Dear friends and family,                                        March 31, 2001
 
We were just given  a few moments ago permission to share with you a
wonderful blessing.  About two months ago we were meeting with our lawyer to
discuss adoption.  She asked us if we owned any property or vehicles.  We
said no, that we were missionaries and that it was not in our budget to buy
property.  She then explained to us that things would be more difficult with
adopting because of that fact.  Even though we are allowed to live in a house
as though it is ours- free to do whatever we please and we are also free to
use a vehicle as though it is our own, it didn't meet the usual expectation. 
Legally of course that is not seen as owning property and we told her there
was nothing we could do, especially since our truck engine was submerged in
water and needed to be rebuilt at a cost of $4000.  We told the lawyer that
we would pray about it.  If God wanted us to have a baby then He would work
everything out.
 
 A couple of days after this conversation we went to a missionary conference
for a day.  John and Madonna Spratt were there and they own the properties we
use.  When they saw us they said,, "oh we have some papers for you."  I  
wondered who  had sent what to them for us.  It is not uncommon for people to
send things to various places instead of directly to us because of our
mountain location.  Then Madonna said,  "we want to give you the papers for
the property and house in San Antonio del Peru as well as the church property
in Penitas Arriba."  She said this as if it were a daily thing, to give away
two pieces of property.  We were stunned for we never expected such a
wonderful gift.  We anticipated that some time they probably would want us to
buy the property and we were always discussing how we could do that since
they probably would need that money for retirement.  We were so shocked when
they told us they just wanted to give the properties to us.  We felt bad for
accepting the papers thinking they were going to need that money.  Upon
advise we gratefully and humbly received the paperwork.
 
Words can not express our gratefulness to John and Madonna Spratt.  The Lord
provided in the moment of our need in a way we never expected.  Most likely,
Monday morning we will go to the lawyer's office to sign necessary paper work
so that the property can be transferred into our name.  For those of you who
don't know, John and Madonna live about two hours away from us.  They only
come into town once a month to do various errands.  They were in town this
weekend on vacation to watch the NCAA, since they love sports and no TV at
home.  The timing is perfect since we will be going to Tegucigalpa, the
capital, next week to submit our formal request for adoption.  John and
Madonna have made the process a lot easier by their wonderful gift.  We
wanted to publicly thank them for such a wonderful blessing since they said
they would not mind us sharing this with you just a few moments ago as we set
up a possible time for an appointment with the lawyer.
 
God is so good,
 
Toby and Amy Hill