Another Saturday Story

The last Saturday story I want to share in this Week of Blessings happened Saturday, Sept. 10th.  I had signed up to attend a simulcast of a Beth Moore special event.  For those of you who don't know, Beth Moore is a Christian Bible study author and public speaker, usually writing and speaking to women (although her stuff is so deep and intensive and worthwhile that there are always some brave men who attend her studies and speaking).  Beth is very Southern, and has historically had big blond hairdos and lots of self-depreciating and completely hilarious stories to illustrate her points.  I enjoy her immensely, and think she is one of the best Christian study writers/speakers out there.  This special speaking/worship event was held at a very large arena outside of Huston, TX, and was streamed live over the internet to--I think she said--17 different countries, a few military bases, and at least one women's correctional facility.  There were about 180,000 people viewing the simulcast from host sites outside of TX--as far away as New Zealand!  (Since this was an all-day event for us here in CA, I imagine the Kiwi participants made it an all-night Beth Moore party!)  It was pretty amazing to think that people all over the world--mostly women--were gathering via the magic of the internet to pray and sing and learn together. 

Our host site was a local church, and the women gathering there for the day came from a variety of area churches--I love it when God-believing people come together like that.  The church took really good care of us, and provided breakfast before the simulcast started, lunch during the first break, and even chocolate dipped strawberries for refreshment during the afternoon break.  The tickets for the event only cost $25 each, so it is pretty clear the church was not making any money off this event--they were just ministering to the women gathered there.  I love that too. 

When I signed up to go, I did not know who else would be attending.  By a few days before, I learned my dear Becky would be there, so we carpooled, and when we arrived we saw other friends, including the women from the homeschool mentoring day we had a few weeks prior!  So once again I spent an entire day with truly awesome women, laughing and learning and soaking in all kinds of truth. 

Beth Moore said during the simulcast that she had been praying that each woman attending would receive "a word"--something that she needed to hear, that God wanted to tell her.  God has always been so faithful in speaking to me--through friends, through the Bible, through the quiet voice, through all kinds of arenas, even movies and newspaper articles!  I knew He had me there for a reason, so it was fun to say, "Ok, God, I trust you have something for me today--I can't wait."  Throughout the day, as Beth talked about all kinds of things, I tried to listen, to hear whatever idea God wanted me to walk away with.  At the last break of the day I took a walk alone to stretch my legs and think.  I was having vague feelings, knew I was on the brink of getting what He wanted me to get, but I could not quite put my finger on how all the ideas in my head connected into something I could grasp on to.  It was not until the end, when Becky and I pulled out of the driveway to go home, and she asked me what I had gotten out of the day, that it was like a little light went on, and I started to realize what God was saying to me--and we talked all the way to her house, and then sat in her driveway for over an hour talking and connecting the pieces. 

It was about my Mother-in-Law.  And how I have been taking a little emotional break since we last saw them, and how that was ok, but now it is time to step back into relationship--because she is worthy of love, and God wants me to love her.  Not only to be receptive, and friendly, but to reach out and be vulnerable.  It is where He wants me, and I am actually a little excited about it!  I mean, there will undoubtedly be PLENTY of moments that are REALLY painful and sad in the near future, but instead of feeling fearful and wanting to avoid them, I am feeling confident and ready to walk through them with MIL, in love. 

Just so you know, I am not pretending to be a saint by any means.  I am still the same flawed person, and I know I will mess things up and not love well sometimes and have plenty of oh crap! cold-chill, dear-in-the-headlights moments--but hopefully I'm no longer going to be living in fearful anticipation of them, and being afraid of being imperfect, and that feels really good.

And just so you know, Becky shared some specific insights in the car that day that immediately sent that thrill of recognition through me--it was truth that I needed to hear, and apply.  Would you believe just this past Saturday I stopped at my friend Terry's house (delivering tomatoes! so fun!) and when we chatted for a bit, the conversation came around to this same topic, and Terry shared one of the exact same insights that Becky had said!  Not a coincidence.  God knew I needed to hear it one more time, to get it rooted that much more deeply in my heart and mind. 

God, speaking to me.  Friends, encouraging and challenging me as His beautiful instruments.  A new vision for the future, that will hopefully bring more peace and love to our extended family.  And chocolate dipped strawberries.

I'm telling you all, this has been the best month of Saturdays.

Saturdays, Continued.

