Friday, August 14, 2009

Who called?

What do you do when the FBI calls? Gasp, scowl, fret and perhaps freak out a little. Well in this case I cannot tell you how elated I was to receive a call from the FBI.

"Joe, from the FBI, just called," Bob said with a puzzled look. "What?" I responded with a gasp!" You have got to be kidding me. Now this is the second time we have been through this fingerprint/background check thing and yet my mind still starts to wander. So I call Joe. What a funny guy and someone who truly seemed to care about our reason for needing the background check. What are the chances of that? He informed me that I had made and error in sending in a personal check, because of course everything in this process has a fee attached. :) He needed a credit card form faxed over in order to begin processing our request. What I wonder is if Joe could sense my instant delight as I was so happy that the form was not simply cast aside or worse yet left in a pile to be mailed back as DENIED for improper payment. Joe was a friendly angel who called me back two more times just to let me know that my fax was received and a few minutes later to let me know that he would shred my personal check. Not bad huh?! There is hope. The good news is that he thought the paperwork would be complete and back in the mail to us by next Tuesday. Yippee! I tried not to be too sugary sweet but whoever you are FBI Joe please know that you just made this couple's day! So soon we will be down to waiting on just one piece of precious paper.

1 comment:

Lauren said...

Thanks Joe!!!
Melanie, I love your blog. It's so cute. You'll have to teach me some tricks:)
It was so good to meet you guys yesterday. You have an amazing family!

Into Our Arms Forever!

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welcome home ava! from melanie Strobel on Vimeo.

Meeting Ava during our first trip to Ethiopia

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Meeting Ava Ethiopia Trip July 2010 from melanie Strobel on Vimeo.

Korah- Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

During our recent visit to Ethiopia I felt very called to the village of Korah in Addis Ababa Ethiopia. There have been numerous rumblings lately about the tremendous need to help the children of Korah who are growing up in and around the local trash dump. The village was established 75 years ago as a place to send people with leprosy who were said to be cursed. Now there is a 3rd generation of people living in Korah with nearly 100,000 suffering from such things as leprosy, HIV, misc disease and of course malnutrition. There are many children of Korah who have been forced to live and work at the trash dump in hopes of finding food and possible items to sell in Korah's center of town. With the start of the Great Hope Church in Korah and the building of a shelter, along with the ministry of local Sammy Liben and Sumer Yates, there is now a feeding program and a sponsorship program in place to rescue the forgotten children of Korah and send them to boarding school where they can escape the horror of the conditions of living and working in a large trash dump. For more information please visit: www.help4korah.blogspot.com or www.p61.org where you can learn more about how you or your organization can help the people and the children of Korah. Please send me a message or email Erin Allen at erin@p61.org to request sponsorship information. I will soon be posting the photos of my day recently spent in Korah. I must tell you it was life changing and beyond anything I have ever done to stretch, change and rearrange myself. God helped me to help the people who I met. Much of what I could offer was nothing more than the snap of my camera or a warm touch or an inviting smile. The needs in Korah are beyond our wildest imagination yet God is over Korah and there is already amazing work being done. I invite you to view the following videos to learn more about the beauty and the needs of Korah's people.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN HOW TO SPONSOR A CHILD

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Hannah's Hope Orphanage- Ethiopia

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