Pics say it all (better quality pics)

Got there at 3:00. Went in at 5:30. Out at 5:45 - these tell the rest of the story...

And Zeke makes seven

A day of joy and a little sadness

Shirt says: I'm the little brother

Shirt says: "I'm the big sister"

Pics say it all...

Got there at 3:00. Went in at 5:30. Out at 5:45 - these tell the rest of the story...

Zeke: "I'm the little brother"
Zuri: "I'm a big sister"

Outside the court with happy, but tired kiddo's

So many emotions (happy and sad at the same time...)

From whence we came...one child's story

We traveled 15 minutes on a main road, 15 minutes on a farming road, and then we came to the end of the road and the driver said: "we must walk from here." "Walk?," I said to myself. "I have all of our money for our trip home, all of our passports, Zuri's adoption paperwork, and all of our carry-ons in this van." Should I take it or leave it in the car with the man that I do not know? "Walk where?" I hid our stuff as best I could and we began the walk up the narrow path. Gayla holding Zuri as we walked along between tea and sugarcane fields up into the place where Zuri was born. I say "place" because it really was not a village, but a tiny compound of a few mud huts (please watch the videos). "Are we really experiencing this," Gayla and I thought to ourselves. "This is where she was born and we are getting to see it." We nervously approached the compound because we were told that those living here were known to have confrontations with white people, so we should not be surprised if we had one too. When we arrived no one was there so we were able to take some quick photos and look around, but soon a man and a woman came carrying big loads of sugar cane on their heads and were surprised to find us awaiting their return. Both the man and the woman were distant, but when the woman found out who we were, and noticed Zuri - she warmed up quickly. This was the lady who saved Zuri's life - and there is no hyperbole in that statement. What we came to learn this day was that Zuri's birth mother was dying and so she came here to give birth and so she was born in a mud hut much like the ones that you see in the video. The reason you will not see the actual house is because her mother was forced to sell the tin roof of that house in exchange for money so that she could purchase medicine to comfort her as she was dying. We were able to see the plot of ground where the house stood at this time last year and we saw the plot of ground where her birth mother is buried - she died two weeks after Zuri was born. There was no marker, just a memory of where they had buried her.

While in Uganda, we learned that the plot of orphaned Uganda infants typically follows one of two paths. The first is that a neighbor or relative takes them in and cares for them as their own. The other path is abandonment and death and this is the path that Zuri would have travelled were it not for one special lady. The sacrifice of this young woman brings tears to our eyes almost every time we talk about it and even as I type this blog. I can assure you of this-money is hard to come by in this area and this sweet lady had to use some of her precious resources to hire a motorcycle driver to carry them to the orphanage that someone had told them about. Her actions and her sacrifice are why Zuri is alive and why Zuri is in our home, in our family, and in our arms. Because of fear of the appearance of child trafficking, we chose not to give her anything, but we sure pray that God would bless her for this act of kindness and I am confident that he will do so.

Walking this path with my family was an unbelievable experience. The life that Zuri would have had in the fields is drastically different from the life that God has for her here. I am not saying that her life there, if she were taken in by neighbors, would be awful, but it would have been awfully hard, and she may or may not have survived being premature and malnourished. Her life there may have been fine, but the canvas of opportunities would have been very small. The life God has for her here is one where she has an enormous blank canvas. She is the center of the attention of five faces. She is loved. She is cherished. She is pampered and she is adored. Not a day passes that I do not think about so many biblical parallels and how I was without hope, but God predestined that he would adopt me. I was lost, but he found me. I was malnourished, but God nursed me back to health and when I see her - I see myself. Outside of Christ, I have no hope, but because of Christ - my hope has been made complete.

Meet little Jimmy

IMG_2675, originally uploaded by jimmyrenslow.

I really like this picture because it says so much to me. This is little Jimmy (his actual name) and what I notice is that he is running without shoes on a dirt\rock road like most do in Uganda, he is having a blast with the lacrosse sticks that TYLA donated, he loved having his picture taken, and every time I saw him, he was full of life and fun - I like this photo a lot. I would love for him to have a family to share his joy with.

Hopes are fading to come home together...

There will be no passport today. The man in charge of releasing them is not in the office. All offices are closed tomorrow because it is a holiday and so it looks like the earliest we can get our passport is Thursday morning. This would only leave us whatever of Thursday is left, Friday and Monday to get the paperwork necessary for travel and that would be a miracle...so that is what we are praying for....If everything is fine with our papers then it is still possible, but we are grasping to what hope we have left that everything will go perfectly with our embassy. Please pray with us and pray that Nathan Flook is generous in issuing us her immigration papers.

"I have my ruling..."

"...Your application has been accepted...good luck." And those were the words that closed one chapter of what has become a very, very long book. I cannot describe to you in words what this means. Our hearts are free now. We are free to embrace our DAUGHTER. She is ours. She is as much ours as Boe, Mac, and Leia. We have four children. We have a 13, 11, 9 and 9 month old. We have two boys and two girls. We are a trans-racial family and boy do we feel that here while carrying around this African princess. "What are they doing with her" is what we feel the looks are communicating constantly. Not in a bad way, but a confused or "that's interesting" kind of way.

