One day early in the summer I had had coffee with a colleague, Sharon, who is very involved with the Free Christian Church in a nearby town. She told me about a girl in the church who used to nanny for the pastor's baby, but she wasn't sure the girl spoke English. For some reason,
I didn't pursue it. Then toward the end of July, Sharon invited us over for dinner on an evening when this girl she told us about, Aurelija (pronounced "Or-rail-yah"), was in town so we could meet her. We were immediately impressed with Aurelija and how well she interacted with Ieva. She was involved for the summer working at some Christian camps through their church, but said she'd be done in mid-August, and was looking for a job doing full-time child care. She has also lived in Germany where she was an au pair for a family there.The week of August 14th, we had our annual Student Life staff day-long retreat, so we invited Aurelija to come with us for the day with Ieva, which freed us up to be in meetings, but kept both of them nearby. The day went really well and we decided to invite her to work for us full time. She agreed and started working for us last week. The only trick is that she commutes an hour each way via bus from her city of Šilutė. We're hoping she might decide to move here to Klaipeda.
The first day she came to our apartment, I took an hour with her to show her around and get to know her before leaving the house. Even though I felt confident that she was responsible and caring, it was still difficult to walk away & leave my baby with a 22 year old girl I barely knew! It was obvious even by that time that Aurelija was a very committed Christian and even told me that she hopes to serve on the mission field one day. We never even thought of praying for a Christian nanny - but now that we have her, I couldn't imagine it any other way!
Tomorrow will complete the first two weeks Aurelija has spent with Ieva, and we couldn't be more happy. Every morning, Ieva happily waves goodbye to us when we leave and is always happy to see us when we get home, but not clingy. It's obvious that she loves spending time with Aurelija, too. Aurelija's English is pretty good, but she only speaks to Ieva in Lithuanian (which is what we wanted). She told me this evening that she thinks Ieva understands her now! It's fun to think that if she continues to work for us for a while, we'll have a bilingual baby!
Thank you for all your prayers for our babysitting situation! We are so thrilled with the way God has blessed us above & beyond what we ever could have asked for!
