Like Family

The Lord has really blessed our family with Mrs. Y. Our boys love Mrs. Y and I think that it is because she is like a grandmother to them. Yesterday she had to sneak past Lucas to leave our house (making him upset is incomprehensible to her) but Lucas went to the balcony and spotted her leaving. He lost it! He began to scream and cry "Mrs. Y, Mrs Y". Mrs. Y then ducked behind a bush hoping that he would stop crying. No go - he waited for her to reappear and then continued to cry. She tried to keep walking but turned around blew him kisses and waved - he cried all the more. I know that it took great strength for her to keep walking.
Last week Caleb was very excited to be able to have a sleep over at Mrs. Y's house. The other boys cried and cried - they wanted to go too. She couldn't bring herself to leave but she didn't want to take more than one kid on the bus with her. She finally said "Please drop us all off at my house and you can pick them up at 10pm tonight". This was after she had taken care of them most of the day. We made sure that she really wanted to do that. Needless to say all the boys went to her house. When Josiah returned that night he was in tears (and not just because Caleb got to spend the night). "I miss Mrs. Y" he repeated over and over. He was beside himself.
So what I am basically trying to say is that our boys LOVE her. Before making our trip to this side of the world I prayed that the Lord would provide foster grandparents for our boys. He has provided abundantly in Mrs. Y. I love to watch the boys relate to her (even when they are just trying to get her to keep me from disciplining them) and I love that she tries to teach Lucas her language. I love the way she laughs at them when they say and do silly things and even though it is not always helpful I love the way she defends them and thinks that they can do nothing wrong. I love that she finds it difficult to stop playing with them and talking to them the entire time that she is here. Mrs. Y speaks no English but as a mommy her love for my boys speaks volumes to me.