The Winds of Change

As you all know, two years ago today my family and I were eagerly awaiting a girl who was coming from another country to live with us.  When Lisa left at the end of her year with us, she left behind a second set of parents, a best friend and sister and also more aunts, uncles and cousins than she had ever dreamed of.

Having had such a close relationship with Lisa that year, we made a mutual agreement to take the next year off.  We did not want to replace her, and we wanted to make sure that if we got a student we would be able to give them all the love and attention that we had shown Lisa instead of wishing that they were her.  I expirienced the wisdom of this decision first hand when some friends of ours had a 6-week exchange student right after their year-long student, who had become a close friend of mine, left.

This year, I had been hoping to be able to host a student again.  We talked about it, and it seemed as though we were leaning torwards not doing it.  Still hoping, I asked our friends at church if they had a list of the female exchange students who still needed homes.  A few weeks later, we all recieved a list of about seven girls.

While my parents remained more reserved throughout their browsing, I excitedly read the dissapointingly short list of bios.  I imediatly found two that I found interesting.  One was for a German girl named Kathrina.  She intrigued me with her personality as well as her fluency in Greek.  The other girl was from Austria.  She seemed very much like me in many ways.  She admitted that she could be stuborn at times, enjoyed drawing, bowling, rollerskating, and teaches herself to play guitar.

I thought that perhaps My mother and father would be more interested in agreeing to host a student if I picked one that I liked, so I weighed the two girls in my mind, trying to choose one.  In the end, I went with Jennifer, the girl from Austria.  I had really liked Kathrina, but I thought that perhaps if we took her in, there might be a slight issue, though humorous, with our names.  Also, Jennifer was older by three or four months.  That may not seem like much of a difference, but I was afraid that the age difference between me and any student we might have could effect our relationship.

I presented my choice to my parents with mental crossed fingers.  Although their levels of doubt were slightly different, but were reluctant to host another student this year.  The fact that I would be gone for much of the time during the first half of the year at Kristen’s house helping her with her day care kids as well as assisting her after her baby comes, and that we still have just the one car, were just a few of our negatively leaning thoughts.  We all agreed to pray about it.  Mom reminded me that if God wanted us to have a student this year, then he would make it happen.

I did pray about it.  Quite often in fact, but I slowly began to feel that this could not be God’s will for this year.  Our busy life just wouldn’t allow it this time.

This past Sunday, Dad recieved an email from AFS saying that they were in desperate need of host familys and that about 25% of their students still needed homes.  We had a family meeting to again discuss the opportunity.  Reasons upon reasons were mentioned about how this wasn’t really the most convenient year, but we could not deny that there was a need.  These reasons, good though they might be, were all material.  If need be, we could get around them as we have in the past.  We all prayed together, asking God to guid our decision and agreed to meet again at super time to make a decision.

We knew that if we got a student that it would have to be a girl, but we were still uncertain.  We seemed on the edge of agreeing to host, when I suggested that it might be easier to make a decision if we could see a list of the girls who still needed homes and their bios.  Mom and Dad agreed, and dad sent in a request for that information.

This morning, an extremely short list of just two girls came from our AFS team contact.  They promised to send information about other girls from the other teams as soon as possible.  I was the one to check the mail.  As you can imagine, I was once again ecstatic at the possiblility of hosting another girl who would hopefully become another sister.  When I opened the attatched file, the first bio I saw was for a young girl from Thailand.  Not yet knowing that there were just two girls on the list, I continued to scroll down.  I’m sure you can imagine my delight when the second bio was for none other than Jennifer!

This evening, dad sent an email agreeing to host Jennifer this year.  The lady wrote back and was so pleased.  She had liked Jennifer’s bio as well, but it had been very difficult to place Jennifer because of her allergies to cats.  Thankfuly, our outdoor cats will not be a problem.

Suddenly, my plans for this year have become foggy.  Arriving on the 13th, it is only 10 days until Jennifer comes to live with us!  Talk about spurr of the moment decisions.  Now that I have said this, I realise it wasn’t spurr of the moment.  God wanted her to come to us all along, we just took a while to realize it.