Today my second daughter was baptized. My first, who is 18 now, was baptized with Jeremy and I years ago.
Cosette is 9 years old and has fully given herself to the Lord. Every word that she wrote down to tell the congregation came from her heart. And although she was very shy about it, she also read Matthew 13, one of my favorite passages, where Jesus became baptized by John the Baptist.
Our decision to follow Christ is a surrender to oneself Pastor says. This is something that Cosette will have to learn. And it will take a while before the selfishness that comes along with being a little girl gets crowded out. Before long she will be planning parties around someone else. She will be praying for others and forgetting to pray for yourself. She will love someone so much that she would not hesitate to put herself in front of harm before that person. I just read the other day of a father who threw himself on top of his son who had caught on fire. He put out the flames with his body, his own skin, probably not even feeling the burn, just feeling his baby not burning any longer. The boy did survive with 3rd degree burns. But now he can live, because his father did not even hesitate. Even when his body caught on fire and he also is covered in third degree burns. But I pray he wears those as badges of honor.
We are starting the next process of our adoption. We continue to really pray for those mothers and fathers who have no choice but to give their children away. We continue to ask for your prayers, especially regarding the precious children that we see on the All Gods Children website. We can't choose. We can not say no to a child that needs us. No one who has gone through this process could ever look at the beautiful children, all of them needing a home, and just turn away without mourning. We pray more Christians come forward, that they follow Gods Holy Word and come forward and take a child from these orphanages. We cant take them all. If 1 Christian out of 4 came forward and adopted a child it would end the orphan crisis in the entire world. Just one out of four.
Please help us and prayerfully consider bringing a child into your home.
If you are not able to adopt prayerfully consider giving money to another couple who could. It does not have to be us, there are so many that have to scrimp and save, sometimes for years, to bring a child home. Please help them like we will be doing when our baby is finally home. We will not stop helping others adopt. Please join our fight to end the orphan crisis.
Sunday, July 26, 2015
Monday, July 20, 2015
How Great Is Our God
"How great is our God?". I hear that a LOT from a friend of ours who is living with his beautiful wife and charming family in the Dominican Republic. The have followed Gods call on their lives and are preaching God's word in a lost land. Praise GOD!!! We have, just in the past week, had the amazing blessing of another visit from them here in the US. While they were here they told us about God's provision and clear path for them in the DR and we told them how God has been blessing us all over the place with our adoption. How GREAT is our God?
It has not been easy. Friendships have been tested and either failed the test or passed with flying colors. God has been revealed many times and agonizing decisions have been made. We have been more surprised at the hows so far than any thing else. We thought the $7, 500 would come from many different people and places. God revealed again how He can do whatever He wants to do whenever He wants to do it.
You heard me right! Step 2: complete. We sent our paperwork and our scary-huge check into them today. Hopefully we dotted all our i's and crossed all our t's. Linda from Fairport Federal Credit Union, our notary and friend, was awesome and we got a cute selfie with her we will post later(I insisted....yes, I'm that kind of nerd).
So what's next? Why, the beginning sillies!!! Haha, yes, this is the beginning beginning.Step 3: home study and more paperwork. We have, miraculously, come up with the money for the home study, praise God. We now have to make a decision on which agency to use(they work in conjunction with our agency, All Gods Children) for that. We have to paint the boys room, put locks on poisons and medicine doors, fix the basement, fix the storage and get rid of things, make sure that everything is perfect and NYS law abiding. We have all sorts of meetings, meetings with me, Jeremy, both of us, the kids and us, Mariah separately, psychological and medical testing, our biographies to write, lots and lots of paperwork that comes out to thousands of dollars.....whew. Lots to look forward to in the coming months.
It is just hitting me as I write this that things will be actually moving forward now. 3 months has seemed like 6 and I'm sure the next 3-5 months of home study will feel like 10.... but we are excited. And we have lots of things to do. We are both very hands on people(obviously, with 6 kids plus 1 :-) so we are excited to keep going. We can't wait to see how God works this all out.
Please continue praying for precious M, the 8 year old boy that can not see. Through all of this the only thing that continues to make me anxious is the decision of which child will be ours. M is constantly on my mind when I think of bringing our child home and yet I can't see how God would make that work. We want a clear path to what God would will for our lives. So please, while praying for M, please pray that our decision is made very clear to us through God, not our hearts. We only want to do what God wills.
Thank you so much for your prayers. And a special, deep in our hearts thank you to all of you who have given us anything at all for this adoption. I don't care if it was 5$ thrown into our jar at church, you are part of the reason we will be taking a child out of the circumstances he is in in China. Thank you so very much. We love you.
