A Couple Cool Things...

Holly & Julianna after we got back from the salon where we got our hair cut and styled and make-up done!

Julianna posing with her new look!

Just a quick afternoon post during our 'quiet time'. It is about 2:30 in the afternoon, and Angie is sleeping, Papi and Juancho are playing Uno and Laura is playing with her Magna Doodle. They are doing a great job of playing quietly and being respectful of Angie's naptime. It's not easy when we are all in the same room! I'll tell more about our day later, but I wanted to share two things with you...

One is about our friend Julianna. She is the beauty in the pictures above. Julianna is 4 years old and was adopted from Colombia when she was only 4 months old! She is back with her parents Paul and Tamara adopting her baby brother John (age 6 months). Julianna and her daddy left today to head back to Boston while Tamara stays with John and waits for Sentencia (the declaration that says adoptive families can go home!). Julianna and I (Holly) had an instant bond from our first day here. She loved to play games together, cuddle up on my lap, and sit next to me at meals. She loved our stuffed dog 'PJ' (our surrogate PJ while we are here). What a lovely girl she is! But she had a hard time when we suddenly returned one afternoon with three children! She saw me putting pajamas on Angie and wanted me to go up to her room to put on her pajamas too. She wanted me to sit next to her at dinner still, even though I had three ninos to tend to now! But at the end of the night she came to our room, a couple tears still on her cheeks to tell us goodbye since her and her daddy were leaving to go home today. She went around the room and said goodbye to each of our children too. So this is to Julianna, who is somewhere in the air between here and home now!

#2 - Another majorly cool 'God' thing that happened today had to do with a music CD that Juancho had brought with him from his foster home. It was a burned CD and the front had written on it 'With Love, Auntie' (their name for their foster mother) and also said 'May God Bless You'. Juancho wanted to listen to it, so we put it into our mini-DVD player (Thanks Michelle!) and fun Colombian songs started playing. But as I listened to the words, I realized they weren't just any songs...they were songs praising God! Then, a song came on that both Robert and I recognized. We had sung it at the Latino service at our church just a couple weeks earlier. So I asked Laura 'Are these songs from church?' and she said yes and then Juancho said with enthusiasm 'They are Christian songs!'. Wow! So it seems like they have been in a Christian foster home for the past nearly 3 years! Last night when we gathered to pray as a family, they were ready and eager to 'talk to God'.

We love the 'God' stories we've been given on this journey and it's always great to share more as they come along!

More later...quiet time will be ending soon!