Assume the Position

Every Friday night, we go to a market in Hout Bay. It’s the highlight of our week! We look forward to seeing the beach, mountains, every type of person you could imagine, stalls filled with artists and their products, a live band, and the most amazing selection of fresh, cheap dinner options. We go early, draw our weekly cash from an ATM, and find a seat before it gets too crowded. I take a break from cooking, and everyone gets to choose what they want for dinner – even dessert!

Bay Harbour Market is the perfect place for us to learn the heartbeat of the city we're learning to love.
Photo credit: www.marketscoop.co.za

Until our own church starts meeting, we worship at a local church weekly. The pastor has graciously welcomed us as church planters into the city. Every Sunday morning as we drive to that church, Chris looks at me and says, “I think we’re supposed to give all of our cash to the church again today.” It’s become the standard to deplete our wallets and pockets for another church’s offering bucket.

This week, Chris had pulled money for both of us, and we ended up giving the church double! He shook his head incredulously. It’s (almost) comical that the more financial need we see in our own lives, the more God asks us to give. Before we pulled into the church parking lot, we had taken our stance and spoken it aloud: “Thank you, God, for asking us to give all we have because it means you’ve given us everything we need.”

Did you read my last post about astronomical lawyer fees?

And did you know that we’ve been called to live and serve one of the very most expensive suburbs on the continent?

And Chris is starting a Master’s program soon?

Thank you, God, for asking us to give all we have because it means you’ve given us everything we need.

Recently, while Chris was out on a run, his mind started racing about overwhelming financial obligations, an exorbitant amount of litigation ahead, early stages of church development, getting equipped with a higher education, moving into our new neighborhood, and on and on… But he stopped. And God spoke.

The King of Kings told him we are perfectly positioned for miracles. He is delighted when we live lives that need Him.

Bring it on, Lord!
Lifa in Hout Bay

God the Father loves lives that die to live, not live to die. He loves emptying our pockets so we can open our hands. He doesn’t need us to make sense of it. He just asks us to be obedient and use wisdom.

We’ve learned a lot about that as a family.

A few months before we got married, Chris apprehensively told me a figure God had given him for our housing budget. A big one. It was absolutely impractical for the rural community we lived in at the time. We couldn’t even find a home to pay that much for, and we weren’t able to yet. From that day, we started organizing our budget accordingly. We moved into a very large home for less than half of the price we were working toward and began slowly building up a collection of used furniture that we adore. Little did we know that, 18 months later, we would be moving all of that charmingly old furniture across the nation to fill a home that is exactly the amount He had told Chris to plan for.

A few weeks ago, we didn’t know if Lifa would be able to go to school because he had no government registration number. God said to position ourselves for His favor, we bought school supplies, uniforms, and everything we needed to start the 4^th grade. The door didn’t open for Lifa to attend the first day of school, but the waters parted with a miracle and he went, fully prepared, on the 2^nd day. (Here’s the story, in case you missed it.)

We’ve got testimonies to stand on, even when one hand is full of lawyer bills and the other is dropping all of our cash into another church’s offering bucket. We are perfectly positioned for God’s provision. For God-filled, God-requiring lives. And that’s exactly where we want to be.

He asked us to sell my car and move to a city where we’d need it more than ever. I'm proud to report that we've learned to be grateful during the daily transportation strategising. It's been a journey, and not every day has been easy-peasy, but we've learned that it's a gift to live a life with larger parameters than you can provide for. The Ladd Family is honoured to have a calling to this densely-populated city, no matter how many vehicles we have to maneuver it with. 

When God trusts you, when He really trusts You with His most beloved, He asks you do do things you can't do on your own. He uses every open hand to make space for more of His miracles.

Photo Credit: https://capetown-airport.co.za

He asked an army to dig ditches while they waited on the rain (2 Kings 3). He asked His Son to die so you could live.

Tomorrow morning, we wake up to a new season. Our sabbatical will be complete. This is the time God has set to begin planting the church. This is when we are moving into the house with the budget he prepared us for, on the street He’s put in my prayers for months. We will joyfully drive our car to get the work done, and spend the rest of our time walking, loving and knowing the neighborhood He's placed us in. 

The table has been prepared.
Tomorrow we are moving to the foothills of Table Mountain to plant a church. 
We can't wait to sit at our dinner table again!

We are perfectly positioned for God’s love to birth miracles and abundance into our family, future, home and into this city. Thank you for praying and participating on this journey with us.

