Dear praying friends

Dear Praying Friends,

I write this with tears streaming down my face, in awe of an awesome God and His moving behind the scenes to answer the deep longing of our hearts.

But since I've been so lax in updating all of you, here's the background to the story...

As Victor is close to turning 3, we have been working on the transition from Early Intervention to the Intermediate Unit. We have had such amazing therapists through these 2 1/2 years and we are going to miss them but I'm told, and am confident, that our new therapists will be just as wonderful. Victor will continue with OT and TVI services and will be picking up O&M (Occupational therapy, Teacher of the visually impaired, and Orientation and mobility, for those less-enmeshed than us).

One question that has come up multiple times has been the question of preschool. I'll be honest, we've never sent any of our children to preschool. As an introvert and homebody, I'm quite content to not have to leave my home twice a day to transport a child to preschool. And with a houseful of children, who wants to drag everyone out twice a day to take just one child to preschool? There is also the fact that you can take the teacher out of the classroom but you can never quite take the classroom out of the teacher; learning is life at our house starting from the day we bring them home from the hospital. Why pay for school when it goes from sunup to sundown inside our own four walls? And speaking of paying, well, yeah, there's that sticky issue, too.

However, as we've discussed preschool with Victor's therapists and with his developmental pediatrician, we all agree that the preschool experience will be an essential next step. We are also in agreement that he should be in a regular preschool and not in one through the Intermediate Unit. In discussing this during our evaluation time, they agreed as well.

The next step was, of course, finding a preschool that would accept a visually impaired child, with significant sensory needs, and self-injurious behaviors. Our first thought was to check out a local college's preschool. All it took was one visit and we didn't need to look anywhere else. They were so welcoming; never a moment's doubt that they would work with him or that he would be accepted.

That left us with two dilemmas: Victor needs to choose to be potty trained before preschool starts in the fall and we need to find someone to attend preschool with him daily so that he is not a danger to himself, so that he can safely navigate around the room, to help him learn to self-regulate his emotions, and to help him correctly relate to his peers. We have started the paperwork trail to be approved for a TSS, but without knowing if this would happen, we started to explore every option. With the blessing and nudge from the preschool itself, we also looked at options within the college student body; would there be a student that would like to work with Victor in an internship or even as a type of student teacher experience? It seemed a long-shot but it never hurts to try. I have also been putting feelers out to everyone I know to see if someone would even feel a call to do this, out of the kindness of his/her heart.

Which now brings us to the reason for this prayer letter. This morning I happened to see one of the preschool teachers and she was excited to tell me that unbeknownst to us, one email behind-the-scenes led to another which led to another and we are one final step short of having a college student to work one-on-one with Victor next year. That final step involves approval from powers-that-be beyond the college staff; in other words, my least favorite thing - bureaucracy. Please join us in praying that they would approve this request so that both the college student and Victor can benefit from this experience. Most of all, we have been given hope!

When I heard that little whisper telling me "your child will be victorious", we believed it so much that we gave him the name Victor. What a constant reminder that the victory has already been won!

Thank you for faithfully lifting our family up in prayer,
Cindy