Still no sentencia but quite the celebration!

Still no word of when to expect sentencia but we feel the hand of the Lord very present in everything we do. AMEN! God has a very defined plan for us and we await His tender mercies! We are so thankful to be here in Colombia during the Christmas season. From what we've seen, Colombians do go all out for decorations and beautifully-colored lights. Rick's dad would love being here right now to view all the great light decorations and displays because that's Dave's thing -- Christmas lights and decorations -- oh yeah!! It's very fascinating and what a glorious time of the year to witness such sights. Thank you Jesus for all you do. You are the reason for the season and we are truly blessed to be here in Colombia at this time.





Yesterday was interesting. Little corrections had to be made and the day just happened to bring on many. We didn't set out to teach some lessons -- really -- however it just happened that way. There were a few very slight behaviors that we felt necessary to correct before they got too out of hand, and yesterday was the day when we were forced to put our foots down in order to let the children know we mean business. Granted these are all very mild behavior issues but it is our job as parents to show them the way. Anyways, long story short, their pool privileges were taken away for the day following many attempts to get them to conform to our wishes. So when it came time for the pool, only Marissa got to swim and they understood but didn't like that we followed through. Even more of a lesson, both Fabian and Karen had to sit and watch. As hard as it was to endure watching the sad twosome pouting a little as the watched from poolside all the while as Marissa swam, we have had much better behaviors coming from the both of them today. Hallelujah! In fact, this morning was a shocker when Karen got up and dressed with the first prompting from her dad. Fabian needs work on accepting responsibility as he blames others whenever he gets in trouble. Not really blames but it happens such as this... we'll say Fabian, no touching the baby, and he'll say in a very stern voice to his little sister, "Karen, no touching the baby!" Sort of a pass the buck type of deal, and he's not picky with passing the buck -- it usually gets passed on to the nearest person to him that he can turn to and repeat the corrective measures that were initially meant for him. He does it all the time so we figured we'd better get ahold of it and teach him a different way. Acceptance of responsibility! He does accept correction well and bounces right back and doesn't hold his anger. Karen can hold her anger for much longer and definitely knows how to pout to get her way. She's quickly learning to conform and we don't see the long outbursts of anger following the correction nowadays. Now Luis, even at 10 months old now, can hold onto his anger. He knows how to hold a grudge! Really! He has been so spoiled for so long and that's very clear, but he's learned that crying doesn't accomplish much. Don't get me wrong, he sure has tried to get his way by crying, but so far it hasn't worked much so he's giving up on that technique. He still has both his sisters trained for the "fetch" game when he wants them to keep picking up his toys as he drops them purposefully. Instead of crying to get his way he is now this super smily boy most all of the time now. What an absolute joy he is! Very gifted with natural charming abilities and just a happy-go-lucky kind of little guy! He doesn't like his siblings to invade his space and gets upset when they do so Mama and Papa have to run interference all the time for him.





There was a heartwarming speech I had to give yesterday to address to the children after we came back to the room after being at the pool. You could almost see it in their faces that they understood why they lost their pool privileges for the day, but they both had this look of concern that we must not love them anymore and possibly we were giving up on them. Rick and I have been very consistent whenever any corrective criticism is given to follow up with emphasizing how much we love them and how happy we are to all be family and trying to explain why we corrected them in the first place! I am so thankful that during this very crucial explanation following the pool visit yesterday that God placed the correct words in my mouth to get our point across! It really was amazing and Rick commented on how well it went and told me how amazed he was that I continued to rattle off Spanish. My Father above deserves ALL credit for gifting my tongue to speak to my children. What a heavenly experience and for it I am blessed! At that moment I had a TV program on a christian channel singing spanish songs when I noticed one we sing quite regularly in our church. It's a song by Israel Houghton and the new Breed, "Lord you are good and your mercy endureth forever, Lord you are good and your mercy endureth forever, People from every nation and tongue, from generation to generation, We worship You, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, We worship You for who You are ... and You are Good!" It was sung in spanish and it was so cool when the kids got up and started jumping around at the same exact moment as we did. What a blessed event! An outright expression of just exactly how awesome our God is! He let all of us know of His presence at that exact moment. Then we heard the loud fireworks being shot off from town and walked outside our hotel room to take in the beautiful fireworks display. See, the Colombians celebrate a holiday on Dec. 8th, but the festivities actually begin on Friday. It's Dia de la Imaculada Conception and it brings about many fireworks celebrations and the lighting of many Christmas displays. So cool to witness and left us with such overwhelming feelings. We had been told earlier in the week that Friday marked the day when people in Colombia lit candles outside but we had no idea of the exact significance of why they did this as a tradition. So on our trip to the store yesterday we picked up some candles and planned on participating. We almost scrapped our plans of lighting our candles and placing them outside our door because we didn't think anyone else in the hotel was going to, but then we saw the family next to us had lit candles marking their front entrance terrace, we decided we needed to also. The kids went nuts and jumped for joy as we lit the candles and placed them out in the front area. Definitely a treasured moment!!! Just this morning as I read another family's blog that are adopting and are now in Bogota, the Colombian people light the candles for the captives taken by guerilla forces. I knew when we lit them that it was truly a touch from God -- a very somber moment and one which will be forever preserved in my mind, but I had no idea at that time the importance or real significance of those lit candles!



Oh and by the way, there's a quick little story on the lit candles. Today as the maintenance guy went around to our front entrance way and as he scraped the dried candle wax left from our celebration, we felt compelled to leave him a tip. Rick and I opened the door to tell him of our appreciation for his services and he was so overwhelmed by our gesture. It was quite a humbling experience to know that the equivalent of $3 or $4 US dollars meant so much to him. He really didn't want to take the tip but we insisted. He didn't feel he was worthy of receiving it but it was so much of what God led us to do at that exact moment. I am sure he needed the money for something and God was providing for his need by working through us!





Well, I'll close now because it's very late and I need to get some sleep.



May God bless each and everyone!

Genece