How did I end up here? -- Part 3

If you missed Parts 1 and 2 --click HERE.

Well, we made it back home!  We had a wonderful time in SC but there really is no place like home.  So, we move into a church house  and we wait for word form the school on whether or not they were approved to hire a foreign worker.  And just so you know, we had been in great contact with the director of the school.  She was a very nice lady who went above and beyond to make us feel wanted and as involved in the whole process as we could be.

September comes: WORD!  We finally hear word concerning the approval.  Well, you might not believe this but it is the honest to God truth:  we get word that the school got approval to higher Luke BUT they were no longer going to.  Just two weeks prior the director that we had been working with the entire time had quit and the new director had just got on the job.  The new director did not know us and she said that they didn't have enough students to continue with starting the school, therefore, they didn't need him.

Yup.  We were fairly flabbergasted.  In one sense we were just happy to have a FINAL word and not have to continue waiting and hoping.  But on the other hand, we were greatly disappointed.  We put so much into this opportunity that we just didn't know what God was doing. 

So, we consult with our leadership and teammates.  The decision was made for us to stop pursuing joining that team .  There just wasn't another viable option for us to enter the country.  Well, throughout that whole waiting and training time, another church (the one we originally went and helped out on our short-term trip in '05) had been saying that if it didn't work out with the one city, that we were invited to join them.  Well, Luke and I knew this was a possibility and we would have jumped on the opportunity before but we really wanted to walk out the opportunity that was before us first.  We  consult with leadership and it is confirmed that we would change our target city and join this other team (they were certain they would be able to get us in).

Well, November rolls around and we had made our third move since arriving in Waco.  We also found out that I was pregnant.  We were thrilled but I was feeling terribly sick.  Sometime around then I also start noticing that our fund raising efforts (now that there was no job with a salary, we had to raise our financial support) were not producing much fruit.  And beyond that, finances were not looking good.

Come a few days before New Years and I find out I'm miscarrying.  Terrible, terrible blow.  It knocks us to the ground.  "God WHAT are you DOING with US????" was the main question.  Throughout this entire time we had been consulting with leadership and this time we came to them with the terrible news of our miscarriage.  The "no" to our first opportunity, the lack of growth in our fund raising, and now, a miscarriage.  Those things were not what we expected to encounter on our amazing adventure with God.  If God was leading us to Russia, then WHY IN THE WORLD were all these negative things happening to us?  Why wasn't our support coming in?  Why did I have a miscarriage?  To add to all that, we weren't seeing a clear way to enter Russia even through this new city.  

Continued in Part 4.