God's presence is all throughout Emmanuel

Today has been a day of many prayers answered and everything working out just the way it was supposed to happen - we of course may have had our plans in our minds as far as how things were supposed to be, but God confirmed today that everything works out in his design.  The cookies have all been cooked (yay!) and we ended up with more cookies than we had planned for - the dough provided for enough to make cookies for every child to have 2 cookies, plus the volunteers and staff. We were even able to give cookies for a birthday party tomorrow for one of the kids for 80 additional cookies for the kids to put icing on themselves and enjoy!  What a huge blessing that turned out to be!  We were also able to get the gas needed to cook in the larger ovens today, but we ended up cooking in the small oven anyway due to a possible gas leak w/ the large oven...it was meant to be that the cookies were made in the small oven and the amount of cookies produced was in abundance.  What was originally seen as a huge challenge ended up being a huge blessing.

The irrigation project is almost complete - the final pieces should be completed tomorrow and then there are some smaller projects the mission team will be working on the rest of the week.  The younger children school is cancelled for tomorrow, so it works out perfectly that the work project is ahead of schedule so we can all have a full day focusing on the kids.  We are really looking forward to tomorrow to have time with the kids sharing love and continuing to build relationships with them.  

Tonight after dinner we were blessed with having 2 staff members, Katja and Max, share their personal stories of how they came to Emmanuel and what this place means to them. Katja and Max have lived here for 10yrs and are raising their children here along with all of their Emmanuel children.  Their story was very inspiring and they both shared how God has continued to work in their lives and brought them here.  I will be sharing their story with my family and friends at home as I am sure others will as well.

Here are some pictures from the evening "gaga ball" and Tuesday night fun with our kids and the Emmanuel older kids - the games were very competative - the Emmanuel girls are really, really good at gaga ball!