Wonderful day!!

Buenas Tardes (Good Evening),

So much to tell... I'll start at the beginning of the day. The two other dads and us met Eduardo at 10:30 a.m. and went over to the flea market; it was huge. We only had a chance to see maybe 1/3 of it, but all of us really enjoyed it. Some items were like yard sale stuff, but most of it was jewelry, hand craft items, clothing, etc. Eduardo dropped all of us off and said he would park his truck and then find us. All of us were like, "You're going to find us... in this large of place... with this many people???" He said, "Absolutely... no problem." We joked with him and told him that we hope he doesn't have to call his mom (Racquel of Casa de Maria) and tell her that he's lost eight (8) Americans!!! Sure enough about an hour later I was watching Jim and Bethany do something and glanced to the right of me and Eduardo was standing there with this smug look on his face as if he were saying, "Told you I would find you." He gathered us all together and said to follow him. He brought us to meet the fifth family that just adopted from Casa de Maria, but they are staying at The Four Points Sheraton. While all of us were standing around talking, Eduardo went and bought us all drinks... get this, pure sugar cane juice... yummy!!! I brought Bethany over to watch the extraction process... very interesting.

After the flea market, Eduardo brought us back to the hotel. During the whole morning and even standing in the lobby after our day out, we were able to be involved in some good dialogue with these two dads. All of us decided to meet down at the pool and let the children swim. This is where it got very exciting for us and we knew, that we knew, God had us here for this time. As we walked through the health club and I looked to my right, I saw a gentleman sitting there that I recognized from a couple of weeks ago and I said, "Hello". Of course his comment was, "You're still here!" He is from the U.S., has lived in Colombia for 21 years, is a professor at the university, and is also a single dad of two Colombian children that he adopted. His name is Daniel; he's 55 years old and is absolutely amazing. The children he adopted are actually off of the street. The oldest, now four years old, was a newborn. He found the mother of the baby, age 13, on the street and gave her shelter and food. She allowed him to adopt her baby. When she got pregnant again at the age of 15, he adopted that child as well. Now she is pregnant again and he will be adopting the third child as well. He, himself, is an orphan, was on the streets as a child, and knows all too well about abuse. In addition to teaching, he works with the children on the streets here in Medellin on a daily basis. He teaches English, for free, here at the hotel and is actually writing a book about a technique he has developed for teaching language. The class he teaches at the college has a two year waiting list and the US Army has approached him asking him to teach them his teaching techniques. I'm saying all of this because his background coupled with what he does now as an adult, is EXACTLY what both of these dads need; especially the one who just adopted the 14 year old who lived on the streets for 11 years and cannot read or write. When I told Daniel about the two dads, he said he wanted to meet them and since they were sitting over at the restaurant, I brought him over and introduced him to them. Daniel, the two dads, and myself talked for about 1 1/2 hours. Come to find out, Daniel is a very strong Christian and was able to give both gentleman wonderful advise concerning both of their situations. He is going to be a huge resource of knowledge to the dad of the 14 year old; he's been in the teenager's shoes, he works with street kids, he is multi-lingual, plus he knows how to bring a 14 year old that is on a fourth grade level up to where he should be academically. The teenager has no interest in learning English and has no interest in talking to adults. Daniel was able to little by little finally have a very small dialogue with him. He was able to communicate a few important things to him about education and about God. Hopefully over the time they are here, Daniel will be able to make a ton of progress with him. Several times throughout our conversation, Daniel said that all of us sitting there together was NOT by chance and that the Lord ordained it. Later on, Jim and I both said to ourselves that we only ran into Daniel once in 30 plus days. If we were not here today, we would of never run into him, and we would of never been able to introduce him to the other two dads that so desperately need his help in both raising the boys and spiritually.

Well, I'm going to get ready for dinner. Daniel will be joining us tonight for dinner. I told Jim that I really don't know any single dads, especially dads that have adopted children. Now, we're having dinner with three (3) of them...we're excited!!

Chao,
Kathy (No longer "Captive in Colombia"... we're excited... God's using us!!)