Speaking of new families, we have three little kitten additions to our family. Their mother's wisdom chose our bedroom window to leave them under one night, and then she didn't come back for them.

Both of our boys are really enjoying them, but Auden's patience and sheer delight with them is astounding. He'll let them crawl all over him, without the slightest complaint about the scratches their innocent claws leave on his neck and face. And every time we take them out to feed them, he lays down with each of them, putting them under his shirt for 'dede' (breast-feeding).

Angeline has a new mom and a new dad, a new brother and a new sister. John and Felicity arrived here last Monday and came out to meet her on Tuesday. It was so emotional; so many fears and so many expectations. But Felicity kept saying, 'Nothing that I was worried about has happened, and everything that I was hoping for has happened. God has done right by me.'

This sense of 'right by me' is nothing but a divine reversal of the difficulty Angeline has gone through before this week.

We got to spend this miraculous week with them, and can't help but feeling like we've made life-long friends. Some of our very best friends here are also from Maine, so we were able to introduce these two 'Mainer' families to one another, and then step back to enjoy the cultural show.

This has been a very exciting week. We've had two adoptive families here. Scott and Kristy adopted Joshua John (in the middle) from us a couple of years ago. This year they are back to pick up Sarah from another home here in the Philippines.


We didn't get a lot of time with them because we were both running around a lot, but the time we got was very precious.


A lot of it was memories: our boys naping together on chairs we arranged into an imprompto crib while we had lunch at a restaraunt overlooking the city.


Here's Joshua checking-up his dad.