When Your Grown Children Return . . .

News Item: Boomerang children seem to be the norm these days. These are the kids that go off to college or out on their own only to return home in a few years unable to make it in the real world. What's a parent to do? It's hard to turn your children away. The best thing a parent can do is making them understand that they are adults now and the rules have changed.

(Read more: How to Survive Adult Children Living with Parents | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/how_2159789_survive-adult-children-living-parents.html#ixzz1HupEhjxT)

The truth is nearly 25 million adult children are living with their parents in the U.S. alone.
A recent Canadian census showed that, of kids aged 20 to 29, 44% live with their parents!

(http://www.adultchildrenlivingathome.com/contract.htm?gclid=CNrAjYbi8acCFcns7QodAEAmbA)

You know the old joke about the man who received a new boomerang for a present but  never used it because he could never throw the old one away. Boomerang kids, evidently, are a fixture of the current culture. It is one of those things you never think will happen to you until too late. After all, we live a continent away from our children. Just when we thought it was safe . . . who arrives on our doorstep but Daniel and Naomi. In case you don't know, Daniel is our second born child, first born son. Naomi is his wife of not quite two years. They will both turn 23 later on this year. We should have had the lights out, hidden under the bed and pretended that we had moved to darkest Africa when they arrived at the front door. Oh well, live and learn. . . .

Now that I have your attention let me set the story straight. We knew that they were coming. We even went to the airport to pick them up. We are extremely happy to have them here. We will also be happy to see them go so that Daniel can complete his last few days of class and graduate from college.

Daniel and Naomi arrived last month so that Daniel could do his cross cultural student teaching here at the Santa Cruz Christian Learning Center. He has been assisting in the 6th grade and doing a very good job. Naomi has been volunteering at the school (even substituting in kinder for a couple of days) including doing lunch duty (Yes, those boys will think twice before talking back again). This student teaching experience will fulfill Daniel's last requirements for graduation from Indiana Wesleyan University. We are very proud of his accomplishment and I will even be able to be at the ceremony. (Sorry, Niki, but someone has to stay home and tend the fires, right? I won't even eat at Taco Bell as a way of feeling your pain with you.)

But Daniel and Naomi have also come home for another reason. Daniel has long expressed an interest in returning to Bolivia to work with children. So this visit has been a chance for Naomi to get to know a little bit of Bolivia and to see if she would share that same goal. Besides volunteering at the school, she has been helping out at a newly established baby home. At this point they only have three babies, all of which are over a year old, one extremely malnourished little girl with a heart problem and two adorable little boys who are HIV positive. I don't want to put words into Naomi's mouth but it seems that these little kids have gotten a firm clutch on her heart so who knows what the future may hold. (God does, of course, but the rest of us will have to wait awhile to see.)

In an effort to help Naomi get a better feel for the country we have traveled to Cochabamba and will be visiting La Paz this coming weekend. We had a good visit at Coch and our co-workers who had not yet met Naomi had the chance to get to know her. One of the highlights of the trip for me was having my pants slit at the market by would-be thieves. They also cut a bit of my underwear but my more important birthday suit was left intact. All they got was a not so clean handkerchief that I was carrying in my back pocket. It made for some good laughs in the telling.

After our trip to La Paz this weekend it will soon be time for our boomerang kids to be boomeranging back home and graduation. We will miss having them around but also eager to see what direction God may take them and if it involves coming back here we will gratefully catch the boomerang.