Let's Do This: Love Speaks

I am always amazed how much grace God pours into our lives each and every day. To sum up how much God worked in our lives over the past 4 years would be impossible in a small blog. My family and I were blessed to live in Kisumu, Kenya since December 2011. We have had a tremendous amount of ups and downs. The day after we arrived in Kisumu we discovered we would have our first baby. One month later, God placed a little boy who had been wandering the streets into our lives, making him a part of our family. Throughout that next year, we found ourselves making an amazing amount of mistakes. We unknowingly gave money to multiple con artists, but God showed us grace, and He still worked it out. We helped out in different situations that ended up hurting more than helping, and God showed us grace, and he still worked it out. We found ourselves longing to come back to America because we missed all the awesome things America has to offer, and God showed us grace, and He still worked it out. We often relied on ourselves for understanding instead of relying on God to guide through difficult situations, and God showed us grace, and he still worked it out. We sometimes made decisions without realizing we were being culturally insensitive, and God showed us grace, and He still worked it out.

Through the power of God’s grace, He used us in ways we could have never imagined. With our hands and the hearts of people that helped all over the world God used us to help save the lives of scores of children. Through the power of God’s grace, He used our hands and the hearts of people that helped all over the world to love hundreds of children that desperately longed to be loved. Sometimes that love looked different. Sometimes we held the hands of kids as they went the hospital. Sometimes we loved by working with churches in rural areas. Sometimes love looked like giving food to people that had none. Sometimes love looked like counseling someone through abuse. Sometimes love looked like just being a friend to someone that needed one.

Over the last four years we still made mistakes. We hope we make less and less, and that we don’t repeat the ones we made previously, but we still make them…because we are human. We are starting to see that because we are willing to live in Kenya, because people are willing to sacrifice and give, and because we are lead by the spirit of God inside of us, it isn’t what we do that speaks. It isn’t our mistakes that speak (thank goodness). It isn’t you and I that speak. God’s love speaks. Yes, LOVE SPEAKS.