Oww! That's got to hurt!

Well this morning I was awakened by our 2 year old, as usual, but today was different. Today it seems as though grandma gave him a whole pack of Listerine breath strips. You know, those things you put on your tongue and they dissolve right on your tongue as they freshen your breath. They are pretty potent, right? Well, I had the pillow over my eyes trying to get a little more sleep (it was still 7 something) and he snuck up on me and was wanting to put one in my mouth, but since I wasn't all the way asleep I was able to thwart his meager attempt of freshening my breath before I got out of bed. I told him to get out of my face with that stuff (I can talk to him like that because he doesn't understand English yet!) and he went into the other room. A few minutes later I heard Marlon yelling. It seems as though Robert gave him one of these breath strips and it must of stuck to his finger or something and... are you ready for this? He rubbed his eye! And put breath strip all in his eye! Oww! That's got to hurt! As I pulled him in the bathroom, I began to flush his eyes out with water. As I was doing this it was all I could do to keep from laughing. I know it hurt, but come on... what are the chances of that happenning to someone? It wasn't like it was going to hurt forever. I only wish I could of caught it on video. Anyway, he's fine now and he still has his vision, so no harm, no foul, right?

Also, in the middle of the night,last night, I began to feel my throat swelling shut again. Sure enough, when I woke up this morning the right side of my throat was swollen shut! The same thing as before. It was becoming difficult to breath and swallow again ( by the way, breathing and swallowing are way underrated). But the beauty of Brazil is that the pharmacists can give you anything you ask for as long as you know what it's called! So, I just took my little receipt from my last visit to the pharmacist from week 2 of our adoption journey (and bypassed having to go to the doctor) and got more antibiotics and another shot. Just call me Dr. Dunn! The swelling is already going down, thank God. Hey, wait a minute... maybe I should have asked for valium for all the kids for their plane ride back to the States? Oh, well. I guess I wasn't thinking. Come on! It's a joke! Although that does sound like a good idea. Also when we got up this morning I had an email from Michael that he sent in the middle of the night. He was letting us know that he was in Sao Paulo and his flight was delayed. He said he called Miami and that they didn't have any more flights going into ATL that were available. What? That didn't seem possible. No flights to ATL? I could feel my blood pressure rising at this point. I was just thinking about my first born being stuck in Miami without me being able to be there for him. Would he know how to get a hotel for a night? Would he know who to talk to to get another flight? How was I going to call Gary, who's suppose to pick him up from the airport, because we don't have a phone today? I'm stuck in Brazil and I can't help him. I was so frustrated. That's my son. But then the thought came to me... "wait a minute, we prayed for safety, favor and no complications for Michael as he left last night." We prayed in faith, believing that we recieived it, we prayed in Jesus' name and even said, "Amen" at the end of our prayer ( like that adds more to it. LOL ). I know that God hears my prayers and I can have the things I ask for in prayer. It's settled, period. So, being the great man of faith and power that I am, I stopped worrying about it right away... yeah, right! I was still trying to figure out a way to contact Michael so I could work out all the things for him that needed to be taken care of. Why do I do that? Why is it so easy to trust God in some situations but I feel the need to try and control other situations... like God needs my help? (Oh, I'm sure you never do that, right?) No, seriously. I need to trust God in all situations. He cares about the small and the great issues in my life. I don't want to be like the Children of Israel... who everytime you turned around they were seeing all these great miracles (i.e. deliverance from Egypt, water, manna, quail, their clothes and shoes never wore out, not one was sick or feeble among them, etc. ) yet they couldn't trust God when the next situation arose. They either complained about their situation or they tried to work things out for themselves... man, forgive me Lord. Forgive me for getting frustrated and even a little fearful and not trusting you. Now you might say, "but Jim, didn't you just trust God and see Him miraculously provide over $40,000.00 for you to adopt 5 kids form Brazil?" Yes, I did. But that was yesterday. This is today. The Bible says, that "without faith it is impossible to please Him." Faith is a 'today' thing, not a 'yesterday' thing. I can have all the testimonies in the world of things He did for me yesterday (which is great), but if I'm not living by faith and trusting Him today, than I'm not pleasing Him. That's just the way it is. I need to be going from strength to strength, from glory to glory and from faith to faith. Well to make a long story short... Michael was able to catch his flight in time and is safely at home. They even sat him in business class! Good thing I did all that worrying, huh?

We only have 1 more day here in Curitiba. We will be flying out first thing Tuesday morning for Rio so that we can get the kids' visas. Please pray for favor and expediency. They must approve the kids coming back into the country with us. We found out this morning that we don't have all the documents that we were suppose to have... so, I guess it's time to whip out that faith thing, huh?

Thank you so much for praying for us and for following our journey through this blog. We love you guys!

Love Ya!

The Dunn 10