OK, so I was telling you Sat. about the first Saturday of Blessing a few weeks back, when I got to spend the whole day with a fabulous group of homeschool moms (maybe I should have mentioned each of the women there I also count as friend--including my dear Becky--which, as you can imagine, totally magnified the fabulousness) being mentored in homeschooling and uplifted by the Spirit.

Then the following Saturday was even more amazing and restorative for my soul. 

A friend had told me about a "Community Farm Day" happening at a local organic farm, and so we decided to go as a family.  This is where my words are bound to fail me, as I cannot spend enough time on this post to choose all the right words and phrasings to describe the perfect, simple, heavenly goodness of that day.  Our goal was to pick organic tomatoes (at $1.50/lb, which is really good for this area), and so we did that first.  Happy was my partner, Sunny and Merry teamed up, and DH took Smiley, and we each took separate rows and had WAY more fun picking tomatoes than I ever thought we would.

The day was gorgeous--sunshiney and warm but not too hot, and in about 30 minutes we had picked about 30 lbs of tomatoes!  And we ate quite a few too--the farmers had told everyone they would be welcome to eat as much as they wanted right there in the field, and even said to bring your salt-shaker!  : )  Somehow the generosity of the farmer spread the warmth of the day throughout my spirit, and even though I have not been the biggest fan of tomatoes in my lifetime, that day has forever changed them for me.  It was the first time in my life I ate a tomato right off the vine that was warm, and perfectly ripe, and so sweet. . . I have eaten my fair share of fresh homegrown tomatoes, people, and these tasted like the day--the best I have ever tasted.

When we were done picking, we were just in time to hop aboard a flatbed pulled by a tractor, and got the tour of the farm.  The tour stopped midway at the apple grove and everyone got to pick a Gala to eat on the spot, and were invited to pick a few strawberries, and when we got back to the tomatoes, the farmer said we were welcome to pick raspberries and eat what we like while picking.  And that is when the day went from amazing to heaven for me.  I am allergic to most raw fruits, including apples; raspberries do me no harm, but organic ones are so expensive at the store, and usually pretty flavorless.  These were flat-out the best raspberries I have ever tried in my life.  No, it was not just the whole experience coloring my taste-buds--other people there said the same thing.  So to walk through the comfortably baking raspberry patch picking berries with Smiley and watching him stuff them into his little chubby cheeks, to savor the flavor of those berries and eat as much as I wanted. . . seriously, it was so beautiful. 

And then on the way home we stopped at the homes of friends delivering gifts of those lovely tomatoes, since anything that wonderful can only be made better by sharing.  Later, those friends also told me the tomatoes were absolutely fantastic--and knowing their pleasure just keeps giving me pleasure.

The event was free.  We paid for the tomatoes, but they were a good deal and so worth it.  (In fact, while I meant to freeze some for later on, we enjoyed them so much we ate ALL of them fresh over the next two weeks!) I figure we ate at least $20 of raspberries, and I would have paid them for that priviledge.  And it was me and my family out in God's bountiful creation, enjoying the sun, the flavors of summer, and one another.

It was the most fun we have had together in a long time (not counting all the fun with my family when they were here--I mean just our little family unit).  In fact, I think it is one of the most fun things we have done ever.

And the tomatoes were so worthwhile that I jumped to take advantage of a second opportunity to pick on Saturday, which was why I did not finish this post that day like I had planned!  This time it was not the whole farm-utopian event, just tomatoes, so I did not take the  whole family but just the girls--but eating those tomatoes again this week brings the first flush of pleasure rushing back.

Week of Blessings, Day 1: Saturday Stories

While I am not getting to blog much these days, it is for good reasons--I'm doin' life instead!  I'm still trying to figure out what homeschooling is going to look like this year (since last year our "usual" stopped working for some reason). I'm being as attentive as possible to my kids, since the kids and I all seem to be working through a spell of being easily irritable and less gentle than we used to be, a bad habit which takes lots of purposeful mommying to relearn.  I'm starting to clean again--that's the one thing that had to go while we were diving back head-long into school, as I really truly have had a hard time this Fall doing anything else with such a consistent focus on homeschooling well and mommying well.  At least I have been cooking!  After a sloppy summer, I am back to cooking real food dinners, and even some lunches.  And I am purging unneeded stuff, too, but slowly, which means in the meantime there have been piles in several places in the living room, which of course do not help the whole cleaning thing either.  I am starting to work playdates into our school week, so we have been seeing friends, which is GREAT.  And we've had some really positive things happen which I really and truly hope to get a chance to write about!

