Santa, I really don't think I deserve any gifts.

Ha... just kidding!

I didn't think I pinched her THAT hard.

Smile sissy, we both really want that 4 door Rubicon Jeep.

PLEASE PRAY!!

Please pray for my friends little girl, Lydia. She is now 13 weeks and has been daignoised with ALL (leukemia). I am posting her blog so that you can read her exact diagnoisis and know how to lift this family up in prayer. Love to you all.
http://littleleaps.wordpress.com/

Can I Get A Hallelujah, Praise the Lord?

I have been trying not to worry and fret over not having the 'fastest' dossier in history. You all know how controlling I am ;) So when Thomas' approval letter came back over a month ago and mine had not, but had to be resubmitted, I simply gave it to God...and then gritted my teeth.

I truly have tried to forget about paperwork and concentrate on praying for our child/ren, their families, the orphanage, Addy's Hope and Pastor Wesley instead. During this time Thomas, being the supportive hubby he is, made the comment that he was wondering what was really lurking in my criminal files...hehehe. Well, worry no more!! I received my approval letter from DHR Thursday night. Whoop, whoop!

Now we wait for my prints back from the FBI and then our homestudy os FINISHED. It will then go to Addy's Hope and CIS where we will be given an appt for our biometric fingerprinting. Hopefully within 3 weeks.

Cute story, our church had World Hope visiting last Sunday and there were a group of 14 kids from around the world performing (Uganda, Phillipines) My 3 year old daughter, Campbell, saw one of the orphans on the screen they were profiling and yelled from the front row, "That looks like my brother, Noah!" as if I didn't know this already...snicker. Thomas and I just had this huge, silly grin on our faces. LOVED it! Love her loving him already....even though we don't know if we are getting a 'him'. God is good, God is real, God shows himself so vividly from a child's eye.

Adoption Statistics for National Adoption Month

November is National Adoption Month, and since I found these eye opening statistics on a fellow blogger's site (Angel) I thought it would be a good time to share them.

In America, there are more than half a million children in the U.S. foster system, a 90% increase since 1987.

12-18 months after aging out of the foster care system:

27% of males and 10% of females had been incarcerated

33% were receiving public assistance

37% had not finished high school

50% were unemployed

Children in foster care are 11 times more likely to be abused in a foster home than they are in their own home.80% of prison inmates have spent time in the foster care system.

Now, here are some statistics from overseas:

Every 15 seconds, another child becomes an AIDS orphan in Africa.

Every day 5,760 more children become orphans in Africa!

Every YEAR 2,102,400 more children become orphans in Africa alone!

143,000,000 orphans in the world spend an average of 10 years in an orphanage or foster home.

In the Ukraine and Russia, 10-15% of children who age out of an orphanage commit suicide before age 18.

60% of the girls are lured into prostitution.

70% of the boys become hardened criminals.Many of these children accept job offers that sell them into slavery.Millions become sex slaves, simply because they were unfortunate enough to grow up as orphans.

The sad reality is that there are so many children in such desperate conditions. Here are some verses that apply to the orphan situation:

And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me. Matt. 18:5

But you, O God, do see trouble and grief;you consider it to take it in hand.The victim commits himself to you;you are the helper of the fatherless.Psalm 10:14

Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless;maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed.Rescue the weak and needy;deliver them from the hand of the wicked.Psalm 82:3

Learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case for the widow. Isaiah 1:17

He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing. Deuteronomy 10:18

When you are harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it. Leave it for the alien, the fatherless and the widow, so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. Deuteronomy 24:19

When you have finished setting aside a tenth of all your produce in the third year, the year of the tithe, you shall give it to the Levite, the alien, the fatherless and the widow, so that they may eat in your towns and be satisfied. Deuteronomy 26:12

When God first began to put adoption on my heart, I thought, "Why would I adopt? I'm able to have children biologically. We've already had two children, and our family is comfortable the way it is. Why would I adopt?"

