What Will This Semester Hold?

So you may be wondering what has become of our student, V, who was living with us last semester. Well, she’s back with us for the rest of the school year!!

Now let’s start with some basics. Her name is Victoria. We call her Victoria but friends here call her Vicki. She’s from Rosebud, South Dakota, which is an Indian Reservation. She is here because our church is doing outreach ministry there and we said we’d take her.

Our first semester has been filled with trials on many levels as we all have learned to adapt to a stranger living with us. We have had some desperate times where we didn’t think anything would change and that it wasn’t going to work out. And we were pretty much ready to throw in the towel. We had a hard time with hope.

You’ve seen a little progression of things here, shoeboxes and Halloween. And the thing is, these things are just ordinary, every day things. But suddenly they weren’t so ordinary because to one, she had never experienced them in light of Hope. On the rez, there is no hope. There is no purpose to receiving an education because you will not go to college, you will not get a job, you will not leave the rez and escape the darkness that resides there.

But by us just saying yes, we have brought one girl out of it all and into hope.

We get many opportunities to answer who, what, why she is here. I’ve been almost tongue-tied at how to answer. Over and over I have prayed that God would help me learn how to answer succinctly. If I said she was here for education purposes, that wouldn’t be exactly right. If I said she was here to share Christ with her, that would be more correct, but a little put offish and just not encompass the whole thing. It is both and more.

She is here for HOPE!

That’s it!! That’s the answer!

Amazingly, I don’t have a great verse to go with that. But think of the word hope and what it means to you in your daily life. What hope has been given to us by Christ’s gift to us. It is this word, hope, that we hope Victoria will embrace as fully as possible this next semester.

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I took this picture of her at Christmas. She was reading this little book Bill’s parents gave her. I didn’t even plan it. How perfect is that?!

P.S. When I was pregnant with Audrey, my grandma shared with me that she always thought the name Victoria Rose was beautiful. I was like, *gag* ‘That’s nice, Grandma.’ Heh!- only God knows what He’s doing. (her two children’s names are Linda and Robert- go figure)