an answered prayer

i spent alot of my early teen years babysitting. i loved kids and it was fun to make money-although at $1/hour i wasn't rolling in the dough. :) i never thought much about how the parents felt, leaving their kids with me. didn't seem like that big of a deal. now that i am a parent i realize how much you want someone to take care of your kids who will think they are the greatest. and love them. a couple of months ago we were new to denver and i realized that we needed some babysitters to take care of the kids when we had gatherings or small groups. it's one thing to ask someone to take care of one child-a little harder to ask them to take care of 3! and for a fee that we can manage! :) i started praying and asking some people from our old church here if they knew of any great people for this job. noone seemed to have any good recommendations. then i remembered that norton had met with a guy who was a denver seminary student along with his wife. they are also on young life staff. i thought, "surely they know someone at seminary or in young life who would like to babysit." so i emailed them. later that day i received an email with a list of 9 names and numbers! they recommended i first call olivia, who did some nannying during the day. i called her up. right away i liked her. you usually can't go wrong with a young life leader-spoken from a former young life leader. :) anyway-she came over to take care of the kids and was as delightful in person as she was over the phone. the big thing for me, though, was when we walked back in later that night. the first words out of her mouth were, "i love your kids!" if i had had a million dollars to give her, i would have at that moment. (i'm sure she would have liked that too!) truly an answer to prayer. thank you ms. livia for thinking our kids are the greatest and loving them! we think you are pretty awesome too!