The drawings... the rest of the story.

     Sit down, this is a long one, but one that bears telling. For each child, when they were 9 months old we went to the same photographer in Whitehouse, Texas and had "naked baby pictures". You know the ones... everyone wears white and the "baby" is naked. Yes, only the baby. We moved from Lewisville, TX when Caleb was 6 months so this happened a little later. We had kept up with our former next doors neighbors who both happened to be professional artists. My nursery was a great example of their work. They painted it with the Noah's Ark theme and Gail (the wife) made all my bedding. Anyway, after we completed the pics with Caleb we called Tim (the husband) and asked him to do a pencil drawing of one of the pics. He had never done this with people, but had been talking about trying this right before we were moving. He was excited to attempt it for us and we were confident in his abilities having seen numerous other works of his. He charged us $35 for supplies after we begged him to let us pay for some amount of it. We were more than thrilled! Well, it was wonderful and has hung in our house ever since.

     As we added children, we continued to go to the same photographer and have the pics made, but lost contact with Tim. We wanted to have the other pics done, but didn't pursue it too much. I finally determined I had to have the others done and set out to find someone through the internet. After corresponding with an artist and pretty much deciding to let her do them I wavered wanting them to be done by someone we knew. I dropped it praying that we would find someone we knew personally. Fast forward a few months later at our house when our small group met for a Saturday night of fellowship.

     One of our friends admired the first drawing and made comments about how she dabbled in art some and had always wanted to try pencil drawing. She had never done it before and I had never seen any of her work. Keep in mind, she never had any training. Well, before she came to our house she had been reading in Genesis about the building of the tabernacle and how God trained the various artisans to do the various projects for it. She prayed and asked God to consider her love and gift for art to benefit missionaries in some way. She told God she was willing to draw for Him and would not accept payment, but for any money the recipients would pay she wanted to be forwarded to various missionaries are her choosing. She didn't want to know the amount or the missionary to know what was even happening. This all happened before she came to our house. I told her I would be delighted to be her first attempt at this. I felt confident in the outcome. She took the photos and the first picture of Tim's to study.
     1 year later she completed the first picture (which happened to be the last one) and we were floored. I truly don't remember what I said. I didn't know what to say. It was amazing. Her ability was incredible. Even Tim who had never done a pencil of people had a degree in art and was working as a professional artist. Christa just had a love for drawing and did it from time to time for fun. We have been sending money monthly to a particular missionary & decided to do this for 1 year. Now today the last drawing is done and framed and once again we are just floored. Her talent is truly a blessing & now we have the entire set complete. We were planning to hang them all together, but decided that that would not give each drawing the individual attention it deserves so we will be re-arranging our house for a while to find just the right spots. Christa has really outdone herself. She even framed them for us.

     She has chosen a missionary family who once served in Papua New Guinea and is now in the Phillipines (she doesn't want them to know it was done for them or know any of the details... she just wants to give her talent to the Lord to use). She has a heart for this family because Christa was raised in Papua New Guinea as a missionary kid herself and has a heart for those people. Christa and her family are no loger a part of our church and we miss them dearly, but we will be forever linked with this amazing story of little miracles that are evident in this story. 1. Allowing us to have a pictures done by friends, 2. allowing Christa to fulfill her promise to God to allow her to use her gift for Him (with Him guiding her gift... since she wasn't sure if she really had a gift.... or just a dream) 3. Allowing us to be blessed and to pass on the blessing to these missionary families. It has been a joyful adventure! Thank you Christa for all your hard work!