HOLY COW!!??

Seriously… HOLY COW!!!
I met with the only person on the face of this Earth (LITERALLY) that could locate Saras father, today. We talked a bit of his story and how Sara became an orphan. Her mother died around childbirth. The mother’s family walked away from the father and left him in care of Sara by himself. The father himself was a poor and very sick man always in and out of the hospital and couldn’t care for her. Recently he had moved far away from Lusaka and was unable to phone. Social Welfare would have never found him!
Our friend then told me what she would have to do to go and bring him to town in order to sign over the rights to Sara. She had to take a bus a few hours away to meet a taxi. She then would take a taxi to a far off intersection where she would then proceed by cow pulled cart through farmland to where the father was staying. She would have to stay the night out in the country and come back in the morning the same way she went out but with the father in tow. We have been praying that everything works out fine and that the father can meet with Social Welfare this morning and we would be able to go get the girls today or tomorrow.
Another process that God is showing us that He is control. Who would have thought cow travel is still a valid means of transportation. haha

While we have almost been here a week and without seeing the girls, it has been a nice time just hanging with our little family here in Africa before it all changes. I have been a little underimpressed with the system here but maybe it’s ok 🙂

-jake

Not a chance!

I would like to go a little deeper into the meeting of Evans at the market.
So, a local Zambian girl, Abby, was recommended to us from a family who has made this journey previously. We have been in contact with Abby for months and have now spent much time with her. She is our local “expert”…so we thought. Knowing we would have to wait thru the weekend, we would have thought that she would have told us about that market that was held down the road at the local mall parking lot. We have walked there everyday so far for something to do. She, however did not mention it.
We just happened to meander over to it in the afternoon. We thought how cool it was that we stumbled upon it. Maybe 60 vendors had booths set up with all sorts of very standard tourist items and some with custom handmade items. We had some other stuff to attend to in the mall so we finished that before we began to look through the booths. We sort of took our time and spent almost every last dime. Looking back I made one last little stop at a booth that “for some reason” caught my eye. I spent several minutes “randomly” looking through some old country coins. I found a few American nickels and pennies that made me chuckle. I found a few pretty neat African coins no longer in print as well. Either way I have never bought anything like that before and i didn’t that day either. BUT… after I had finished looking and we proceeded to the grocery store is when we “by chance” walked right by Evans. Now mind you, we were in a random market we didn’t know about, we previously only knew Abby and Evans who lived in Lusaka, Lusaka is a population of a couple million, Evans hadn’t even planned on attending the market until the last hour to meet co workers, simply that is amazing but what happened the next day is more amazing.
We arrived in Lusaka on faith God was in control. We had no transport from the airport, but Abby came through. We had no place to stay, but Abby came through. One other big key to the adoption process here is a lawyer to file court hearings and finalize the process at the end. We didn’t have lawyer either. Well, wouldn’t you know, Evans’ wife is a very powerful attorney here with a well known firm. He passed along their info and we met with an attorney the next day. It gets better!
After meeting with the attorney and sharing our mission and hearts with him, he was seeing how because of our “noble cause” that the firm could represent us Pro Bono and only have us pay court fees. AMAZING!!!! We had not come with a lawyer planned because the previous families really couldn’t recommend their lawyer because of lack of confidence in them after paying them thousands of US dollars. So, what an amazing God we serve.
We just looked at each other, held back the tears of joy and thanked God for once again showing us that we ARE doing His will and that He is in control and He deserves all glory. It is NOTHING that we can do. Praise Him!!!

-jake