standing with hope

by vonda hogle

As we headed for the airport on Saturday, January 7, 2010, I said to the director of the orphanage, “I don’t know what God is doing (though I totally knew what God was doing) and I will keep praying about it, but I just want you to know, if anything ever happens, I want to take care of these two.”

That was on Saturday. Three days later on Tuesday, January 10, 2010 I was at McDonald’s playland talking to a friend while our kids played. I was crying telling her I did not know what to do with all of the feelings I had about these two children when I got a phone call explaining that there had been an earthquake in Haiti. The magnitude was measured at a 7.0 and the epicenter was Léogâne, the town where the orphanage was.

Over the next few days, a flurry of things happened as we tried to find out what had happened with the community we had just visited the week before. Thankfully, we found out that everyone in the orphanage was safe and unhurt. God truly did a miracle, but He was just beginning. When I finally got to speak to the director of the orphanage, the Help Haiti Act had been enacted stating that if an adoption was in process before the earthquake, it would be expedited. He said to me, “When you sat in the meeting with the lawyer when you were here … we will consider that your initiation of the adoption process.”

In March, I traveled to Haiti to do whatever I needed to do. I truly didn’t know much of what I was doing, but I knew God was at work. Before I arrived, I found out that the kids’ mother was still alive. Three years before the earthquake she had placed them in the orphanage because she couldn’t provide all they needed and it was important to her that they were cared for and received an education. She had an older son who had spent some time in the orphanage, as well, but now was with her.

I will never forget the day she arrived at the orphanage in March to meet me. They had not told her why they had asked her to come, but when she arrived she said that she already knew who I was because God had shown me to her in a dream. She was a very godly woman who trusted God in ways I couldn’t even begin to imagine. As we talked about what a future in the United States would look like for her children, she said to me, “I have prayed for the lives of my children every day. I trust God so much that I already look to you as their mother.” Humbling! I cannot imagine even to this day what it must have been like to be in that position.

I will fast forward. The two children from the orphanage did get to come to the United States with me in June of 2010. We stayed in contact with their mother with frequent phone calls. In September of 2011, however, we were unable to get a hold of her. She had gone to the Dominican Republic with a pastor and his family to do some outreach ministry for the Haitian migrant workers there. Finally, we got a call from the director of the orphanage that one evening, a week before she finished a women’s bible study, she stood up to pray and collapsed from an aneurysm in her brain. She passed away three weeks later.

At the time, all I could think about was how God had honored her prayers for these two children and made a way for them to have a life in the United States. The boy, who by this time was a teenager, had some issues that were beyond my capability to manage. As a result I was unable to adopt him.  He did leave my home, but stayed in the city. I was able to adopt the girl and then I truly did feel as though our family was complete.

That would be a great end to the story, but God’s ways are so much higher and greater than ours. One morning in October 2022 I got a call from the boy, who now is a man doing well and thriving. He asked me what I was doing that afternoon. I informed him of my busy schedule and asked why. He said that because of some recent initiatives that were enacted, his older brother and young family, the one who stayed back with their mother, was coming to live here in the United States and he was going to the airport to get them.

Here is where the long prayer game of God hit me like a ton of bricks. Eleven years after their mother’s death, God honored her prayers – her requests and trust in Him – to see all of her children living with great opportunity and provision from Him.

vonda Hogle

I know this was a long story, but here is what I hope you take away from it. Revelation 5:8 tells us that our prayers are the incense that is collected in the gold bowls before God’s throne and in His time, they are poured back out on the earth. I said that I have put a clock on God, thinking that there is an expiration date on my prayers if I don’t see an answer, or at least the answer that I want, in my timing. God could care less about our timing.

As a matter of fact, 1 Peter 3:9 says, “The Lord isn’t really being slow about his promise, as some people think. No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent.” We have no idea the impact of our requests and what work may be done for the benefit of others as he answers and works out His perfect will in our lives – if we will trust him.

Today you may feel like the clock has run out on what you have trusted God for, or even things you are sure He promised you; but can I encourage you that He is not slow. He plays the long game even when some things are answered quickly, I can guarantee that it also has a place in what He holds for the future.

Hebrews chapter 11 is considered the Hall of Faith, but verse 13 puts perspective on it, and I would submit to you that among the names of Enoch, Noah, Abraham and Sarah should also be Erole Gentile. “All these people died still believing what God had promised them. They did not receive what was promised, but they saw it all from a distance and welcomed it. They agreed that they were foreigners and nomads here on earth. “