So I am going to make this a week of Blessings, starting today.  Hopefully I will get to blog even just a little bit each day--and will have to let go of my perfectionist desire to describe everything in minute detail and flesh out the significance of every little thing. ; )

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Blessings Day One:  Saturdays

Normally DH and I don't have much going on over the weekends.  This works well for us, since we always have plenty to do around the house, unfinished projects anywhere the eye might rest, etc. and weekends are the only time DH can work on things around here, so we usually like low-key, hanging-out-at-home weekends.  Since the beginning of August our weekends have been unusually busy--but so chock-full of blessing.

While we have had unusual weekend events since the first weekend of Aug., the first one that was a huge blessing was Aug. 20.  That was the Saturday at the end of the First Official Week of School (our homeschool charter began Monday the 15th, even though I had started school with the kids on the 1st, because I just knew we needed that much readjustment this year before the official start), so it was a week when I had been immersed in all things school, and by the end was very worn, frustrated, frazzled, and a tad overwhelmed.  I really do plan on writing more about why homeschool suddenly became hard, and what I have been doing to move us out of this phase, but for now, let's just say since last year ended up feeling so unsatisfying and less fruitful and rewarding than it should have been, I have been asking God over and over to show me what to do better/differently.  And that Saturday He started to answer. 

One of my homeschool friends arranged a gathering of homeschool moms at the home of a wise, Godly woman who just "retired" from homeschooling, after putting the last of her four children into college.  My fellow moms will understand immediately the blessing of a whole day without children, in the company of kindred spirit moms!  But this lady, named Gracie, really went all out, and provided breakfast and a delicious lunch for us, and all day we sat around her kitchen table and she mentored us in all things homeschool.   It was such a lovely, relaxing time, where we could speak honestly about struggles and get encouragement and ideas from one another, and I took about 4 pages of notes, and felt God whispering and nudging me several times that day, and left no longer feeling defeated at the very beginning of the school year, but excited and redetermined.

Oh, yes, Lord.  Do your good work in me!

This is long enough I think I will go ahead and post--but more Blessing to come today!  May your Saturday be full of blessing too!

Another little house anecdote

What I wrote earlier this morning brought back to mind another favorite memory of mine, something that I wrote about in the comments to a post a looooooong time back, so most of you probably never saw it.  I like it so much, I'm going to share it again here, a story that happened back in December of 2008:

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At Christmas, we visited DH's grandma's home, which is a spacious 4 bedroom 1950's ranch style house. The girls could potentially play almost anywhere in the house, esp. on the seeming miles of carpet, which is a novelty for them. While hanging out in the living room one afternoon, I sat on the short end of Grandma's vintage 60's "L" shaped sofa to nurse Smiley. Soon DH came over and sat a few feet away on the long side of the "L" to put up his feet on the coffeetable and read a magazine. Then one of the girls came to "nap" and stretched out on the other side of her daddy with a throw pillow and afghan. A few minutes later, I was bemused to look up again and realize that the other two girls had taken up residence with their toys between me and DH, and now all of my family was sitting engaged in various activities within a 5 ft. space on that sofa. The sofa is in the corner, with FOUR other cozy recliners or couches or rockers to choose from in the room, all much more centrally located and with better natural lighting. But no, my family must have unconsciously gravitated to be near each other. We clearly don't have much need for personal space!

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It still gives me the warm fuzzies. 

The original post that led to this comment is here.  Those of you who are intriqued about our house, or who need encouragement about your own house today--you should enjoy it. : )

Anecdote for Melancholy

There was one last aspect of my family's visit this summer that I had not yet shared here, but which came to mind when I was feeling blue, and which gave me big old warm fuzzies to recall.  It was such a subtle thing, but one which made the visit so much more fun, and so much more special.  It was unexpected togetherness. 

So here's the deal:  you all know we live in an inky-dinky house--550 square feet total.  With no interior doors, even on the bathroom (sorry about that, visiting family--I tried to make it happen before you came!).  You know we had five guests coming to stay with us for a week: my parents, my elder sister, and her two daughters.  Her two teenage daughters.  You know my in-laws so graciously brought down their motorhome to park in the driveway as guest quarters (and an extra bathroom for emergencies).  What I never wrote about is how it all ended up working out. 

Beautifully.  Even better than I had hoped!