And then the Lord began to point me to these scriptures, and He began to show me the over abundance of resources and relationships I was surrounded with every day, and He spoke gently to me, "You are asking the wrong question. Don't ask, 'Why would I adopt?' Ask, 'Why wouldn't I adopt?'"

Have you ever asked yourself this question, "Why wouldn't I adopt?" If you're like me, there are lots of immediate answers that come to mind. It costs too much money. My biological children would have to sacrifice too much. I'm too busy already. What if I adopted a child who had problems I couldn't handle? I wouldn't know where to begin. What if I couldn't love a child I adopted as much as my biological children? Aren't we too old to bring another child into our family? We don't have a big enough house.

It makes me think of the story of Moses in Exodus 3:1-4:15. When God came to Moses in the burning bush and told Moses He wanted him to lead His people out of Egypt...Moses had a lot of questions. He really thought God had the wrong man for the job. But God didn't mind Moses' questions. One by one, the Lord patiently answered them, so that Moses was left without any excuses. It was only when Moses said, ""O Lord, please send someone else to do it," that God's anger burned against him. I want to be a person that God can call upon to do His will, and I want to be comfortable enough with my Father to ask him the hard questions, like, "How is that going to work because I sure don't get it?" But I don't want to be a person who says, "O Lord, please send someone else to do it." I want to learn from Moses and choose a different path...a path into the Promised Land.

Thanks Angel for your words :)

I just wanted to shoot you all a post on what has been happening since our last post. We had our final meeting with our social worker at our home, well not final...but for a while anyway, last Monday. It went to smoothly and the girls slept through most of the discussions that they didn't need to be a part of anyway. Campbell took Ms L on a tour of our house and made sure she saw Campbell's blue ceiling in her room.



Thomas received his approval for adoption through DHR. I, on the other hand, have not :( My fingerprints were not of good enough quality so they had to send new ones in. Once that has cleared it will all go to Atlanta CIS and then we will be document ready.



I just learned too that we are 1 of 7 families waiting on children under 3 ( I am pretty sure we are #7 in the line up) and that there are no children in the orphange under 3 that are adoptable right now. BUt that is ok. I keep reminding myself that it is not my timing but HIS. He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end and every where in between. If God is ready for us to have a child then He we make way a path for this to happen. I truly have a peace about all of this...for now. That is not to say that after we have a referral and know our children's names and see their beautiful faces that I will want to speed up the process. But for now, I am at peace.



We are trying to learn as much about the Liberian culture and way of life as we can. We are hoping to infuse Liberia and America in our home so that our children won't feel to lost when they come home. Here is a short video/slide show to introduce some of the Liberian landscape, faces and facts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCNNYG57wpo

Official Addy's Hope Family

We got notice on Monday that we are officially an Addy's Hope family. I can't begin to tell you how this feels. It is similar to looking at a pregnancy test and seeing 2 lines instead of just one.

Just another confirmation that we are walking in obedience, as soon as we turned in all of our paperwork, Addy's Hope temporarily stopped accepting applications for families wishing to adopt children 0-3 yrs of age. This is the age group that we are in. Also, the price of the adoptions has gone up but not for us. We are one of the last if not the last family to be accepted. God is good and He keeps opening doors for us that we need to walk through.

Thomas and I have a huge praise too. We both FINALLY finished our autobiographies. It is a hard thing to do, sit down and write everything you can remember about your life from your earliest childhood memory to now. Especially try doing it with 2 little ones running around. But it is finished, our sw has them and we both had our 1 on 1 interviews with her this week. We now have a million books to read in the next 2 weeks before our home visit.

Please continue to keep us in your prayers as we walk this road. Also, please pray that God will protect our child (whomever he/she/they may be) as well as their parents/family.
We love you all. Thank youfor your comments. We love reading them.

