I wrote this post a week ago but accidentally posted it to the wrong category on my blog and thought I’d lost it. I quickly wrote a short replacement entry, posted it, and then found the original today. It repeats some of the info of an earlier blog, but it’s a little fuller, so I’m posting it. Sorry for the repetition.

For the past month (starting on the very day we arrived in West Chicago) we’ve been working with the summer international student camp at Wheaton Academy. I taught a reading/vocab class (using two books from C.S. Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles–very cool); Dave shared basics of the Christian faith (there is a Creator; He loves you; He died to redeem you); and our family hung out with them during several of their activity times. Dave will continue this ministry since he teaches all the first-year international students in a special Bible class, but we knew it could also continue in our home if we wanted to host one or two of the students.

No way, we thought. We’ve just moved. It’s been an incredibly crazy summer. We’re getting back to teaching (at Wheaton Academy, where the expectations are wonderfully high). Our kids will be adjusting to new schools… The rational and logical reasons for us NOT to take in students went on and on.

But a still, small voice whispered at the back of my mind and heart. “Will you let these reasons–and be honest, the true reasons are really selfish–keep you from seeing me work in a student’s life AND your own?”

Then I decided to go transparent–generally the best choice with the God who knows all anyway! “I don’t want the bother. It will be uncomfortable and I don’t want to parent a teenager; sometimes I don’t even like parenting my own children. When will I ever get alone time? I’m an introvert–You created me that way!”

But the whisper continued–in Dave’s heart, too, I later discovered–and we moved Nina and Jane (their American names, not their true names) into our home last night. Jane is from Vietnam, Nina from China, and they are both beautiful, wonderful girls created by God and placed for this time very intentionally in our family and home.

So yesterday, when I had to share some interesting fact about myself in the Wheaton Academy new teacher video, I said, “This school year my family has four countries of origin: America, Uganda, Vietnam, and China.” It’s pretty amazing.