You see, I had expected that at some point every day my nieces would get tired of hanging around with us "boring" adults and want some space away from the little kids.  I figured they would retreat to the quiet, private sanctuary of the motorhome at least once a day, to escape for a while, and read or sent text messages to their friends or be on the web (we have wireless that reaches the motorhome) or whatever it is I imagined teenagers do these days.  What I did not imagine was that my nieces would be young adults instead of teenagers, and be so friendly and social and well-mannered that they chose to hang out in the house with the rest of us adults and kids, all the time.  Granted, we were pretty busy those days, and having adventures out and about most of the time, so there was little time to be bored, but there were many mornings or afternoons when we had down time here at the house, and it would have been quite reasonably expected that the teens would drift off and do their own thing by themselves for a while.  But instead, the girls chose to be on the computer here in the house, or laying with cousins on our bed/sofa reading, or just hanging out and chatting with the grown-ups.  The entire week.  Not ONCE did they go out to be by themselves (unless they were sleeping in or packing).

It was completely unexpected, and so cool!

In fact, I don't recall any of the grown-ups going out to have quiet time either--unless it was for a short nap or packing.  Everybody wanted to be together, and so they were.

So not only did we have ELEVEN people hanging out in our teeny house that week, but they were perfectly happy doing so, all day long! 
And here is the craziest part--at one point we had some friends come by, and at that point were FOURTEEN in the house.  We and our friends were sitting on the bench and chairs we pulled up in the "entry" part of the living room, my family were hanging out in the living room and kitchen, all eating pie and ice cream. . . and there was plenty of room for everyone.  It just seemed to prove that "close quarters" is a state of mind, and when people are comfortable with one another, they'll be comfortable in whatever meager setting they are in.  Or maybe it is not so much being comfortable with one another, but being comfortable with one's own self.  Maybe the trick is to be an easily comfortable person--and then you can be comfortable anywhere!

Even during the moments when the house did feel cramped--like when we were getting ready to sit down for dinner (yes, all of us squeezed in together!) and there was barely space to move around the kitchen table--everybody had such good attitudes and didn't fuss or complain.  (Or at least were also considerate/well-reared enough not do so within my earshot ; )

This whole big hearts in a small house thing was such a blessing to me that week, and is still a blessing now when I remember it.

Thank you for that, my family!

If You Lived In My House--the photo gallery

I know some of you started reading this blog because you were fascinated by the thought of a family of six living in such a small house; you wanted to see how it was done, how we have arranged furniture, what we deem worthy of the precious square footage, how we store all our toys and clothes and homeschool stuff and still have room to walk.  You've been waiting patiently for a long time, for me to post photos and give you the walk-through.

Sorry, this is not that post.

Some of you have always wanted to know how we homeschool, the breakdown of an average school day, how we manage time and little space to give each child a healthy, productive work space.

(Giggling and wiping eyes at the thought of such a thing happening in my house.) 

That post, too, will have to wait.

Some of you are just plain curious about us, and have long been trying to figure out just what kind of people we are--exactly how weird we must be to do what we say we do.  You want the inside scoop, the dirty laundry, the reality-TV show.

This is that post.  With pictures.

My antique hobbit-green door, which I love.  Note the broken pieces at the bottom which most people would mend before painting--I don't know how to fix those pieces, but I know how to paint, so voila!  Also note the completely odd door knob that fits neither the door nor the jamb.  Just one of those unfortunate, bizarre things that was like that when we moved in, and which we will someday (. . . sighing wistfully. . . ) replace. You will sometimes find my door decorated.  Guess what country we were studying last Spring?

This is our soapstone hearth, and antique redwood floor, in the living room/master suite. This is the way my floor looks pretty much every morning.  DH is totally great about getting up and making a fire for us in the morning before he goes to work, but sometimes not so great about sweeping up the ashes.  I will gladly sweep the hearth and floor--I posted this pic just because I have a feeling most of you readers never wake up to a bedroom floor strewn with ashes and bits of wood (from when it was carried in the night before).  Welcome to my world.

And it's not like it's just the living room that suffers from such daily debris. This is my sad kitchen floor, only a few hours after it was swept.  Four children, three meals a day (ok, at least two), firewood being carried in, a dirt driveway, no place to leave dirty shoes outside the house. . . sadly, my floor is only tidy for about 5 minutes after being swept.

Those worn places on the floor are some of what I was trying to fix before my family came.  I did a really poor job, but at least it is much less noticable now than in this photo, which is from a few months ago.  Which tells you just how long I have had it in my head to share photos of my dirty floor with you.  All in the name of making you feel so much more content with the state of your own floors.

