A little progress this week! After a couple of weeks of just waiting and not much going on, we have made a little progress this week! We have sent off for our passports and are hoping to have them back in four to six weeks. We have a little bit of trepidation about this because apparently the laws changed in 2011 and they want your parent's full names on your birth certificates. Idaho...back in my day, didn't put the full middle name, just the middle initial. Getting this changed is a MAJOR project and the lady at the records department acted like that was complete new information to her and said that they had no thad any influx of people needing their certificates revised...so, we took a risk and just used the original, here is hoping we don't have to go back and redo everything!
We also had our first home study meeting this week! We met our social worker in Corinth at Subway...Chris is totally accusing me of making the plans because I am the only one in the house that truly appreciates the deliciousness of a good Veggie sub...or any other sub for that matter. Anyway, I had nothing to do with it...but I didn't complain! :) I totally meant to take pictures, but I guess nerves got the best of me and I forgot. The meeting went well. We met our social worker in person for the first time and she is a little bitty, sweet, talker! We talked for about 2 1/2 hours and it was not at all nerve wracking, more like just talking to an old friend! Our next visit will probably be our home visit...would love that to be next week but we haven't heard back from her yet so not sure about that yet.
Thursday we got our local fingerprinting done...that will probably take the longest and, in hindsight, we wish we would have gotten on that a little earlier because that will probably take several weeks and our home study can't be completed without them...live and learn! We talked to a very sweet lady who did the fingerprinting AND we will soon know if Brooks has a criminal past we don't know about! (I kid!)
Finally, we got our well tested. We had no idea you were supposed to get your well water tested (apparently once a year....ours was last tested in 2001)! We got the results back today and we have no bacteria...but we do have high levels of chloroform...REALLY, chloroform...I had no idea. ***Update, Chris just called with a revision of this report, he misread and we do NOT have chloroform...we have coliform, which is totally normal and harmless! Makes me think back to a certain court case I was obsessed with this summer, but I digress. Anyway, we now have to use some bleach to treat the water and retest in 7-10 days, simple enough I guess...except for the whole no access to water for bathing, drinking, cooking, etc.
We are now, once again just at a waiting point. Hopefully we will talk to the social worker today to get our next meeting scheduled and get our education set up.
Please pray that my passport application will be accepted, that we can get our water up to standard and that we can continue to keep things moving along. We are still committed to getting everything on our end in as quickly as possible. We also talked to our stateside representative for the orphanage and they have received all of our "stuff" so they are just waiting for our completed home study to proceed! Every day brings us a little closer to our sweet girl! Thanks for the prayers!
Showing posts with label The beginning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The beginning. Show all posts
Friday, January 13, 2012
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Welcome to Our Journey
Almost five years ago, you could have swept me up off the floor when a late night run to the grocery store for a test confirmed what we suspected...we were expecting child number four.
It wasn't in our plans. We had a fine little family. I finally had my little girl and we were finally in a place where we could breathe a little. I could run up and take a little nap without fear of what would happen to the house in my absence. Home schooling was going along okay. Things were good.
Our first blog (One More Equals Four) started as I began to record our life as our family size increased! NEVER, EVER, EVER did I ever expect to be making such a change again...and my husband has the surgery record to prove it! We were done. Our family was perfect. While our littlest was unexpected, he was welcomed and loved and has made quite a splash in our little world!
Then, a couple of summers ago, I was introduced to the book "Radical" by David Platt.
It was life changing. I began to look at our Americanized christianity and saw that the life we were living was not the life God had called us to. We looked good. We went to church every time the doors were opened, we taught Sunday School and attended Bible Study, we had Christian friends and said Christian things and even home schooled our kids. However, we weren't doing a lot outside of our church. We were comfortable. We read our Bibles and said our prayers and lived our life in the traditional, American way.
But what we have learned over the past couple of years is this...the traditional American way is not necessarily God's way. God doesn't call us to a life of comfort. He doesn't call us to an easy life or a quiet life or even a good life. He calls us to serve Him, to love His people, to live a life that looks different.
And so, we began to make small changes. We began volunteering at a ministry of our church to a low income apartment complex. We made friends with a precious, naughty, beautiful little girl being raised by her grandmother and brought her and her sister into our home when possible. My husband began to consider going into the ministry in some way...we began searching for what our life should look like.
And then, we began to sponsor a little girl in an orphanage in Uganda. A precious two year old who lost her mother to breast cancer. A sweet, smiling little girl with a father and six siblings who cannot care for her. She touched our hearts.
One day, my husband came home and suggested to our only daughter that we just adopt that precious girl. Of course, our daughter was ecstatic and happily bounded down the stairs to announce what a great idea that was. I quickly bounded back up the stairs to let my husband know that flippant remarks like that were NOT a good idea. Our daughter was desperate for a sister and her feelings would be so hurt to find out that he was just kidding. However, it was me that was shocked when he announced that he really wasn't kidding...he thought we should pray about it.
