This past Sunday, August 12, was Kids Day in Uruguay. To celebrate this day, we decided to host a big kids celebration at the church. We reserved a bouncy house and trampoline; we rented a bus to bring kids from different neighborhoods; we had great responses from our outreach efforts; and we made many plans to make it all a success. We were praying and planning for 50 kids. This was an “all-hands-on-deck” event for our church and everything was coming together wonderfully.

Then, a couple of days before the event, everything seemed to be falling apart. One of our church families informed me that they would be unable to attend because of family matters. Then another one of our families could not come due to eye surgery. Next one of our families came down with the flu. Then the company we were renting the inflatables from informed me that they would probably be late. We began to wonder if we should change the event to the following weekend. As we wrestled with everything going “wrong” God reminded me of the story of Gideon, how He said to Gideon, “The people that are with thee are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, Mine own hand hath saved me” (Judges 7:2); and so God whittled down Gideon’s army. Thinking through this story we decided, by faith, to proceed with the event, trusting God to fill in the gaps of those who were “missing.”