Friday night in Hout Bay

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www.chrisandkacy.com

Payback

The Ladd Family has something to share. It’s big, bold and urgent.

Many of you have followed along on our family’s journey. (Here’s a link to a silly story of us coming together as a family.)

You might have been there in Tennessee when Chris gave up his passion for trail running and mountains to move to Africa. He came as a single man, willingly surrendering his desires for a family and the mountains. Or perhaps you remember me finding deep fulfillment in my family counseling career and painstakingly giving my therapy licensure back to God, choosing to stay permanently in South Africa to care for Lifa. He has no birth certificate and the circumstances were messy, so I accepted the likelihood of being a lifelong single mom without any legal way to protect my child.

There have been dangerous and difficult times since we said “yes” to God’s call in our lives, many of them better left unspoken. But we have also learned when it’s important to speak, and today is one of those days.

Today, we can tell you that surrender, the gut-wrenching, wholehearted, painful surrender counts. Every bit of it. And it’s worth it.

This week, we see the secret surrenderings over all those years, even the midnight ones were not hidden from God. They’re worth something to Him, and He’s restores what we lay at His feet in the way only He can do.

Yesterday, we took a risk and shared our story with some family lawyers.

We have decided to pursue legal co-guardianship of Lifa. That means Chris, myself and Lifa’s biological father would all have parental rights over Lifa. He has never been counted and has no legal rights. With guardians, Lifa could be safe, secured and provided for.

He can be a kid. With parents

A human being. With rights. 

We weren’t sure we could even afford the one-hour consultation cost, so we prayed, researched and made phone calls first. We decided that these particular lawyers would be the best stewardship of our family’s resources. As it turns out, the family law advocate we will trust to take our names and future to the South African High Court lives on the same street that we will move into next week. It’s the very street and its residents God has been prompting me to pray over for the past 3 months!

The lawyers soaked in every detail and document and then spelled out the process. They said, “Within a few weeks, you could easily have co-guardianship of Lifa.”

They just said it like it was a normal sentence.

They said it like heaven hadn’t just come down to earth, as though they couldn’t hear the chains falling off over the sound of their pencils scratching facts on legal pads. They said it like breaking off generational curses is their day job. (It basically is.)

They told us the cost and the steps:

First, they will write affidavits for parental rights for myself, Chris and Lifa’s biological father. Next, Chris will have to fly across the country to Lifa’s father, have the affidavit translated and explained to him so he can sign and legalize it. Then, we will bring it back to the lawyers. The advocate (who will be our neighbor by then) will submit them to the High Court. With the favor of the court, LIFA WILL HAVE GUARDIANS WITHIN 48 HOURS OF SUBMISSION.

South African High Court in Cape Town

He’s been invisible for 9 years.

It’s been 7 years of fighting, striving, surrendering, and doubting.

And it’s time for payback.

Since our arrival to Cape Town, God has kept us tucked into His favor. He has restored my husband to the mountains. He has even given me a place to exercise my passions and use my clinical counseling skills. He’s paid back those small surrenders that seemed so big at one time. He’s paid them back with more purpose and abundance than we could have dreamt on our own.

And now… Even now…

He’s paying back what Lifa’s never known he didn’t have.

He’s paying back the prayers of a parent’s raw, rendered heart.

He’s paying back 6 years of sleepless nights.

He’s paying back all those tears and struggles with identity.

He’s giving Lifa a name and a place.

He’s recognizing me as a mom and Chris a dad.

Even Lifa’s father, who’s never had a name or an identity, is becoming a dad. His name will be written down for the first time in history.

He pays back what we didn’t even know we needed.

He deposits more into us than we could ever spend of ourselves.

Pray for a smooth and easy process of establishing legal co-guardianship of Lifa.

Pray for Lifa’s name, his father’s name, our family’s name to be written, sealed, secured.

Pray for our finances to pay for legalities, our communication with Lifa’s father, Chris’ upcoming travel, family relationships, favor with the High Court, wisdom and discernment.

Pray for all the dead dreams being resurrected into something bigger and better than we ever imagined. Pray in faith with us, and remember it.

This same payback is available to you – maybe even more. Whether it’s your midnight or your morning, your prayers and your renderings count. Share your faith with us and share in the bounty of this testimony.

Everything you spend counts for something. Everything you give for God comes back exponentially. Don’t stop in the middle of the night, whether it’s been 7 years or 70. It counts.

