Dear friends and family,
Greetings from Lima, Peru! We are reunited with the WMF community in Lima after spending the month of July visiting the States, thankful for the ways in which we were loved on by so many of you while we visited. As our time was short this year, we sincerely wish that we had been able to see all of you.
We have come back to a very warm “el niño” spring in Lima. Blooming trees that usually bud in October are already showing color. Our first weekday back, Monday August 7th, was also the first day of at Isabel's school, which was on a two-week break. So, she only missed two weeks of it has taken us about two more weeks since returning to get the make-up work done. We are celebrating by going “rollerblading” in the park across the street. We don't even have rollerblades, and her blades are more like plastic sandals with wheels. Of course we'll have fun.
For those of you who might be hearing the news about our adoption process for the first time, we are excited to announce that we are pregnant with hope as God prepares our hearts to receive a new child into our family! We are adopting through the Peruvian government, and we have been more than impressed with the level of professionalism and thoroughness. At the same time, and as we found out last week at our first meeting with the psychologist, things may not proceed as rapidly as we would hope- a lot like a biological pregnancy actually. We are so happy that God has brought our family to this place of looking for a child to bring into our family; we are feeling lots of interesting things, among them a new emotion of “choosing” our child; it is like the reality in the heart of God when we who are “far away are brought near” through the blood of Christ.
Just the other day we saw a man standing at a street corner; he was older, maybe 65. He held out his hand and asked for bread, proclaiming that he hadn't eaten in four days. The interesting thing is that he had a bag full of food in his other hand, and that I have seen him at that street corner now for three straight days. While our first instinct might tell us to become critical of this poor man who seems to be using trickery to provide for his basic needs, we also know that people with money also use trickery to provide for basic needs. The Bible says this, “Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.” Ezekiel 16:49
Maybe our trickery involves proclaiming to the poor around us that we don't have enough to help them. Maybe we make all kinds of expensive commitments on luxury items or maybe we give our money away to the poor as a way to avoid personal involvement with them. God wants us to live honestly with each other, and to take His Kingdom more seriously than even our own lives. What does a real commitment to the poor look like? We know that it's not about money; the streets of the Kingdom of God are paved with gold, not because of it's luxury but because gold is not valued there, but the people “from every tribe and nation.” God wants us to put people first, and to help the most vulnerable in our midst.
Please pray for us as we reconnect with the ministry in Lima and continue to labor that God's Kingdom would come among us in love and power.
Lots of love,
The langleys