A priceless Christmas gift

Amidst all the hustle and bustle of Julian’s graduation, Thanksgiving, the Christmas season, finishing up the first semester at school, and sending Julian his gift, apparently a lot of activity went on behind the scenes in Colombia, too. His social worker found him an opportunity to continue his studies in Bogotá, which explained why she never contacted me.

It disappointed me to know he wouldn’t come to stay with us, but this opportunity thrilled me. The program we wanted to get him in here only served as a stepping stone without any clear leading. His social worker found him an opportunity to study the Arts, his main passion. So, we dropped our pursuit to bring him here and went back to Plan A, to support him in furthering his studies once he exited government care.

I thought back to that lonely boy I barely knew at the beginning of the summer, the boy who felt so alone, completely forgotten about by God. God now flooded him with more love and opportunities for his future than he ever dreamed. It honored and humbled us to play a role in his story.

I spent Christmas Eve with half of my heart in Colombia once again. (Perhaps it never left.) I researched airline prices for our upcoming trip in June and couldn’t believe the prices we found, hundreds of dollars cheaper per ticket than we expected! When our friends who travel often saw the prices, they suggested we book those tickets immediately. Mike hurried to get his vacation time approved for the following summer, and we booked them!

This was real. We finally had tickets to take us to Colombia.

It felt surreal, after everything that led us to this point. I gave Julian the dates, but he didn’t have any idea where he would be or what he might be doing at that time. We’d arrive almost two months after his eighteenth birthday, so he didn’t know if he’d still reside in government care or live on his own by then. We felt confident God told us to go in June, so it forced us to take a huge step of faith.

I think I glowed on Christmas Day. What a year, filled with a whirlwind of emotions, leaving us committed to and smitten by this seventeen-year-old boy in an orphanage in Colombia. Not just any seventeen-year-old boy from any random orphanage, but the sibling of the two children we failed to adopt, living in the same orphanage I called so often in the previous year. God indeed redeemed our story by giving us Julian, our Christmas miracle.

“Hi. May I please speak with Julian?” I could hardly believe I dialed the number to that same orphanage again, now over a year later.

“Hello? This is Julian speaking.” I barely recognized his voice.

“Merry Christmas, Julian! It’s me, Rachelle!” I don’t think he recognized my voice either on the other end of the line.

“Hi, Rachelle! It’s so good to hear you.” His voice held gratitude for my call. After all the times he watched his brother and sister receive my phone calls, now he held the phone on the other end of the line as the recipient.

Oh, to hear his voice again. I adored that boy. The pieces fit together now, and the puzzle started to make sense, despite all the times I asked God, “Why Colombia? Why that orphanage? Why those two kids?”

Each piece mattered.

A little box filled with lots of love

I now faced the upcoming holidays with joy and gratitude in my heart rather than the despair I faced a year ago. I cherished the time with my parents when they came to visit us again for Thanksgiving. My mom, David, and I hit the stores on Black Friday like we always do, but I didn’t wince in pain as we walked through the toy aisles this year. The princess outfits didn’t torment me as I walked by them either.

The orphanage recently gave me permission to send Julian a Christmas gift, so I thought of him this year as I shopped. He told me once that he didn’t own a Bible, and I remembered saying maybe I’d send him one for Christmas. I searched through the Spanish Bibles at a local Christian bookstore to find him the perfect one. David and I worked together to find the right translation for him. We wanted a Bible with both the Old and New Testaments, but still little enough to fit inside a small box. My heart filled with joy when we made our purchase that day.

It’s amazing what latching on to hope can do for you. We didn’t feel like we’d reached the mountaintop yet, but we anxiously and eagerly climbed our way up. It felt good to love and be loved again.

Julian’s high school graduation approached quickly, but he ran into an unexpected problem. Since he attended a year-long course at a technical school at the same time, he did not attend his high school classes as consistently as he should have. Now with graduation right around the corner, he found out he might not graduate because he missed too many classes. The news devastated him!

It concerned us, too. Without a diploma, he couldn’t take the courses we hoped for him to take here. We prayed for God to make a way for him to graduate.

Julian said he had to take a test to show how much he learned throughout high school, and, luckily, he only fell short in one area--Calculus. The school gave him remedial help and allowed him to take the test again. We prayed him through it, along with all of his prayer warriors at our church, but when he took the test the second time, he still didn’t pass. So discouraged and scared, he gave it one more shot by hiring a tutor before meeting with his teacher to demonstrate what he learned. That boy had more prayers going out for him than he even knew. He finally passed, graduating a week later.

He made it, so he totally surprised me when he said he didn’t even want to attend his graduation.

“Why don’t you want to go? You worked so hard!” I asked.

“I don’t have anyone to go with me.” He invited one person from the orphanage, but she couldn’t go. He didn’t feel like going to his own graduation all alone. Thankfully, when he realized the orphanage already paid for his attire, he changed his mind at the last minute.

I chatted online with him that morning while he got ready. “I would have loved to go with you if I were there.”

“I know. Thank you.” He nervously put on his cap and gown, saying he looked like a penguin. I loved being able to “spend” the morning with him.

