pray and not give up."

So it seems fitting, on this National Day of Prayer, to thank God for his answer to prayer. And thank you to all of you who have brought our case before His Almighty Throne.

From one of my favorite hymns, Praise to the Lord, the Almighty:

Praise to the Lord,
Who doth prosper thy work and defend thee;
Surely His goodness and mercy here daily attend thee.
Ponder anew what the Almighty can do,
who with His love doth befriend thee.

To be befriended by the Lord of the Universe, and to have him smile upon your own child with daily goodness and mercy. What an awesome God!