Compelled by Love

This is one of my new favorite guys. He's a friend of a good friend that you've read about on my blogs before. You will remember my talking about Judy and Brett and their desire to find a new house for their Honduras family so that the mother could remove her children from a community that was getting way dangerous and was having really bad effects on her oldest son. This is him. They live in Santa Ana now. When we first started going out there and met Carlos, he was really stand off-ish, had this very rough and tough thing going. I sent Jude an email a couple weeks ago and just asked her to pray and have some people pray that he would soften up so we could get close and things would turn around for this kiddo.

Well God gave us the answer. We put a paint brush in his hand and let him come and help us paint in the children's home and we have a different kid. Seriously. Every day when we show up it's not 5 minutes before he's up there and usually he's waiting at the gate for us to get there. Daisy, his mother, was up the other day and asked him to go eat and have lunch with them and he said no he'd eat later. His mom told our friend Jen outside that he doesn't even want to eat when we're here because he doesn't want to miss a minute of time with us.

So...anyway, I'm posting this picture today as a testament to the power of prayer and a life invested in, because he's not just coming around, he's smiling, and letting us hug him and he's a happy kid who is doing well truly.

Every single time I tell him you said hello Jude he gets this HUGE grin on his face. He knows you all love them and you've made a huge huge huge difference in the life of this family. I hope you feel the weight of that even when you can't be here right now to see it. It's beautiful to watch and I pray often that through these pictures and our stories you might feel the depth of your love, prayers, and support over these precious ones. I'll post a couple more pictures of the rest of the family too.

Keep loving on people where you are. You never know when it might just be the one thing that makes a forever difference! Thanks to those of you who made the forever difference in my world.