Ever Have A Dream That Featured 6 Million of Something You Don't Have, But Desperately Need?

This is what our Dream looks like on paper. It came from Kenya by way of diplomatic pouch last week. I thought it an appropriate way for a dream of this magnitude to arrive.

I'm so emotional about finally being able to have a tangible picture of our cooperative vision that it's rendering me completely helpless to write anything even remotely insightful, or witty, or profound. I've tried, really I have. For a couple of hours. But I just can't seem to produce coherent thoughts. All I can think is if I was a desperately struggling, orphaned child left destitute for whatever reason (the list of possibilies in a third-world African country is seemingly endless), and someone told me that I would from this moment onward be living here, I would think the impossible had occurred. That heaven had actually sought out and found me. And then, increduously, I would run all over exploring the place - being first and foremost a kid. But I would stop short when I came to a bed with my name on it. Because I've never had my own bed. If I even had a small foam mattress on the floor, I shared it with several other impoverished children in my same predicament. And if there was no mattress, which is the more likely scenario, I slept right on the cold ground. But here not only do I have my own new bed, I have new clothes, and shoes, and a school uniform, and books, and toys and...I get dinner even? And then breakfast, and lunch, and then dinner again, all in the same day?

I'd worry for a while that it wouldn't last. That eventually someone would tell me that I had to leave. That I would have to go back to a life of destitution and despair. Wondering where my next meal or drink of clean water would come from. Working from sun-up to sun-down every day despite hunger, thirst, and extreme exhaustion. Sleeping at night under a cloak of fear. But in time I would gain confidence and come to know this big stone building as my home. A place built specifically with me in mind. Where I would not only phyiscally grow and mentally thrive, but I would begin to re-experience the joy of childhood. Ultimately coming to understand what it means to be the cherished, beloved child of the King. Dear God, if even for one small child let it be so!

As I write this, I cannot help but humbly praise God that my own three children have lived thus far under the exceedingly generous, gracious, and protective hand of our Lord. They lack for nothing - a state I am alternately proud of and embarassed by. That they are not reliant on so human a couple as Jeff and I (or any member of our small team) to pull off a 6,000,000 Kenyan shilling miracle on their behalf. That is perhaps their greatest blessing of all.