Thankful Thursday

Our family is getting an exchange student today.  I'm going to be a Mom again.  It probably sounds ridiculous but Ive got the same jittery excitement to meet her like I do my other kids.  I also pretty sure that "raising" her for 10 months will not be any easier than if she were really my daughter.  Maybe harder.  Her name is Chantal, she is from Germany and we love her already.  I am thankful for the chance to share my home.

And why did we decide to share our home with an exchange student?  We have been blessed far beyond our needs.  We have a beautiful home, in a wonderful neighborhood.  We have good friends and a wonderful family and a great job.  The Lord could have given us much less and we could have been happy.  Our home, which is one of our favorite blessings is large and spacious for our family.  We planned it that way so that we could grow into it as our family grew.  We are amazed at the generosity of HF in our lives.  We have been so abundantly blessed, and I am reminded of that every time I walk by our "guest" room and see that we have everything in this house that we need and more.  Since we live so far from family, the guest room goes unused for most of the year.  Someday our family will spill into that room and it wont be a guest room anymore but for now its extra blessing space.  Since fostering kids isn't right for our family right now (though we have considered it for the future),  we have decided to host an exchange student for the year.  We want to share our blessings, our love, our family, our lives - all the good in our lives, with someone else.  Plain and simple - we have been given so much, we can share.  I am thankful for this chance to.

How did we get into it?  Well I had been thinking about the blessings we have and thought that I would like to get into doing some volunteer work.  I looked up some websites for local volunteer opportunities and one of them pulled up an exchange student program through The Center for Cultural Interchange, or CCI.  Andy and I had talked about it a few years ago.  I grew up having exchange students and it was a really neat experience.  It didn't feel right when we talked about it before.  When I found the program I decided it couldn't hurt to look into and see what was required.  As soon as I made an inquiry of interest  - it just felt right.  I was told to submit an application, which would give me more information about the program.  When Andy got home, I had just finished doing the application.  I talked to him about it - a little weary of his reaction since it was so sudden - and he was completely excited about it.  He felt the same way about our blessings and had been thinking how we could share what we had.  Well that was a relief!  Before we could really even finish discussing the possibilities the agency called us because they were in need of host families and it was getting late in the game for placements for this fall.  That evening she sent us profiles of the girls we could choose from.  This was a 1.5 weeks ago and Chantel comes to our family today.  I am thankful everything has worked out so relatively smoothly.  Dealing with the school district wasn't fun but that is another story, another time.