It has not been easy. Friendships have been tested and either failed the test or passed with flying colors. God has been revealed many times and agonizing decisions have been made. We have been more surprised at the hows so far than any thing else. We thought the $7, 500 would come from many different people and places. God revealed again how He can do whatever He wants to do whenever He wants to do it.
You heard me right! Step 2: complete. We sent our paperwork and our scary-huge check into them today. Hopefully we dotted all our i's and crossed all our t's. Linda from Fairport Federal Credit Union, our notary and friend, was awesome and we got a cute selfie with her we will post later(I insisted....yes, I'm that kind of nerd).
So what's next? Why, the beginning sillies!!! Haha, yes, this is the beginning beginning.Step 3: home study and more paperwork. We have, miraculously, come up with the money for the home study, praise God. We now have to make a decision on which agency to use(they work in conjunction with our agency, All Gods Children) for that. We have to paint the boys room, put locks on poisons and medicine doors, fix the basement, fix the storage and get rid of things, make sure that everything is perfect and NYS law abiding. We have all sorts of meetings, meetings with me, Jeremy, both of us, the kids and us, Mariah separately, psychological and medical testing, our biographies to write, lots and lots of paperwork that comes out to thousands of dollars.....whew. Lots to look forward to in the coming months.
It is just hitting me as I write this that things will be actually moving forward now. 3 months has seemed like 6 and I'm sure the next 3-5 months of home study will feel like 10.... but we are excited. And we have lots of things to do. We are both very hands on people(obviously, with 6 kids plus 1 :-) so we are excited to keep going. We can't wait to see how God works this all out.
Please continue praying for precious M, the 8 year old boy that can not see. Through all of this the only thing that continues to make me anxious is the decision of which child will be ours. M is constantly on my mind when I think of bringing our child home and yet I can't see how God would make that work. We want a clear path to what God would will for our lives. So please, while praying for M, please pray that our decision is made very clear to us through God, not our hearts. We only want to do what God wills.
Thank you so much for your prayers. And a special, deep in our hearts thank you to all of you who have given us anything at all for this adoption. I don't care if it was 5$ thrown into our jar at church, you are part of the reason we will be taking a child out of the circumstances he is in in China. Thank you so very much. We love you.
Monday, July 6, 2015
A Jumble of Thoughts and Asking for Prayer
I truly wish I could give you all the password to show you all the precious children on the All Gods Children website.
I don't spend a lot of time looking unless a child is especially on my heart. M is always on my mind. M is blind and he is 8 years old. A is also on my heart quite a bit. She has a tumor growth problem and her last one turned up cancerous. She is 2. So many more with so many issues. But each one so precious and one that God gave to this world.
We jumped into this thinking that we would be adopting a sibling group within the US. After talking with the agency we chose to adopt internationally. When we asked where the greatest need was they didn't even hesitate, they said, "China". But everyone adopts from China! After much research we know why. The circumstances in China are one of the worst. It is a combination of several factors, each more heart breaking than the last.
Ok, China then! We began to look forward to adopting a little baby girl, as young as we could get, with something very correctable....a cleft palate, possibly even a repairable heart defect. Something easy. Something that was easy on us.
But looking through the kids and babies, watching the videos the agency took on their last mission trip, watching the videos of older kids being dropped off at baby hatches(http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1462626/abandoned-heartbreaking-moments-parents-leave-their-children-chinas?page=all), God has placed an even deeper meaning on our hearts. Easy is not what this is. Children being abandoned in baby hatches, sometimes by parents who would have given anything to keep them, is not easy. Babies and children who are going through the first part of their lives without their mommy kissing them good night is not easy. A blind boy who in a couple years, at age 14, will be out on his own, possibly institutionalized just because he is blind but otherwise is completely healthy, is not easy. Nothing about adoption is easy. Not what is happening to these kids now, not what happened to them or their parents in the past, not what could possibly happen to them in the future. Every part of this adoption is hard. And it is from God. Thank you God, for giving us this experience. Thank you for letting us pray for these precious precious souls.
Logically we should not take the 8 year old blind boy. Or the 4 year old blind girl. Or the girl with the cancerous tumors. Logically we probably shouldn't be adopting at all with 6 kids. We can't think logically. We have to think prayerfully. We cant let our pocketbook lead us, we have to let the Holy Spirit. We cant look through the kids on the page and brush uncomfortably past those kids that might make us cringe. We have to look at them, read their page, think about how their lives combined with ours would look, and pray pray pray.
We are SO thankful for each other. My husband is dealing with finances while I deal with fundraising. We are working as a team and talking to each other about what seems like peoples indifference to adding onto our family or their careless words about us adopting a child with special needs. When nothing seems to be going right, when we spend $100's only to make not even 50% of it back, we can talk to each other and know that we each feel the same way, that at least we have each other to understand.