And so began the months of praying and talking and praying some more, researching to find out about the possibility of adopting and then praying and talking some more. We had many discussions about what adopting would mean to our family and our finances. We had many discussions about what our families would say and think. We talked to our other children and found that not all of them thought it was such a great idea!
Finally, this November...we decided that this is what God was calling us to do. The finances are impossible, the logistics are equally so, and yet, we know that somehow, God will provide. We know that somehow, our son's heart will be softened and he will accept this precious girl as his sister. We do not know who our little girl is, but we know that she is in an orphanage in Uganda right now waiting for her forever family. We know that there are millions more like her. Precious, innocent children that desire a home and desperately need to know the love of a savior.
As we have embarked on this journey, our eyes have been opened to the desperate need all around us. People are starving to death or dying of preventable disease. Children are suffering from illnesses that could be cured with medicine that costs just a few cents. Boys are being taken and forced into military services and girls are sold into unimaginable conditions. We cannot save them all, but we can no longer close our eyes and pretend that life in America is normal.
So, we invite you to join us on this journey. We know it will be full of ups and downs and lots of waiting. We also know that it will be a learning and growing experience that I am not willing to miss. We know that there will be bumps along the way but that there will also be rejoicing and in the end, Lord willing, we will welcome a little girl into our home and become her Mommy and Daddy, her sisters and brothers, her forever family.
It wasn't in our plans. We had a fine little family. I finally had my little girl and we were finally in a place where we could breathe a little. I could run up and take a little nap without fear of what would happen to the house in my absence. Home schooling was going along okay. Things were good.
Our first blog (One More Equals Four) started as I began to record our life as our family size increased! NEVER, EVER, EVER did I ever expect to be making such a change again...and my husband has the surgery record to prove it! We were done. Our family was perfect. While our littlest was unexpected, he was welcomed and loved and has made quite a splash in our little world!
Then, a couple of summers ago, I was introduced to the book "Radical" by David Platt.
It was life changing. I began to look at our Americanized christianity and saw that the life we were living was not the life God had called us to. We looked good. We went to church every time the doors were opened, we taught Sunday School and attended Bible Study, we had Christian friends and said Christian things and even home schooled our kids. However, we weren't doing a lot outside of our church. We were comfortable. We read our Bibles and said our prayers and lived our life in the traditional, American way.
But what we have learned over the past couple of years is this...the traditional American way is not necessarily God's way. God doesn't call us to a life of comfort. He doesn't call us to an easy life or a quiet life or even a good life. He calls us to serve Him, to love His people, to live a life that looks different.
And so, we began to make small changes. We began volunteering at a ministry of our church to a low income apartment complex. We made friends with a precious, naughty, beautiful little girl being raised by her grandmother and brought her and her sister into our home when possible. My husband began to consider going into the ministry in some way...we began searching for what our life should look like.
And then, we began to sponsor a little girl in an orphanage in Uganda. A precious two year old who lost her mother to breast cancer. A sweet, smiling little girl with a father and six siblings who cannot care for her. She touched our hearts.
One day, my husband came home and suggested to our only daughter that we just adopt that precious girl. Of course, our daughter was ecstatic and happily bounded down the stairs to announce what a great idea that was. I quickly bounded back up the stairs to let my husband know that flippant remarks like that were NOT a good idea. Our daughter was desperate for a sister and her feelings would be so hurt to find out that he was just kidding. However, it was me that was shocked when he announced that he really wasn't kidding...he thought we should pray about it.
And so began the months of praying and talking and praying some more, researching to find out about the possibility of adopting and then praying and talking some more. We had many discussions about what adopting would mean to our family and our finances. We had many discussions about what our families would say and think. We talked to our other children and found that not all of them thought it was such a great idea!
Finally, this November...we decided that this is what God was calling us to do. The finances are impossible, the logistics are equally so, and yet, we know that somehow, God will provide. We know that somehow, our son's heart will be softened and he will accept this precious girl as his sister. We do not know who our little girl is, but we know that she is in an orphanage in Uganda right now waiting for her forever family. We know that there are millions more like her. Precious, innocent children that desire a home and desperately need to know the love of a savior.
As we have embarked on this journey, our eyes have been opened to the desperate need all around us. People are starving to death or dying of preventable disease. Children are suffering from illnesses that could be cured with medicine that costs just a few cents. Boys are being taken and forced into military services and girls are sold into unimaginable conditions. We cannot save them all, but we can no longer close our eyes and pretend that life in America is normal.
So, we invite you to join us on this journey. We know it will be full of ups and downs and lots of waiting. We also know that it will be a learning and growing experience that I am not willing to miss. We know that there will be bumps along the way but that there will also be rejoicing and in the end, Lord willing, we will welcome a little girl into our home and become her Mommy and Daddy, her sisters and brothers, her forever family.
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