I'll be home for Christmas (part five)

My sister in law and her husband are traveling "home" today from Colorado to New Hampshire.

Our teammates' daughter and her husband are traveling to Uganda today from the USA to be "home" with the rest of the family - all together for Christmas.

Our friends here are traveling to their villages to be home for the holiday week. For a Ugandan, home is where the family is. Our baby is named "Otim," meaning "born away from home" because he was born away from our family home (the USA).

And our dear adopted grandma in the USA has just traveled home - for the last time - to her eternal home. She is celebrating Christmas with the origin of life this year. She is home, where Christ is celebrated every day.

Is that the home you're longing for this Christmas? Are you teaching your children to long to be home with Christ? Is that a higher priority in your family than wrapping the gifts and baking gingerbread?

I fail at that daily and rely on God's grace to fill in my adequacy.

I have posted on my wall in front of my computer Colossians 3:12-15. It's scribbled on by an anonymous two-year old, yet it says, "Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy, and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must also forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful."

Let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts as we long for our eternal home!

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Family of Three!

We are in Liberia - the electricity goes in and out because the generator is having trouble keeping up these days! So hopefully it will stay on long enough to post and the internet connection will allow me this luxury! We were united with precious Gracie on Thanksgiving day - I will write more about this later. But, oh! is Gracie a joy! She is so beautiful, so joyfilled, and a bit mischievious. Her physical limitations do not permit her to accomplish much mischief, but we can tell that she is trying to push some limits already. If we were not in love with her already, she is irresitable and such a treasure and blessing from God. In our two days together, she has not cried once. She spends most of her days smiling, she loves to snuggle (good match for us!), and has the most contagious laugh! Life takes more effort for her - her cerebral palsy is moderate and every activity is a challenge and is clearly tiring for her. Meal times (which she loves) take a long time and much patience and d

Check out this progress!

A year ago, my friend Rachel http://josiecomehome.blogspot.com/ emailed a photo of her beautiful son standing on his own... I've since dreamed of having a photo to post of Gracie doing the same thing. It was always one of those wild-don't-think-it'll-ever-happen kind of dreams, a romantic, fairy tale type of dream. But this week, Gracie made another leap in development and muscle tone. It started when I leaned her up against the wall and planted her feet a shoulder-width apart. For the first time, she didn't lunge for the safety of my arms or hands, but rather, she allowed herself to stand steadily on her own two feet and she kept her center of gravity centered over her feet instead of wildly in front of her or to one side or the other. She even quickly figured out that she couldn't lurch around in excitement while standing on her own two feet with no support but a wall behind her back, but rather had to express her excitement over this new development with a gentl

Amazing girls!

Gracie and Ana have taken to walking around the church together - Ana pushes Gracie's gait trainer as Gracie walks along. Between the two of them, they make a pretty efficient team (except for the steering part!). They love it and could do it for hours! Gracie has made amazing strides (no pun intended) in standing up - we'll get some video up soon of her standing, supporting herself ONLY with her right hand (her otherwise useless hand) - it's amazing! We didn't dream that we'd see her looking this strong and steady. Plus, now she's smiling and her little heart isn't pounding out of her chest with stress at the thought of standing up without human contact - God is SO good! Gracie went to music camp this summer at the Y which was somewhat fun for her, but definitely good to have her around other kids.

Rattins living Coram Deo

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