Wow...

Well, there's something pretty big happening in our lives right now. First, a little history:

We came back from Zambia knowing that God wanted Blu to complete seminary, so while doing that Blu has been the youth pastor at a church. For the past 2 years, we have been seeking God about our future--do we return to Zambia as career missionaries? Do we stay in the states and pastor? Do we stay in the states and work with youth? Though we haven't felt "release" from Zambia, we haven't had a peace about returning as career missionaries with our mission board. We prayed and prayed and just felt like we got a big fat WAIT from God.

In the past 3 weeks, God has knit things together so beautifully to give us a picture of what our future holds. That sounds cheesy, but I have no idea how else to describe it. Out of the blue, someone approached us about donating a huge sum of money to open an orphanage in Zambia. Specifically, they said that they felt God wanted to use these funds to open an orphanage that was to be run by us, and that God was going to use this to send us back to Zambia. We were in shock, but the more we talked about it, we knew this was God and there was such peace and excitement in our hearts! We knew we could not do it alone, and we doubted that our "friends" (who need to remain confidential at this time) would be along for the ride, but little did we know that God had been preparing their hearts for this as well.. In fact, they have a donor that has been approaching them as well in years past about opening an orphanage in Zambia...

We are all still in prayer about this and all of the details, but it does seem pretty clear that this is the direction God is leading. Our goal would not be to adopt these orphans out (Zambia's adoption laws are crazy) but to take a group of 25 kids ages 5-7, and raise them in this orphanage, educating them as well, and most importantly, teaching them about Jesus. We would live there full-time along with another family, and we would rely heavily on volunteers from the States to come and serve in short-term capacities. Our tentative plan now is to begin in 2008 the process of setting up the non-profit here in the States, and then leaving for Zambia in January of 2009 to set things in motion.

As you can imagine, this is a terrifying and exciting adventure (much like adoption!) Please pray for us. Speaking of adoption, where does our adoption fit into all of this? More posts on that to come in the coming days/weeks...