Cool story warning!!

I wrote this a few days ago but I have been having trouble with my pictures loading so I thought I'd go ahead and post this and then I'll work on adding some pictures soon.

We have had a great week!  Walker has been back to normal so we've spent several afternoons at the church building hanging out with kids.  We usually stop by the Villa Primary school right after school and see who we can find.  We park beside the school and usually have a few kids that come up to the van and visit with us.  We invite them to come hang out with us at the church building and we get a few randomly. Several of the kids that come around on a regular basis live right behind the church building so everyday that we get there, our girls run up to the fence at the back of the church and see who is there.  Once the kids on the other side of the fence realize we are there, some of them usualy come over to play.

Mr. Deon, the song leader at Villa, brought us a bucket of mangoes straight from his farm this week. We were at the building playing with the kids so Will used the mangoes as bait so that the kids would answer some questions about Jesus.  It was so great to see their hands flying up trying to be the first to answer.  They were so excited to receive a mango and all of them ate them right away.  We got some mango education from them!

I have to tell you a really, really cool God story.  When Gena was here a few weeks ago she took us around the Villa area and pointed out where some of the kids lived that have been to our VBS/soccer camp.  The only problem is that she didn't always know exactly which house but maybe just the road or alley on which they lived.  She told us about one girl that lived up an alley and John Oubre Henderson and Sarah Jones would always walk down this alley to get her.  She became very special to them.  We have known which alley she lived but have hesitated to go down it and try to figure out which house it was until yesterday. We were driving around looking for kids and randomly decided this day the 5 of us would walk down the alley together and look for clues (actually I'm not sure how we thought we were going to find her but we were feeling productive to at least try).  There are probably 10 or so houses down this alley and about halfway down we see a man and his 2 young children sitting in the alley eating and hanging out so we asked him if he knew her.  He didn't know her but went inside to ask his wife.  Of course we explained why we were wanting to find her and how we knew of her.  While he was asking his wife, I saw a younger girl come out of a gate a few houses down so I said I'm going to go ask her because she is more of the age of the girl we were looking for.  So I walked up to her and asked her if she knew Fredresha and she said, "Fredresha Pinnoch" and I said, "YES, that is her name!" (I had forgotten her last name so when she told me I got excited.  She then replied, "I'm Fredresha Pinnoch".

Pause for dramatic effect.....

Guys, this is crazy!!  The Holy Spirit totally went with us down that alley and God totally knew that we would have NO CLUE how to find her so he just sent her out of her house at the exact moment that we were looking for her.  How cool is that?!!!!  Long story short, she ended up coming with us and I got to meet her very sweet mother at work and her mother encouraged her to come hang out with us.  So we took her back to the church building and hung out for the rest of the afternoon.  It was such an amazing God moment and I hope you got that feeling while reading this.  We left on a high yesterday being reminded of how amazing God is and how cool his ways are.

And to top it off, this morning I got to see Jehlaine, one of my trouble maker boys from 2 years ago who found a place in my heart.  I was sad not to get to come back and see him last year (because of Walker being born) but was so excited when he remembered me this morning.  Hopefully we'll get to hang out with him soon.

We are eagerly anticipating the arrival of Lee Flynn.  His dad, Dorian, and mom, Cheri, started the Villa church of Christ many years ago so the church members are excited for Lee's visit as well.  Its always fun to see a face from back home.

Pictures to come.

                                                       3 2 1...Go!!!