His Joy Comes in the Morning!
And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. ~ 1 Peter 5:10
After 14 months of waiting, we are overjoyed to welcome our students back to our Freedom Campus! At 7:45 this morning, the halls that have been far too empty for far too long will once again be bustling with students! The Ministry of Education, along with the Health Department, has made several recent visits to Freedom and has granted us permission to open our doors. We will begin with half days and will continue this current school year through the end of July. The new academic school year will start later this fall.
The days of waiting often felt long and difficult. There were days where questions of "Why God?" seemed to cloud our minds. It often felt like we had hit a brick wall. But God is faithful! He continued to remind us that He knows best. His plan is far bigger than anything we could even imagine or see. He provided opportunity after opportunity for us to be in the community almost daily. He refined us and caused us to fall deeper and deeper into a greater dependence on Him. While we are weak, He is strong! Click here to watch a video about lessons learned during our time of waiting.
As many of you know, we've also been trying for a while now to travel with the boys. One of our biggest desires is to introduce them to all our family and friends! Since we are only guardians at this time, they needed Dominican passports. This past spring, they finally received their passports. Yay! Talk about excitement.
The next step was to apply for their Visas. After a little bit of a runaround, we were sadly denied. Talk about disappointment. Again, the Lord was providing us with another opportunity to be in complete dependence on Him and to find rest in His timing.
After some tears, (from me and the kids!) we started looking into speeding up the adoption process. The process requires that the child lives with you for 5 years before it can be made official. We talked to our lawyer down here and he went to work. Just a few weeks ago, we were given the wonderful news. What was 5 years has now gone to 2 years! After two years of cohabitation, the boys will officially take on the Pyle name! That two-year mark is this October. We are overjoyed and so excited. We hope that all will move quickly and we will be able to introduce them to you all soon!