Our first and most exciting news is that we have now officially
adopted Rodolfo after having him live in our home for almost 7 years. Adoption
in Honduras has been virtually closed for many years due to child trafficking
issues, but recently they decided to reopen the option to adopt, so we began
the process of getting paperwork ready, picking a lawyer to work with us, and
preparing ourselves for the opportunity to have Rodolfo legally as our son.
The day we signed off on the adoption papers, Robert continued our
discussion with Rodolfo now in more detail of how earthly adoption, Rodolfo’s
specifically, is a beautiful image of how God spiritually adopted each of us as
His children. God handpicked each of us in our sin and nakedness and without
hope. He chose to adopt us into His family,
to change our
name, our identity, our hope, and our
future. It is natural to be amazed and excited about the new identity that
Rodolfo has received through adoption into our family. Unfortunately, time
often dulls the image that we have of our own adoption into the Father's
family. We love getting to look at Rodolfo's situation as a beautiful physical
image of the spiritual transformation God has done for us. We rejoice in the
good news of Rodolfo's adoption, and we rejoice in your and our adoption as
well.
God's faithfulness has
been shown to us in ministry as well. World Gospel Outreach celebrated a very
significant year as we finished 2012. Our medical and evangelism Serve Teams
saw more patients and shared the Gospel of Christ with over 100,000 Hondurans
last year. God brought us the personnel, resources, and protection needed to continue
this work. The Pastoral Discipleship program is also catching its stride.
Pastors in the churches where we serve are meeting weekly to study and grow,
and they are anxious to do even more this year. The Bridge House youth are
doing well balancing full-time work with university studies and showing
continued growth in maturity and preparedness. The children's program at Rancho
Ebenezer is progressing well through the transition to an improved model that
began last year. We are positioned well to add more children into the program.
There is so much need in this area, and God has been faithful to make a way to
serve these children in need.
Robert and Jennifer Butts
