Prayer for Moses

Those of you that are new to Seeking Above may not be familiar with Moses.  You can read more about him on these two posts:

• Meet Moses
• Update on Moses

God has answered our first prayer, as Moses' surgery was successful.  The doctors cut a tendon from one part of his wrist and wrapped it around to the back of his wrist with the hope that he'll have some use of his hand.  Moses was a real warrior, not taking much pain medicine and now is working hard on rehab.  The rehab is probably the most important part of the whole procedure.

We went through quite a few ups and downs with Moses living with us.  He's a very proud 12-year old and we had some confrontations with boundaries.  At one point he told us he did not want to live with us anymore.  However, he eventually settled in, and I think like most young boys, he actually appreciates the boundaries (although he'll never admit it).

About a month after the surgery he was ready to start physical therapy.  This includes three trips to the physical therapist each week and home exercises each night.  The trips to the therapist have proven to be a challenge, as we live out in the country and the clinic is in town.  While we have volunteers from the church to help take him on these therapy sessions, there is not an easy way for someone to pick him up or for us to get him to them.

To help with the therapy sessions we have asked if anyone else at the church wants to sponsor Moses for the rest of his stay here in the U.S.  We've had a few takers so he'll be staying with other people here and there for the next six weeks.

For the last two weeks Moses has been staying with another family that lives in town.  However, he's coming back to our place tomorrow.  Our family and he are anxious to get back together again.  He'll be here a week and then spend a week with another family and then we'll see what happens from there.

Moving around to different families may be the best thing for him for these last few weeks for more than just therapy reasons.  As expected, our family and Moses have developed some strong bonds and it's going to be difficult on everyone when he has to go back to Liberia.  He calls me Dad and my wife Mom.

Obviously, the question is, why don't we adopt Moses into our family.  Especially since we've already committed ourselves to international adoption.  There are two main reasons at this point.  One, we really do not want to alter the birth order of our children when we adopt.  Moses is older than all of our other kids.  I am especially concerned with displacing our oldest son as the oldest child.  This is an issue we keep in prayer.  The second issue is that Liberia is currently not processing new adoptions. This is a fickle issue with international adoptions so this could change anytime.

We're tentatively scheduled to take Moses back to Liberia at the end of September.  I'll be going with our head pastor and another brother from our church.  Moses is not excited at all about going back in September.  The original plans were to go back in October and he wants all the time here he can get.  He is very excited that I'll be making the trip with him.

We have a few goals on this trip.  One of the guys going is an engineer.  He's going to review a bid to build a government required fence (current bid is $15,000).  If we can't get this fence built, the government will shut down the orphanage.  He will also be looking at their well and buildings to see what else can be done to improve things for the orphanage, school, and church.

I'm going because I have to go see, touch, and love on the kids in the orphanage.  God's talking to my heart about the global poor.  I don't know all that he wants me to do.  However, I do know that he wants me to go and see it in person.  In my own mind, what  I want to do is come back and fire up our church and anyone else that will listen to get out of their pews and into the real world.  I anxiously wait to see God's plans.

Please pray:

• For Moses' therapy to continue to strengthen his hand so that he can have a functioning left hand for the first time in his life
• For God to provide Moses a family - this is Moses' deepest prayer
• For a new fence for the orphanage so that it does not lose its government license
• For our church as we seek to figure out a long-term strategy for supporting the orphanage, school and church in Liberia (we are looking into a sponsorship program so that church members can sponsor a child through a organization like Bright Point)
• For my family as we look at international adoptions and also that we hear God clearly if Moses does happen to be the child he has for us, regardless of birth order and Liberia adoption difficulties
• For the global poor and the global orphans, yes, those in our own country as well

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Deuteronomy 26:13 (ESV)
¹³ then you shall say before the Lord your God, 'I have removed the sacred portion out of my house, and moreover, I have given it to the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, according to all your commandment that you have commanded me. I have not transgressed any of your commandments, nor have I forgotten them.