Finding Our Son in Haiti Day 3 continued

Day 3 Continued

An hour after I had written my last journal entry that Tuesday morning I came down to this meeting spot above. We would meet in the mornings to pray. Sarah had gone to get the new team arriving to haiti at the airport that morning and so it was just me, stew and Christel and Neal. I was reading over Romans 5...still asking God "who is our son".

You see, stew and I have begged God to make our journey such that there is no doubt to us or others that God did this. Those were our exact prayers to Him. I think some of our hesitation was that we did not want to move anywhere on our own. The one little boy was always a possibility in our minds, but we were still blinded and needed God to show us who our son was that HE had chosen. Even in deciding on "baby moses and the toddler" to pray for and then go and see which one or both were our son....we still felt this fear that we were walking in our own choices. We wanted God to do a work in our heart and show us who our son was without us. So, it might have made sense that the toddler was our child when we arrived and "baby moses" was not available. But God had not revealed it in our hearts. We didn't even know what we were looking for. We honestly felt blind and were begging God for sight.

We all sat down and all 4 of us wanted to know what God would do. We talked briefly about our morning over coffee and then neal and christel looked at us and said, "well..." God was with us. I proceeded to talk about what was both in stew and I's heart. I cried and they cried with us and said, "I am afraid!" "Really afraid of choosing in my strength." "I am afraid of taking ____ from his culture and mom that he knew when he was little" "I am afraid I won't provide what he needs!" Christel gave gentle words of encouragement. And then the gospel opened our eyes and heart.

We all began to talk about how we once were far off from God. That we did not know or see God...nor did we have righteousness or anything that caused Him to choose salvation to us. We were an alien far off from God. But God, being rich in mercy, b/c of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace we were saved. He died for us while we were apart from Him. He loved us and adopted us into His family before we knew Him. (Eph. 2, Gal 4, Rom 5)

Stew said, "Let's do it. ___ is our son. I see that God has been leading us all this time." The adoption of our son was led by the gospel of Jesus. We did not choose him, God chose him for us. ___ did not know us, speak our language or give us any good merit for us to choose him. But in that moment we chose him, b/c God chose Him. In that moment it was like angels rejoicing. A peace came over us. We loved him deeply in that moment before he would ever return love towards us. We all wept b/c of what God had done. We prayed and a new race began. To bring our son home.
After we prayed, we waited for the team to arrive who would go with us. They arrived late morning. This sign above was in the wall of our house that we stayed. I didn't know what it said. When the team arrived one of the men pointed me to that sign and said, "You know what that says? Jesus did this for us" WOW! I thought! My heart said, yes, indeed HE did...
So, we headed to His Home to spend our last day with son. OUR SON. I begged God to make the time deep and wide. I expected him to give us no special attention as before. I prayed that God would remind me of the gospel the whole time. I prayed that God would lead us ahead. ____ was put in our hearts by God. It was a transformation that happened. From that moment we knew ____ was our son, he became a son in our hearts. He was felt in our hearts the same way of our son, Wesley Grant. Whatever it took, we would hold our son and fight for him to come home. ____ being in haiti no longer was right. It was broken. He was our son who needed to come home.

I have a story to tell you of that last day. My words will be too simple to help you know what we physically, emotionally and spiritually were going through. But I will tell you. We arrived at His Home. We met with the director and talked and expressed that ____ was our son. All had been praying for that. We had much favor. We proceeded to head down to the kids. My heart was beating fast. As much as i fell in love with all of the kids...all I could think about was going to hold my son. I was nervous about his response...telling myself, he has no clue..he has no clue. But God's grace was with us...we continued down the steps.

The kids all came running at us and the Gilbreaths. We looked for ____. Stew was in front of me and i watched him make his way through the kids headed for ____ who peeked around a bed post watching from afar. He looked at Stew coming for him and literaly raised his hands up with big smiles and came right up to stew. Stew picked him up and I have never seen smiles on ___'s face until then. WHAT?! Christel and I were balling our eyes out and trying to contain ourselves.

Though we didn't get the picture of that moment, all 4 of us hold that picture in our hearts. All 4 of us saw a picture of our own salvation. Of what it was like for a child to run to his papa. God chose us when we did not choose him. He loved us before we loved him. We are safe in our Father's arms.

_____ is our son. And his story is one of redemption. His story is one that will forever change us.

I pray this shares the story of the good news of Jesus. We are all made in the image of God...but sin has broken us...we are all far off. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent Jesus. Jesus died for us..the death we deserved. And He made a way for us to be with God and be adopted into His family. We have nothing for God to love us. His love is a gift...we are saved by faith in the free gift that He gives. He loves us. He is our only hope. He is renewing all things. Our son's story is one of many stories. Thank you Jesus. May your name be lifted higher and higher.