The Long Awaited Trip

This coming Tuesday, July 11, Naomi and I are embarking upon the trip she has been waiting for and working towards for a long time. We adopted Naomi in September of 2003 and she has not seen her biological sisters since then. Leaving them was most likely the hardest thing she had ever done in her life, but she had no choice in the matter. The family that disrupted the adoption of the three of them would not allow us to adopt Abby and Maddie, nor would they allow the other family to adopt Naomi. They insisted that these sisters be separated, for reasons not clear to us.

Ever since the day they were separated, one of Naomi's greatest desires was to see Abby and Maddie again. Last summer she asked us if there was anyway she could work to earn the money for a trip to Vancouver Island, BC, where they live. I don't remember if she came up with the idea of raking leaves or if we did, but she soon had signs written up and posted all around our neighborhood.

Calls started coming in for her on a daily basis - sometimes more than one a day. Raking and bagging leaves was a hard job, but she proved herself to be a good strong worker and in no time she had built up an excellent reputation among our neighbors. Folks who had never even heard of the Edwards family knew of Naomi. She had calls coming in for other odd jobs, too, which she often did in addition to her raking.

Many weeks Naomi worked six days a week, often raking more than one yard a day. I sometimes had to go and find her as the sun went down so that she would not walk home in the dark. She wanted to get every last minute of work done that she could. She hired her brothers and sisters to help her, paying them part of what she earned. Some yards yielded 75-100 bags of leaves and no one had a word of complaint for the work she and her siblings did. On the contrary, they often called her back to rake more later, as the leaves continued to fall. These raking jobs lasted into the middle of winter, finally coming to a halt in January.

We gave Naomi a certain goal to work towards, since she would be paying for two airline tickets (we would not allow her to travel alone). Even with paying her workers and buying supplies, she eventually reached and exceeded the amount we suggested she save for the trip.

Tickets have been purchased and Naomi and I will be leaving soon for the long awaited trip to see her biological sisters. I only hope the neighbors can do without her for a week.

We would greatly appreciate prayers for this trip. We will fly into Seattle and then our good friends there will drive us to the ferry depot where we will catch a ferry to Vancouver Island. The week will be gone in a flash and the hard earned money well spent.

God has brought this young girl so far - from a rural village in Vietnam to a highly respected hard working young woman in Huntsville, AL. To Him be all the glory!!