Vivien's Influence...

Well we have always known that God has a purpose for Vivien here. He has done much in our hearts and lives through her.  She has touched many through her life.

Recently we have felt, more than ever that God is showing us what He is going to do through her life. When Edith Lukawbe left our house a couple weeks ago, she left us in wide eyed wonder and amazement at all that God is doing because of Vivien's influence and place in our life.

Many of you know that we were made aware of Edith through my cousin Rachel. Rachel originally went to Uganda to help children with special needs. She met her husband there and now lives  and she and her husband are raising funds to build a hospital. She would visit Edith at Home of Hope every couple of months to help out and visit with her. Home of Hope has 55 children who have been abandoned because of their special needs. In Uganda children with special needs are considered curses and even the mothers who bear them are considered "cursed". If the child has epilepsy, they are often believed to be demon possessed.

Edith had a son with special needs and through a long set of semi-miraculous circumstances (I wish all of you could hear her incredible story) ended up starting Home of Hope, a place for children with special needs where they can be fed, cared for, given medicine and physical therapy and most of all loved.

We were made aware of Home of Hope through Rachel and thinking of of Vivien and her special needs we sent a monetary gift to them at Christmastime (which came from my Granny Melquist). What we didn't know at the time was what desperate straits Home of Hope was in and how timely the gift was.

In early February, Edith contacted us saying that an organization in the US (Embrace Kulture) was sponsoring her to come to the US to raise funds for the expansion of their home. She asked if she could meet with us and if we would have any opportunity to help. She introduced us to Christa Preston who founded Embrace Kulture and was setting up her schedule. We found out that Edith would be in San Francisco at the end of March and since we had some credit card air miles, we offered to fly Edith up here and help with some of the fundraising.

Edith had never been to the US until now. What we didn't know is that Edith was praying about asking someone in America to possibly start up a non-profit or foundation so that Home of Hope could have a US base, as well as a Ugandan base. Embrace Kulture is its own non-profit and was generously hosting Edith, but sending money to Home of Hope in Uganda is a bit of a complicated process as we had found out in December. She was praying about who to ask to start up a US base. We had been on her mind but she was praying for confirmation.

When she arrived and laid eyes on Vivien, she was amazed. Apparently we hadn't thought to tell her that we had a child with special needs and when she saw that we had Vivien she felt like God confirmed it in her heart to ask us. It was evident to us that she was completely enamored with Vivien and we loved watching her interact with her.

As she sat down with us, and told us her story we were awed by all that God has done to bring about Home of Hope and our hearts were drawn to wanting to help her more and in any way we could. A friend of ours had brought up the fact that it would be good for Edith to have financial oversight and a US presence so it had already been on our minds.

We truly felt like God was at work. As we discussed the possibility of starting up a non-profit, God started opening doors and a friend happened to give us the name of a woman who helps with non-profits and another woman who helps churches and organizations with 501c3 statuses. So we are now in the process of learning about how we can do this for Home of Hope.

We enjoyed our 4 days with Edith. She had speaking engagements and meetings several times a day each day she was here.  She spoke at both services at Redeemer Eastside on Sunday.  It was busy but we did get to take her on a quick 3 hour sightseeing trip to Seattle Monday morning and let her experience the Space Needle. We are grateful for all the opportunities she had while she was here, and grateful to Christa and Embrace Kulture for getting the ball rolling.

We truly feel like God has used Vivien to broaden what He has for us and we are excited about what He is going to do through all of this. But there was one point in the conversation that caused us to praise Him and to believe that He has connected our lives with Edith's in an inexplicable way.

After Edith told us her story, we were talking more about her son and asking her questions. Derek lived 14 years with special needs and was Edith's motivation to start Home of Hope. I asked her how long ago he died and she told me 2014. I asked when in 2014 and somehow I just knew she was going to say, "September." She did. As we talked more, we realized that they day that they put Derek's body in the ground and both celebrated and mourned his life, was the same day that we were celebrating Vivien's entrance into the world. She was born the day of his funeral. We do believe that God has truly connected our life with Edith's and has a plan for what He is going to do and how he is going to help Vivien have a small part in helping more children like her, even if it is across the world.

If you'd like to help Home of Hope expand we have almost reached the goal and there is about 2 weeks left to give to the crowd fund.You can give here. http://help-edith-expand-home-of-hope.causevox.com/

Thank you to all of you who have supported through prayer and giving generously and coming to the events.  Also thank you to those who contributed cloth diapers!  We were able to send Edith home with 2 big suitcases full and hopefully Todd and Maggie will be able to bring more in the fall.  As a side note, when Edith traveled to LA with the suitcases there was a mix up about the cost of the baggage.  The flight attendant, after finding it out told Edith that she didn't need to worry about the cost.  Edith replied to this effect, "I think God made you do that,"  The attendant smiled and said back, "Amen!"  It's so fun to watch God work.

We would appreciate your prayers as we go through a learning curve of setting up a non-profit, a 501c3 and a giving website for Home of Hope.

In the meantime we are celebrating what God is doing through the life of our little girl and how he has used her to continue to touch others lives in ways we never dreamed of.

Lastly we want to share this little video we took of Vivien recently. We'd never given her a baby doll before but Maggie was playing with her and we were amazed by her response. She played with her for quite a while and we've never seen her respond to a toy quite like this!  Enjoy!