One Less

I woke up early today (actually this is the best I’ve slept the whole trip.)  I got a solid 8 hours of sleep.  Minus the time I woke up and looked over at the girl’s bed and thought Ruthie was missing.  After waking up enough to see if she fell on the floor and rolled under the bed, I realized she was sleeping in Lydia’s spot and Lydia had moved to the end of the bed.  I was not scared, but I was wondering what happened. 

I thought I’d add my two cents to yesterday.  Yesterday I did not sleep as well as today.  I woke up about 2:30 in the morning (I have no idea what time it actually was, but that seems like a good guess) and started thinking about everything going on.  While I was doing that a song came to me that I thought summed up the day fairly well.  It is the song “One Less” by Matthew West.  (I attached the link if you do not know it).  I sometimes think songs about adoption maybe make orphanages seem worse than they are.  This may stem from the fact that both of my daughters spent significant time in one, and I want to think of that time as positively as possible.  We have not been to Ruthie’s yet, but from visiting Lydia’s it is a very nice building with very nice people that do their best to care for the children, but it is not a family.  God designed families as his plan for the world.  The way we are going to see our culture improve is to improve families.  We need strong marriages, with parents training their children to follow God’s word.  Before I get too close to preaching, I’ll get back to the point.  Yesterday officially and legally (in the eyes of the Chinese government, the only one that counts for now) Wang Xuan Yi is no longer an orphan and there is one less in the orphan world.  

Three reasons I put this into our blog.  First, I thought I should let everyone know I’m involved here. Erica is much better at the play by play.  If I typed it, it would be about half the length so I'll let her do that.  Secondly, I thought it was a nice way to sum up the importance of the day.  Sometimes a song is better than words.  Thirdly, I want to let everyone that has had a part in this process for us (there are a lot of you) know that what you have done is appreciated by us, and is bigger than us adding to our family.  We could have chosen to do that in several ways.  We could have added a dog, Lydia would have been happy, it would have been a lot less money and paperwork, and we could be done, but God chose this as the way to add to our family.  I believe after sin entered the world God knew adoption would be a big part of smoothing out some of the effects of sin.  If you look in the Bible adoption is all over it, not the least significant is that God chose Joseph to adopt Jesus (the Bible does not say how official the adoption was, but he was Jesus father here on earth.)  Sorry, getting close to preaching again, back to the point.  I want everyone reading to know we appreciate more than we can express all the way you have helped lower the number of orphans in the world by one today.