A Surprise Easter blessing

One of the things we did as a family was to release these balloons with a message and a way to contact us. We let them go Easter afternoon and hope we hear from someone. The week before Easter I gave a challenge to the kids to do something to encourage someone else outside of our family. Lily, Tia and Rachel met this challenge with a great idea. They made these baskets themselves, bought candy with their own money and even made cookies. They wrote a message to our neighbors and placed them in the baskets and then they gave them out Saturday afternoon to several of our neighbors. We got a surprise on our doorstep while we were out to church Easter morning...one of our not so friendly neighbors left us some flowers and a nice homemade Easter card. For over a year we have been loving them at each holiday with something and  a message to encourge them. We were rewarded with a positive surprise this Easter.

Now let me give some history with this story...In  May 2008 just weeks before we were to travel to Ukraine for the adoption of 5 children there was a knock at our front door. I answered it and there stood 2 cps workers from social services. Apparently our neighbor had called back in March to have us checked out because we were adopting these 5 , went to a church, and we were building an addition. They were not there to check on any abuse or neglect issues...I immediately let them in. Fortunately the kids were all doing school and their rooms were clean...and we had just completed our homestudy update and because the Lord was showing us something...They were so impressed with our family and actually apoligized to us for this...but they had to investigate this claim . Paul had come home to be a part of this discussion with them. Honestly they were very satisfied with our home , children and family. They even shared some information that allowed us to sort of figure out who did this....and after we shared why this family might have had an issue to burn with us...they told us to report them if we felt like we needed to...Very odd but it gave us such a peace to see in such a real way how the Lord provided for our family.

After they left we talked as a family about what a great opportunity we had to see the Lord at work in our lives. Also we said that this is why you live your life like an open book...My letting them in right away, sharing openly our homestudy, recent police clearances, and letters of support from even the school board and all of our medical professionals proved we had nothing to hide...We were encouraged to live our lives hiding nothing....and if we are doing something wrong or immoral than let us be taken to court because our hearts really are for the best for our children. So these social workers were very impressed with the children and how they were and our home. Honestly it turned into a big blessing.

Now we had some bitter feelings towards this family and it was hard to be positive when we saw any of them...but the Lord worked thru our feelings and finally we were able to allow His love into our hearts and we began to pray for them, and send things we made for them to encourage them...and finally after over a year the Lord blessed us with a gift from them left on our doorstep....Thank you Jesus .