If you would like to give toward our upcoming lawyer fees or join our family’s monthly support team, click here.

Joel 2: 12 "Yet even now," declares the Lord, "return to me with all your heart… 25“So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten. The crawling locust, the consuming locust, and the chewing locust, my great army which I sent among you. 26You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied and praise the name of the Lord your God Who has dealt wondrously with you; And My people shall never be put to shame.

It's Like Taking a Walk on the Beach

After my first year in South Africa, I visited my family in Texas. I took a walk… No, a stomp down the beach on Galveston Island, spiritually arrested with the choice God had laid before me. He gave me a “Yes or No only” invitation for a very special kind of life and family.

 

When I ran out of beach to walk, I took a spiritual leap. With sandy feet and a tear-salted heart, I said, “Yes, God. You can write my family story. From this day forward, I will commit to being Lifa’s mom, no matter what happens.”  

 

There was no paperwork to validate the invisible covenant I had made and things only got harder from there. When I returned to South Africa, I spent countless hours advocating for justice for the invisible children around me, with one especially in mind.

 

Lifa is a person – real flesh and blood with a beating heart – but there’s not a piece of paper in the world to prove it. Lifa deserves an education, health care, protection, a hope and a future in his nation.

 

I’ve heard “It’s impossible,” a trajillion times out of every type of social justice officer in South Africa. Everything changed once my feet landed on Yes in the sand that day. Everything became possible. Not easy. Not immediate. But possible.

 

A few years later, I took another fateful walk down a wedding aisle. We made a covenant to be a family that walks in God’s miraculous love. We knew we were better together and committed to live in a way that shows and requires God's miracle-sized love. 

 

Some days, that journey is tough.

South Africa started school yesterday, and Lifa had to stay home.

Lifa has never had the right or access to a proper education. I’ve lived in South Africa for seven full years as of yesterday, and I have spent six of them fighting for his rights. My husband’s YES to stand in the gap with us has been a game-changer. We believe in the power of our united prayers- the impossible doesn’t stand a chance when a Miracle Family brings it to the throne.

 

We brought it. We had an excruciatingly disappointing day while all the other kids went to school, but we know all things are possible with Christ - in Cape Town and to the ends of the earth.

 

AND GUESS WHAT: Impossible started losing this morning.

The God of all things possible started “The Great Cape Town Takeover." 

Mission: All Things Are Possible. 

 

Today is the first day of my 8^th year in Africa

 

Today Lifa started his first day of school. 

Legally. Validated. Visible.

Invisible and impossible is broken off forever.

 

There was just one school in all of Cape Town that did not send us away with an impossible “No.” The principal invited us into his office and said “Yes, if…” If we were able to make the invisible boy visible to the government.

 

The school’s admissions counselor has not eaten breakfast or had coffee in a week because she’s spent all of her mornings on the phone with me and the education department. She's denied herself push for possible, fighting for the "Yes, if" with us.

 

Yesterday, I made my way into the big boss’ office in the Department of Education. I went with folder full of paperwork and a boatload of prayer. I sat in the office and watched everything impossible become possible. She made a phone call, sent an email, and IT WAS DONE.

 

She told me Lifa could go to school the next day. I kept my cool: I burst into tears and asked if I could hug her before I went to cry in the car. I called my husband, and we wept miracle’s tears together. I drove straight to the school to give hugs, flowers and chocolate to the admissions counselor. I went home to hug my guys HARD. And we got to work… there were books to cover, lunches to pack, ties to tie, stuff to do.

EIGHTEEN notebooks covered by the incredible Mr. Ladd.

Getting the tie ready for the first day.
Lifa is also really good at keeping his cool.

This morning, as we headed TO SCHOOL, I looked at Lifa and said, "It's like we're walking through the Red Sea this morning." I asked him if he remembered when everything felt impossible for the slaves who were trying to get to freedom, and then suddenly God made it possible His way - He simply opened up the ocean. Lifa looked at me and said, “I was thinking the same thing, Mom.”

“Lifa, this drive to school is like taking a walk on the beach.”

 

We’ve faced fears, struggles and a lot of impossibilities, but impossible has parted like the ocean and made way for the possible. It took a lot of work and a lot of people, but we know Who made the sandy way.

Lifa was full of questions about what the day would hold, but not about Who held him. We’ve got a lot to learn here, but we’re going to keep our feet sandy and our hearts set on Yes.