We went early this morning (6 a.m.) back to Kampala to hear from the judge and Mac wanted to go with us - this was incredibly sweet. Mac has been worried that we would be disapprooved. His little heart has been afraid that we would walk right up to the line and be rejected and so he has asked several times, "what will we do if he disapprooves us?" So, he wanted to wake up early and go with us and hear it for himself. After the ruling his smile was the widest and brightest that I have ever seen it - I will never forget his pride and his love that radiated from him and the tears that filled his eyes as he called her "sister." Oh...the joy. Again I ask the question: "What exaclty are we sacrificing and giving up and who is this for again?"

Now we wait to get her Ugandan passport and then we can begin the application process to get her US Visa - this is where the hold up could be, so our prayers are still that we travel home together on June 9th.

There is a lot of action going on around here and we are packing up one place, putting our stuff in storage, and getting ready to travel 10 hours to the other side of the Country in the morning with Claudia and her four girls to see some of the native animals of Africa (you know dogs, cats, worms, etc - the usual Africa stuff). GSF is getting ready to welcome a team of teens from Ireland and getting ready to start school and so there is a frenzy happening around us. We are in the process of waiting now and are just praying that we will get the passport on Tuesday so that we can go to the US Embasssy on Wednesday. You could pray for that and also continue to pray for our dear friends at 5:14 who lost a mom, a siter, a sister-n-law, and a friend this week.

Arrival confirmation

Twenty seven hours after we rushed from our house we have arrived safely in Uganda and were met by our friends Bob and Carolyn. Last night we slept in a guesthouse for the night before making our way to Jinja today. We are about three hours from Jinja and travel at night is dangerous. Today is the day we get to meet Zuri and squeeze those little cheeks! We are counting down the minutes!

It does take a village

Thank you to the Kody's for rushing with us and taking us to the airport at the last minute.

Now that's a friend

The Schultz family have agreed to watch our dog for the five weeks we will be away and let's just say there is more than a little chemistry between Max and Hannah. Can you tell the difference?

Anticipation

It is finished. Good nights sleep. Rested. Packed. Errands completed, now waiting until the hot flashes come when we remember what we have forgotten:)

Fatigue

The details of all that it takes to be gone for five weeks have overtaken us. Although we have prepared all along the way, these last few days have been utterly exhausting. We have hit a wall and are thankful for 24 more hours here to accomplish all that we need to.

Bank error in your favor-should we even be surprised anymore?

The check was payable to Jimmy Renslow and the amount was $317.00 from the State of North Carolina. Why? Poor accounting skills by Jimmy, but the perfect accounting skills by God. We have also opened several other envelopes with donations inside this past week, making our march towards zero balance ever closer! When will surprise stop and true belief begin?

P.S. Zuri seems to be feeling much better today. Lot's of people have asked and we are glad for care and love.

Bloodlines and love

We have never seen Zuri with our own eyes nor held her with our hands, but our hearts have already connected with her because that is just how love leads. Yesterday, we found out that Zuri is sick and is being tested for malaria. She may or may not have malaria, but our hearts are torn to pieces thinking about her suffering and we can do nothing to comfort her. Love aches for those who suffer, and to be honest it has nothing to do if she is a biological child or not. We already love her in the same way as we do our biological children and we have not even held her yet. I guess love operates in the same way regardless of blood lines. I think of the millions of children in the world who are suffering from malaria and other diseases right now and thank God for those who are demonstrating love to them as they suffer. People like this...(click here)

A child well-loved

This is Mark and Amy Gwartney and their family who serve at Good Shepherds Fold- they cared for Zuri every other week for the first three months of her life - we get to go and meet them:) Click here to go to their blog - it is a great blog to see what life is like caring for orphans.

This is Claudia and her girls (Zuri is on her lap). Early on, she rotated with the Gwartney's and for the past six months she has cared for Zuri in her home at Good Shepherds Fold. Gayla e-mails with her every week and Claudia actually called Gayla when we found out the court date. We have her to thank for all of the pictures of Zuri.

 

The oldest brother is getting anxious

Boe is already cropping himself into photos - just wait young padawan learner - only one more week.

Money, babysteps, fingerprints and Yahweh

A moment of reflection: It seems that money is the biggest idol that keeps us from following what our hearts know to be true. I have been so guilty of that and am just now beginning to learn to trust beyond what I can see and enter the fruits of the promised land of faith. It is faith that is bringing this life changing gift to our family - not sight. If I would have stayed in my normal "m.o." then this would have never happened, but for perhaps the first time in my life - I stretched further than was comfortable. I walked into the darkness and I followed my heart and a dream instead of what my eyes could, or could not, see. Our family stepped into a story greater than our own! Believe me, we are not those faith giants that you read about. We like to control our own lives just as much as anyone else, but this time...yes this one time...we took a baby step, and God has blown us away with his generosity.

Practically speaking: It is comforting to be on this side of the fence and to see how God has lavished his resources upon us. It will cost about 20-25k for this adoption and I fully believe that at the end of our journey that we will bring this child home without debt and believe me - that will be supernatural. I give you that figure for perspective and for hope - that much money is way out of the realm of sight for the Renslow's, but not for the realm of faith. In a culture of reason - the fact that we have paid for this is unreasonable - and therefore unmistakably bears the fingerprints of God. What are your baby steps?

Court Date and Plane Tickets

We are due to be in court in Uganda on May 13th, but flight schedules have us leaving on the 6th. This is what we have been waiting for and the wait is almost over! Click the video button to see what it is like getting ready for five of us to go pick her up.