S

A lot of you have asked what the time frame is for the adoption, so I wanted to try and break it down for you.
From what I understand, our homestudy will take from 4-6 months.
After that is completed, it will go to DHR in Montgomery and will be reviewed which takes about 3-6 weeks.
They will then send it to Atlanta CIS (this is the international part of it) and that will take about 30 days.
Finally, it will be sent to Liberia and I don't know how long that will take. Hopefully, somwhere between 5-7 months until we get our date to travel and pick up our children.
So, hopefully, 15-16 months in total.

We are hoping for 2 siblings, relatives, best friends, etc and are open to 3. We know that God has already chosen children for us, regardless if they have been born yet or not so we haven't specified about the sex of the children. We already love them so much.

I was picking up Campbell from school the week I got back from my mission trip when she asked me the craziest question. There is a huge map of the world on the wall outside her classroom and she stopped me at it and asked, "show me where Noah is". You could have knocked me over with a feather. We have only talked a little bit in front of her about adoption and that we are adopting from Africa. She has named a brother 'Noah' already and she really wanted to know where he was and when we could go get him. It amazes me what little ones pick up on and how they know things we parents do not. It will not surprise me at all if we are referred to a child named Noah. God works in crazy ways like that.
We love you all. Keep us in your prayers.
S

Wow!! We had our first interview with our social worker through Lifeline Children's Services. I was starting to stress about it because our 1 year old came down with a fever on Sunday and our 3 year old had it on Tuesday and we still had paper work to fill out and fingerprinting to get completed...all on no sleep. Our wonderful neighbors were kind enough to watch our little ones while we had physicals at our internist and then made it to our interview. All in all it went great. God was so in control and I felt a peace and happiness at being there and not the anxiety that I thought I would have.

Now we have about 10 days to write our autobiography of our entire life. What a joy that will be to bring up all those past experiences I buried long ago...hehehe.

Thanks for your prayers. They were truly felt this morning.

This is a link to this past Easter message from our pastor, Dr David Platt on adoption. If you are considering adoption, please take time to watch this. It will change your view on adoption and how our heavenly Father has adopted us.

First let me introduce myself. My name is Staci and I am a 35 year old SAHM. I have an awesome husband of 5 years, Thomas, who works so hard to allow me to stay home with our girls. We have 2 little ones, age 3 years and 1 year. They are the best gifts that God has given us after our salvation.

Let me tell you about our journey so far.

Several years ago I saw on a tv show a town in NC that had adopted 16 boys from an orphange in Africa. They were here in the US on tour for their boys choir. Unable to go home because of war conflict, they stayed in NC a little longer. The town indeede up adopting the boys. This obviously was the seed that was planted in my heart all those years ago., I was just unaware of it.

Fast forward to last year. After our 2nd daughter was born, I knew, that I knew, that I knew we were we to have another child and I was ready. After talking to Thomas over serveral months he kept telling me that he wasn't real game for us having another pregnancy. My past two had caused some complications resulting in several surgeries. But I wouldn't hear of it. I knew in my heart that I was to get pregnant again. So I started praying that God would change Thomas' heart and he would be open to us having number 3.

Back up 15 years. When I first started dating Thomas, he had told me of his desire to adopt children at some point in his life. He has volunteered at schools, coached a girls soccer team and volunteered when orphans came from the Ukraine with our church. It really shouldn't have been a surprise to me.

Well all that praying really worked........on ME. Christ totally took away my desires for a bio child and put in it's place a stronger desire for adopting. The seed that was planted 2 years ago started to grow in my heart. I asked Thomas if he was up for adopting and boy was he excited. After a couple of weeks I told him that the Lord had put Africa on my heart and I thought this was where our child/children were. It took him some time of prayer before he too was on board.

So the journey begins!

"Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God and whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe His commandments." 1John 5:1-2

We have heard God's call on us to be obedient and care for His children and we are following. We know that if He calls us to something that He will provide for us and the resources. And we are trusting in that.

"to look after orphans and widows in their distress" James 1:27