Secure in God’s Timing

One of the events that confirmed our calling to the Sahel was a very specific answer to prayer. If I go into too much detail, this blog will be long, so I will try to give you the pertinent information without being overwhelming. We were foster parents in the States. We were waiting for another foster child placement in our home, but our 10th anniversary was a few months away. So we prayed for months for a child to be placed in our home after we returned from a weekend celebrating our 10th anniversary. Within an hour after returning home a three day old infant coming from the hospital was placed in our home. No family could be found. This was exactly the type of situation we felt most able to help with, but had found it was rare and so this had God's hand written all over it. 

The child was in our home only for six weeks, but of course we were in love. During the six weeks we thought wow, God answered our prayer so specifically, maybe this child will be adoptable! But then suddenly a grandmother who would take care of the child was located by the police. After we had some time to sort through what had happened, we realized that God had used this as a major teaching point in our lives. God taught us that: 1) He hears and answers our prayers 2) He can do ANYTHING 3) although it was our desire, putting another child in our family was not His plan at that time. But the prayers, answering prayers and teaching us was all in His plan. I was reminded of this learning event during our uncertain times we had last week. I believe it gave me a lot of peace. Yes, we had some tense times, but we did not have sleepless nights. We did not let fear get the best of us. We clearly see God's preparation in our lives and are grateful that He is always guiding and leading us in His way in much better ways than we could have ever imagined.

Our family of four in front of the gate of our house