God orchestrating it all

As tomorrow is Joy's last day at school and Sunday her last day at church it seems an appropriate time to post her mother's account of how we all came together.

Joy eating breakfast before leaving for school in the morning

The way everything came together in so many large and small details, it was SO-O-O apparent that God was orchestrating it all. We are really in AWE at how God took care of so many factors. some of which are:

• finding out who you were through Laurie Batty when their family stayed in our home here - just at the time when we were trying to discover how to help Joy realize her dream of an exchange program in Japan.
• allowing me to meet you personally on the ONLY weekend I had free to travel when my father passed away in April.
• the British passport (which I found out how to obtain while on that trip from the assistant pastor of our church in St. Catharines who is going as a missionary to England).
• taking care of the finances in an amazing way which made it so easy - North American donations covering her stay there in Japan while Brazilian donations looked after her flights. NEVER EVER in all this world did we expect that to happen! We expected ALL of the finds to come from North America!
  
  

Joy in her Ajigasawa High School Uniform

Our travel agent found a wonderful price for the flight, and and with the Brazilian churches raising the funds for the airfare, we did not have to even figure out how to get funds from Canada to us. It was a glorious day when Joy walked into the travel agency and was able to pay cash for the tickets - totally provided by loving Brazilian brothers and sisters in Christ.

God knew ahead of time, we were in no situation to help financially as we would have liked since, with the falling U.S. dollar against the Brazilian Real, we have lost over 30% of our buying power over the last two years and are barely... How graciously He planned it all.

- Yvonne Baab

Joy with a classmate and Mrs. Saruga

I, too, saw God's sovereign hand in the arrangements when we learned that Tomomi Saruga (Messiah soloist and the conductor's daughter) for whom we have been praying so long (!) was to be Joy's homeroom teacher.