We are SO thankful that soon we will have our social worker to talk to and ask questions. We will be on the "in" in the agency and be able to ask questions of other moms and dads who have taken home a baby or child with special needs.
We are so excited to move forward, to have a child picked out and to have help with that from our agency, China's agencies and our Social Worker. We are excited to get into the nitty gritty, dealing with travel arrangements, her new bedding and her suitcase to take with us to pick her up. To meet with our pediatrician, to set up his first appointment and get any surgeries scheduled. To pick out his school work for his first year of homeschooling or crib bedding and baby toys if he is a baby. To sit our kids down and really discuss the children that are our options, how they would work into our family.
So much to look forward to. So much work to be done. We are so thankful for each step that is taken that moves us further along. We appreciate your prayers above all. We thank you so much for being an ear when we cant shut up about the process or one of the kids. We thank you the most for the kind words and actions that you share with us. And thank you so much for anything you can donate- a dollar, $5.00, $100.00. Everything you donate helps bring our baby Hoffman home.
We THANK YOU.
I don't spend a lot of time looking unless a child is especially on my heart. M is always on my mind. M is blind and he is 8 years old. A is also on my heart quite a bit. She has a tumor growth problem and her last one turned up cancerous. She is 2. So many more with so many issues. But each one so precious and one that God gave to this world.
We jumped into this thinking that we would be adopting a sibling group within the US. After talking with the agency we chose to adopt internationally. When we asked where the greatest need was they didn't even hesitate, they said, "China". But everyone adopts from China! After much research we know why. The circumstances in China are one of the worst. It is a combination of several factors, each more heart breaking than the last.
Ok, China then! We began to look forward to adopting a little baby girl, as young as we could get, with something very correctable....a cleft palate, possibly even a repairable heart defect. Something easy. Something that was easy on us.
But looking through the kids and babies, watching the videos the agency took on their last mission trip, watching the videos of older kids being dropped off at baby hatches(http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1462626/abandoned-heartbreaking-moments-parents-leave-their-children-chinas?page=all), God has placed an even deeper meaning on our hearts. Easy is not what this is. Children being abandoned in baby hatches, sometimes by parents who would have given anything to keep them, is not easy. Babies and children who are going through the first part of their lives without their mommy kissing them good night is not easy. A blind boy who in a couple years, at age 14, will be out on his own, possibly institutionalized just because he is blind but otherwise is completely healthy, is not easy. Nothing about adoption is easy. Not what is happening to these kids now, not what happened to them or their parents in the past, not what could possibly happen to them in the future. Every part of this adoption is hard. And it is from God. Thank you God, for giving us this experience. Thank you for letting us pray for these precious precious souls.
Logically we should not take the 8 year old blind boy. Or the 4 year old blind girl. Or the girl with the cancerous tumors. Logically we probably shouldn't be adopting at all with 6 kids. We can't think logically. We have to think prayerfully. We cant let our pocketbook lead us, we have to let the Holy Spirit. We cant look through the kids on the page and brush uncomfortably past those kids that might make us cringe. We have to look at them, read their page, think about how their lives combined with ours would look, and pray pray pray.
We are SO thankful for each other. My husband is dealing with finances while I deal with fundraising. We are working as a team and talking to each other about what seems like peoples indifference to adding onto our family or their careless words about us adopting a child with special needs. When nothing seems to be going right, when we spend $100's only to make not even 50% of it back, we can talk to each other and know that we each feel the same way, that at least we have each other to understand.
We are SO thankful that soon we will have our social worker to talk to and ask questions. We will be on the "in" in the agency and be able to ask questions of other moms and dads who have taken home a baby or child with special needs.
We are so excited to move forward, to have a child picked out and to have help with that from our agency, China's agencies and our Social Worker. We are excited to get into the nitty gritty, dealing with travel arrangements, her new bedding and her suitcase to take with us to pick her up. To meet with our pediatrician, to set up his first appointment and get any surgeries scheduled. To pick out his school work for his first year of homeschooling or crib bedding and baby toys if he is a baby. To sit our kids down and really discuss the children that are our options, how they would work into our family.
So much to look forward to. So much work to be done. We are so thankful for each step that is taken that moves us further along. We appreciate your prayers above all. We thank you so much for being an ear when we cant shut up about the process or one of the kids. We thank you the most for the kind words and actions that you share with us. And thank you so much for anything you can donate- a dollar, $5.00, $100.00. Everything you donate helps bring our baby Hoffman home.
We THANK YOU.
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