You can see the mix of antique chairs we use--the spindle belong with the table, but the folding oak are less tippy for little ones.  The table and chairs all belong to my in-laws--a permanent loan that I really truly love and appreciate.

I keep reading on some people's blogs--esp. those of you in Texas--that parts of the country are experiencing 100 degree temperatures almost daily.  We are currently experiencing heavy fog pretty much all day, so above is what the thermometer inside the house read yesterday morning.  Hence, the daily fire. 

On Monterey Bay, if it reaches the upper 80's we're in a heat wave; where we live, under the redwoods over a creek, our temperatures generally peak in the upper 70's.  If we are lucky.  So yes, DH makes a fire almost every morning of the year.  Sometimes during our hottest seasons, we have gone for as long as a month without a fire.  Last summer I heard we had the coldest summer since 1971;  this summer we had a gorgeous spell of weather, right when my family all came to visit (yay! but even then the mornings are cool so we still made fires for our guests), but it has been cool since.
 
I should admit here that our low temperature inside the house on a January morning might only be five degrees lower than that.  Living on the Bay, we only experience a temperature range of about thirty degrees throughout the year.  So, mild summers and mild winters--not much to complain about. 

But it does not really matter how cold I think it feels in the house--here at home, any time of year, there is always the chance that I will walk into a room to find my children naked.  (Yes, they are all stripped down to their panties/diaper on a chilly morning.  No, Smiley does not sleep up there with his sisters, he sleeps in the crib underneath, but has recently learned how to climb up to the top bunk all by himself.  Which mommy is not at all thrilled about, but which is sometimes very cute.  Yes, all three girls sleep in one single bunk.  We breed them small, for efficiency.  YES, we plan on coming up with a better sleeping arrangement . . . one of these days. . . for now they are happy and sleeping through the night, which is all I care about.)

Speaking of Smiley, here is what he was up to earlier this week:

No, wait, he looks too adorable--that picture does not quite do the moment justice. . .

There we go. 

I can't believe I managed to raise three toddler girls with not a single wayward lipstick.  But now along comes the boy. . . .  At least he was wearing old pajamas. . . and did show an understanding of what to put lipstick on. . . I am working on that whole gratitude thing pretty well, I think.

But I am sure many of you have your own tales of kids and lipstick--that's more common.  Let's see, what else can I find about our house that most of you would not experience in your own homes. . .

And, there we go.

That is a banana slug, native to the Santa Cruz redwood mountains.  This is a fairly small one, only about 2 inches long. My laundry machines are down in the underbelly--what I call the loosely sealed, mostly dirt-floored storage area under the house.  So, we live in harmony with all manner of God's wild creatures.  But this guy was really lucky I caught a glimpse of him there in the crack of the washer door just as I was shutting it.  Frankly, I'm lucky too.

They don't just keep to the underbelly--no, sometimes our kitchen has mysterious visitors in the night.  These tracks are tiny, so I have to assume were left by a garden slug.  But I have never seen a slug on any interior walls in the daylight--just sometimes find these shimmering ghostly trails. 

Our cabin is single-walled construction.  Which means the other side of those boards is the outside of the house.  Good thing we are not fanatic about being sealed off from the outside world, as in several places you can see daylight through cracks and holes.  Hence the occassional guest.  

I'll save the wolf spider stories for another post.

Yes, we could put sheetrock up, and insulate, and do all that stuff to their walls that most people do.  But then we would lose the beautiful, glossy old-growth redwood heartwood that currently lines our walls--stuff that is now so rare that a single board of the quality and size of one of ours would cost you well over a hundred dollars, if you could even find it.  

So we are choosing to embrace what our little house is--and enjoy it.  Like the ceiling, which got a fresh coat of paint when we moved in.  This is the view from my bed/the sofa, next to the fireplace.  I love how the light from the big picture windows plays on its beams throughout the day, different every hour, and how the glow of the night's fire dances above me as I fall asleep.  My ceiling is one of the things I love most about my house.

Oh, and if you have been trying to picture what 560 sq. feet looks like, well, that's pretty much it.  The window at the far end is over the kitchen sink.  The bedroom/bathroom/shower is off in a little shed-roofed addition to the right, through the kitchen. 

And while it is far less than ideal to have our master bed in the living room, I have to admit it does up the cozy factor for our family.  Some days this is what school looks like--another favorite view, just for fun. 

