Rattins living Coram Deo

I know I promised a blog series... oh four months ago... I WILL write it.  But life is so hectic here and blogging is emotionally stressful... My mental, physical, and emotional energy went elsewhere. Last week, missionary friends here in Uganda were in a devastating car crash on our horrible roads.  Their one month old baby died in the crash.  The mom has significant injuries and is in a Ugandan hospital trying to recover and find her way through the veil of grief. Today, I got a phone call (I'm a doctor) asking for advice on a little girl who was caught in a brush fire.  She is burned over 100% of her body and fighting for her life. We prayed for both situations with our children.  And I hugged them a little longer at bedtime and prayed over them again.  And kissed my special needs daughter more, memorizing her smile and her lovey eyes a little longer. The children's favorite song is "ashen bla blesho"... or, to translate from their gibberish "Abs...

When November rolls around each year, we find ourselves reminiscing about our family's beginnings - this Thanksgiving marks 6 years as a family.  Six years of snuggling our beautiful Liberian princess.  Six years of wheelchairs, AFOs, thickened liquids, AAC, Diastat, and therapies.  Six years of praying every night, "Lord, wake me up and take me to her if she needs me." Six years of treasuring every day as a family. I suspect that Gracie will never be able to fully share her story herself.  So, as will be my role for her entire life, I will speak for her.  We sense the joy of the Lord in her and we pray that she does truly understand God - she speaks loud and clear with her overflowing, body-shaking joy that there is a joy in her that exceeds our understanding! We are so grateful that God prompted us to adopt Gracie as our first-born child.  For much of our life as a family, we have lived in countries where birth order is valued greatly.  For in...

"My mother's mother is my grandmother." "My mo-der and mo-der eee have goder." "Nope - say my mother's mother is my grandmother." "My mo-der and mo-der eee have goder." "Not quite.  Listen closely, Moses: My mother's mother is my grandmother." ... (half hour later)... "My mo-der's mo-der is my grandmo-der." "YES! You got it, buddy!! Now, look at my mouth "th - th - th"... mo"th"er - you say it." "Th-my th-moTHer and th-moTHer..." 'sigh' ... Teaching Moses is a whole different ballgame.  He struggles to actually engage his mind to what he is learning. We're taking a kid who has managed to not learn and not be engaged with the world around him beyond having fun and doing what he wants to do and stretching his mind to all kinds of new exercises.  Listen closely enough to a sentence to be able to comprehend it and answer a question about it.  Manipul...

http://www.christianalliancefororphans.org/cafo-white-paper/

Noah and Fortunate having fun I have spent the last five weeks in the home mostly. Making sure that I'm home every time that Moses is home. We've had some very interesting times of adjustment and as this amazing kid takes everything in stride, he also has been trying on different things. Now he's on to crying about little things like Ana does. Makes a mama struggle since I'm 90% sure he's crying because he forgot to take his shoes off before his pants and now his pant leg is stuck, but maybe, just maybe, he's crying about something greater than that and I'm just not understanding... His (and our) language is coming along well - although, we're still struggling with basic communication, let alone more complex topics! Josh playing football with the guys (Moses in the "smart" orange polo). We finally ventured to Home of Love as a whole family yesterday. We (I?) were a little worried about how he would react and whether that would cause even m...