Rattins living Coram Deo

I am amazed at how the seasons of life fly by – although so quickly do I forget this while I’m in the midst of a season. Our season of first-time-career-missionaries-support-raising felt like a dreadfully long season of anticipation of the unknown. Then, one day we’re on a plane and that season is forever closed. We waited for approval to bring Moses home… and waited… and waited… one little delay after another… our son 1 mile down the road but not WITH us… and suddenly, one Friday afternoon, we were told that we would bring him home the next morning. Our season of life with only three children was over. Our season of life of intense training, teaching, and loving our son across languages and cultures started with a bang just as our field director left the field for urgent health needs, leaving Josh in a leadership position. Within a week and a half of that season's begin, our next season started: life with another adult in our home. Elizabeth joined us for the summer, to help...

If you're in the USA, you've probably run into the "interesting" comments that Pat Robertson made on behalf of Christians on TV. Honestly, I've never seen the 700 Club, so I don't know a thing about it. But, I do know that lots of people watch it and might interpret his comments as something that resonates with Christ. The snapshot that I have of his comments on adoption do NOT resonate with Christ. His comment particularly struck me: "You don't have to take on somebody else's problems." Reality is that as Christians we ARE to take on other people's problems because we are nothing but wretched sinners ourselves! We should be willing to make sacrifices for others, as our Savior made the ultimate sacrifice for us. We are not above God and exempt from giving of ourselves. Will my life be more complicated because I have adopted? Maybe. Will my life be more complicated because I have biologically-related-to-me kids? Maybe. Will my life b...

(Cooking with my extremely messy boy!) If we were doing an international adoption in the USA, we'd have the "luxury" of hibernating as we get Moses settled... at least for some time. Although our friends are interested in learning about our different child-rearing (i.e. discipleship and sheparding) concepts, it's still a foreign concept to make sacrifices in our day in order to train our children. And, as many of you know, any adoption takes lots of intense training and time. I got the chance to take Moses out on a date today - just me and him at the coffee shop. We ran into a friend there who asked if Moses is a "quality time" kind of kid... I had to think hard about that... No, I think he's a quality-quantity kind of kid... i.e. very intense at this time! I have intentionally spent good snuggle time and reading time with Moses, hoping to see him demonstrating less insecurity... no immediate results! (yes, I know over time it'll pay off, but as ...

I haven’t blogged in a while – things got rather busy here. Josh is running non-stop as he figures out what it means to be Acting Director of ACTION Gulu. He feels the weight of that responsibility – having employees who depend on ACTION to put food on their tables, having 40 some children at Home of Love who are entirely dependent on us for everything, including their spiritual discipleship, having a school that is huge and needs reforms, building a missionary team… We’ve been eternally blessed by the presence of Elizabeth this summer – a young lady who desires to serve God and joined us in Gulu for a few months to serve our family. She has focused on Gracie’s homeschooling and therapies and Gracie has thrived under Elizabeth’s attention! Elizabeth has also picked up the slack for me as third trimester of pregnancy hit with the fatigue that comes along with it. And then the illnesses hit – with four kids, 7 total household members, and a big belly, it seems that the illnesses have b...