He did meet up with a female friend at his graduation, one who also grew up in the orphanage with him but no longer lived there. He didn’t take any pictures, but she did, and he sent those to me. I immediately printed them out to hang on the wall in the spare bedroom. He sure made a handsome graduate, making me one proud “Mom”.

Months earlier I made a small photo book with pictures of Julian and his siblings. He never found an opportunity to get a picture of the three of them together, despite my begging, so the book only contained pictures of him and Juan David together or him and Viviana together. Now that I had graduation pictures, I taped them onto the inside and outside back cover of the little book. I bought a CD of one of his favorite songs, and I carefully packed it all together in the little box with his new Bible.

http://tinyhappy.typepad.com/tiny_happy/2008/08/hope.html

His Christmas package still felt incomplete, but an idea came to my mind about what it lacked. When I sent Juan David that little Texas keychain over a year ago, I bought myself a matching one as a keepsake. Juan David now had a new family to love him, although they still hadn’t adopted him, and my heart let him go. I wanted to give Julian the matching one rather than keep it for myself. He and Juan David could share a common possession, plus now it could remind Julian of a family in Texas that loved him as their son, now his family forever. We didn’t need adoption papers to declare it true this time around.

We just turned the calendar to December, but I couldn’t wait to send Julian’s gift. That little box seemed ready to “bust at the seams” because it held so much love within it. I couldn’t bear for it to sit on my counter when it could be in his hands. I carefully wrapped it all up tight, drove to the Mail Mart and sent it off.

What an odd feeling, walking into that Mail Mart again with yet another package to send to that same orphanage in Colombia, another one of those moments I never could have imagined taking place. Our story touched the owner of the Mail Mart so much that she gave us a discount for every package we mailed those kids. Now, a year later, she recognized me as soon as I walked in the door and gave me the discount again.

I secured the tracking numbers for my package and watched online almost every hour until that little box reached its destination.

 “Milllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll gracias. (Thanks a million!) The gift is beautiful. I love you guys so much. I don’t need to receive another gift at all for Christmas.  This is more than enough.” Julian thanked me immediately for the gift.

To add to the excitement, the same day I put the package in the mail, the director of the orphanage also gave me permission to start making phone calls to Julian. I only ever heard his voice once, and I didn’t even remember what it sounded like during those brief moments of a conversation Juan David arranged over a year ago. 

An open door beckoning us to Colombia?

“How are you doing today, Mom?” Julian sent me a random message during the day, but his new choice of vocabulary brought tears to my eyes when I read it.

Could God have made it more obvious that He chose Julian as our son even without allowing us to adopt him? What a pleasant surprise when he called me “Mom” in early November. The first time he wrote it, it melted my heart. I could only imagine what I meant to him now after all this time, or how long it had been since he even used that word. It solidified our bond, binding us together for life. Through it all, I gained another son.

Only a few days remained until Juan David’s thirteenth birthday. Since he still resided at the orphanage during the week, I asked Julian to please wish him a happy birthday for me. Juan David got my message, and it meant the world to me that he knew I didn’t forget his special day. I never imagined a year ago after our last conversation that I’d still send him a birthday greeting a year later. Truth be told, I didn’t think I’d ever communicate with him again.

God filled the entire month of November with His goodness and blessing, opening several doors we didn’t even know existed.  I remembered one of my particularly long conversations with Julian in the summer. He mentioned how he would love to study in the States, but he also turned the table to ask, “Have you ever thought about coming to Colombia to live?”

“An opportunity like that would be a dream come true!” His question actually brewed in my mind over several months as I wondered if God had more waiting for us in Colombia than just Julian. Deep down in my heart, I believed God might call us to serve as missionaries in Colombia someday and use Julian to draw us there. I didn’t know this for sure, nor did I have any clue how it could ever work out. I researched several mission boards I connected with in my college days to see if they had missionaries in Colombia, but none of them worked in Bogotá near Julian.

I brought in the mail one day that month, quickly ready to throw all the “junk mail” in the fire currently burning in the fireplace. A letter caught my eye, so I decided to look at it first. We received yearly letters during the holiday season from a certain mission organization, and, truthfully, neither of us knew how we’d gotten on the mailing list. We didn’t even know anyone who served with them. As I pulled the newsletter out of the envelope that day, I wondered if any of their missionaries lived in Colombia, specifically in Bogotá.

When I realized they did have missionaries serving near Julian, I soon found myself glued to their website. The home page also contained a link to a Christian school in Bogotá run completely in English for missionary children and also for Colombian children of parents who serve in the ministry somehow. I found the jackpot, this little gold mine! I could feel my heart beat faster as I read more about the school, its mission, and personal testimonies from teachers currently working there.

Could this be that wide open door for us to get to Colombia as missionaries? I had to find out more. I contacted the mission organization to say we planned to visit Colombia in June. I asked if we could visit with the missionaries in Bogotá to observe some of the ministries going on.

Mike and I shared a passion for the mission field, after spending a summer working in Mexico together as an engaged couple, so finding a possible ministry to join in Colombia stirred my heart. We had to find out if God had a plan for us there, so we agreed to scope things out when we got to Colombia to meet Julian.