#2!
After leaving the team of 4 in the coast of Colombia, a big piece of news were waiting for us. We are pregnant! A new life is growing in Abi´s tummy! Quarentine arrived days later and even with the stressful moments that the lock-down brought , it has been a really good time for just being instead of doing!
Being together, without the need to look at the calendar to plan the next trip was lovely, (I had plans to travel once a week in March and April visiting projects, Striders and organizing the Latin Link Colombia team retreat in Medellin) so the lock-down brought loads of time to pray and process what this new life brought and what it means for us as a family!
We scheduled an appointment in the 12 week of the pregnancy for a scan! God has been good to us and we discovered that baby is healthy and growing perfectly. We had our compulsory cry together (we never cry as you know! ;) ) and we worshiped God to have the joy of a new baby as part of our family.
After overcoming the stage of processing the news, the next step was thinking the logistics of having a new baby, and those logistics are a bit more complicated when the family is cross-cultural. This chain of thoughts is a little window of our life:
- If the due date is 10th of November, we have months still to get ready! We have ages!
- Oh, but, wait a minute, we would like to have the baby in England, right? we don´t want to have to pay for visas, and gather documents for the baby as we have to do for me (Pipe) every time that we go there!
- Yes! definitely!, so we should go to England.
- And Abi could be with her Mum and Sister. She will love to have them around when the baby comes!It will be lovely as well to be around Grandma and the rest of the family! we need to start gathering the docs for my visa right now!
- Oh, but wait a minute!, the airports are shut! and the borders closed! *panic* but, no problem we still have time to go back! *deep breath...*
- mmm or maybe not! the limit for pregnant women to travel in a plane is when they are 7 months pregnant. Ok, so that take us to mid September. That is good.
- oh, but wait a minute! The Colombian government has just extended the emergency status until the 31st. of August! so it means that the visa offices are shut like the airports, like everything else until that date, so we can´t send all the docs even when we have them all.
- No , but no worries! when the total lock-down finishes 1st. June, the air traffic will be open bit by bit, so maybe the 1st. September international flights would be available.
-Ok, so maybe Abi could travel then and I could stay in Colombia meanwhile I ask for a visa and arrive later! But, if the visa offices are opening in September then.... I will be able to travel maybe at the end of October the latest! just on time for the due date! ...I hope so!
-Or... maybe, God wants for the baby to be born here for a reason that we don´t know yet!
Anyway! As you know now, the picture of our future is pretty blury at the moment. Sometimes we are in Mose´s Mood: "Yes, God for sure will open the sea!!! Let´s put our feet in the water!", sometimes in Noah´s Mode: "We will wait till the rain stops and for the water to go down for us to get out of the arc" and sometimes in Pipe´s Mode: "I have no idea of anything at all!"
The only thing that we know for sure is that we can rest in God because He already knows what is going to happen. He knows our future, what is best for us and He is already writing the future of our next baby! so we have to put our eyes wide open to see which doors is God opening and which is He closing and have our confidence in Him!
So if you like to pray for us, please pray for peace in our hearts meanwhile the news tell us our government decisions, please pray for direction from God to take the rights steps towards what He wants for us in the near future and it´s implications! and pray for the baby to keep growing healthy!