And finally, just because this is a photo gallery of my unusual home life, random stuffed animals.  Because anytime I download photos from the camera to the computer, I never know what I might find.  (Upon querying the photographer, Sunny, it seems the kids were playing Christmas.)

This is the little guy we surprised her with from San Francisco when my family was here.  He's a baby sea otter named Butterscotch Baby.  I think my daughter likes him.  I also think my daughter might have a future with the camera. 

So, there you go!  I hope you all enjoyed this peek into Life in My House. 

And HEY, any of my fellow blogging readers, if any of you get the urge to write an "If You Lived In My House" post on your own blog, leave a link in the comments below!  Those of you who don't blog, please feel free to leave a quip of some kind about your life at the moment.  I love hearing the details of your lives. : )

Update #2: Ransom paid

Miracles.

God at work in the world, noticably.

God's people, strangers from all over the world, moving as one body.

This post is long over due.

SO GOOD:

I started telling you a story a couple of weeks ago, about a little girl found hidden away in a metal crib in a former Soviet Block country.  A little girl who had Down Syndrome, and who had been so unloved and barely cared for that when her new adoptive mother saw her, she wondered how the little girl had survived for so long.  One of the posts originally sharing their story is here and you can see a video of this mother and her new daughter, Katie, there at the orphanage at this post.  When I first wrote about this story, the mother had posted on her blog many photos and descriptions of the horrible conditions in which she found her daughter and other special needs children, but since then she has had to remove all such references and details from her blog, due to political backlash from the country in question, which her caseworkers feared would create problems for their adoption proceedings. 

Some things can be erased, but not forgotten.  I am so glad the mother is still blogging about their adoption journey--which the foreign government is fine with--because the story just keeps getting better and better.  In the same post that has the video, which I linked above, the mom describes some of the amazing things happening now during their adoption process, things that are completely out of the ordinary and should expedite the proceedings and get Katie home much sooner than usual (which is vital, considering Katie's fragile physical state)--things that Katie's mom believes are interventions straight from the hand of God.

And just today, Katie's mom made a new post, in which she focuses on her blessings.  And while I have a hard time looking past those emaciated arms and stunted body, past the long years of suffering and unlove, her words remind me that--even now--love is overcoming. 

EVEN BETTER:

When Katie's mom was visting her daughter there in the orphanage, she talked about the other special-needs children in that room where her daughter was, especially one little girl who was even older than Katie and--it is almost impossible to comprehend--in even worse physical condition.  Those posts too have been taken down from the mom's blog, but that little girl--being called "Liliana"--is the one I wrote about here, because of the efforts being taken up to raise funds for her to be adopted.

In that post I shared that Katie's mom contacted another blogger mom, Adeye of No Greater Joy Mom, who wanted to help raise funds for Liliana, so that when an adoptive family could be found for her money would be no obstacle to getting her into their safe arms as quickly as possible.  Adeye asked her readers, a generous body with huge hearts for the plight of the orphan, to help her. . . .

This is one of those posts that I really needed to write in a timely manner.  Because on Wednesday, Aug. 17 Adeye asked her readers if someone could please donate one really good prize for the "giveaway" she was going to have as a fundraiser.  (Bloggers are not technically allowed to sell things, but they can do "giveaways" and in this case to earn a spot in the giveaway all you had to do was make a donation of any amount to the adoption fund for Lilliana).

Her readers responded with overwhelming generosity, the very same day, and gave iPads and Pods, Kindles, hundreds of dollars in gift cards, and LOTS of other things.

The giveaway started Thursday morning.  The goal was $22,000.00, which would cover almost all of the adoption costs.

By Thursday night, the amount raised was more than $23,000.00.

In one day, caring people all over the world came together and raised the ransom for this long-forgotten child.  Because God had not forgotten her, and when He moves in people's hearts, they respond, with joy.   

You can see the photos of Liliana and read about this awesome story here.

BEST:

Within the same week, Liliana was claimed by hopeful adoptive parents who were paper-ready. 

As Adeye wrote, "How can I ever thank you all enough for literally pouring out so much LOVE for one little girl?  I found out today that things are moving along steadily with her adoption and that her family is already compiling their dossier which will go to her country.  Please continue to pray that things will move forward swiftly and without any glitches whatsoever.  Like many of you, I am so hoping that Liliana's family blogs their journey so that we can all follow along.  If they do, I will be sure to pass the information along to you."

Oh, I hope they blog about it too!  That would be the BESTEST.