I'm Keepin' a Look Out!

Our local USCIS officer told my social worker he would be working on the 171 approval's this week! They only get to do them about every six weeks and it's been about eight now. My homestudy has been in for over a month and fingerprinting for two months. So hopefully ours will be in the next round of approvals! I know I'll be checkin' my mailbox everyday for the next few weeks!
For those not adopting internationally...a 171 approval is the go ahead from immigrations to proceed with your adoption. Our Liberian agency does not like to give out referrals, (letting you have any information on any child you might be interested in) until you have your 171 approval, so there are no surprises or time wasted if we are rejected for any reason. It is the first of many hurdles in the adoption marathon.
I'll keep you posted!

"Don't Waste Your Life"

I love this time of year. The sunflowers are out and the roads are lined with those little sunshine flowers that seem to dance in the wind. It means that fall is just around the corner and the harvest is coming in. I even smelled green chili roasting yesterday. Sweet Corn should be available soon and the state fair starts in two weeks. October is our annual Hot Air Balloon Festival and before you know it Thanksgiving and Christmas will be here sending us into winter. But August has to be my favorite.
I am reading John Piper’s book “Don’t Waste Your Life”. It seems the Lord has been challenging us in our personal walk and lifestyle. There is always that balance of living “in” the world and yet not living “for” it. In the end, can we stand before our God and hear those sweet and tender words “Well done, good and faithful servant.” It was put beautifully by another adoptive family who has endured much with their premature first born and now adopting 2 older boys and a beautiful little girl with cerebral palsy from Liberia. Friends who had watched them endure so much with their first now ask why would you want to bring on “trouble”? As they pondered that, they realized this “Because we want to live our lives well”.
John Piper asks: “Whose life is a tragedy? Two woman pushing 80, one single all her life the other a widow and medical doctor serving in Cameroon, West Africa pouring their lives for one great thing: to make Jesus Christ known among the unreached, the poor and the sick. Their brakes failed, the car went over a cliff and were both killed instantly. Or the couple who retired early: he was 59, she 51, living in Florida where they cruise on their 30 foot trawler, play softball and collect shells. Picture them before Christ at the great Day of Judgment “Look, Lord. See my shells.” Come to the end of your life – your one and only precious, God-given life – and let the last great work of your life, before you give an account to your Creator, be this: playing softball and collecting shells. That, is a tragedy. And people today are spending billions of dollars to persuade you to embrace that tragic dream. Over against that, I put my protest: Don’t buy it. Don’t waste your life.”
Galatians 6:14 says: “Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” John Piper says “If we desire that there be no boasting except in the cross, then we must live near the cross – indeed we must live ON the cross.” “…when you put your trust in Christ, your bondage to the world and its overpowering lure is broken. You are a corpse to the world, and the world is a corpse to you”. “The world is no longer our treasure. It’s not the source of our life or our satisfaction or our joy. Christ is.”
God has not called Dan and I to the mission field (yet), He has called us to the ministry of adoption. We know that it will cost us something. Not simply the fees involved with adoption but the life long day in and day out. Our pastor has been doing a series on Nehemiah and one of the titles of his sermons was “Real Ministry Costs” His outline went like this:
Nehemiah 5:14-19
1. Real ministry will often cost you certain freedoms and rights in order to best serve others for the glory of God (14-17, 17-18)
2. Real ministry will cost you time, energy, effort and other potentially beneficial opportunities in order to devote yourself fully to the work God has for you. (16)
3. Real ministry will cost you family and personal time (17)
4. Real ministry will require you to generously and graciously give of yourself and your own resources in order to meet the needs of others for the glory of God (18)
5. Real ministry that costs you your rights, time, energy, the loss of beneficial opportunities, family and personal time, as well as your own personal resources will be remembered by God (19 with 1 Cor 15:5 &32)

Sometimes we think “We have it so good with only one, what are we thinking?” but then I remember the burden God put in our hearts and we don’t want to miss the blessing. I don’t want to miss the laughter and noise. I don’t want to miss those sweet and tender words coming from my Lord and Savior “Well done, good and faithful servant.” I want to “Live my life well for Christ.”
As we pursue adoption the reasons why we initially started get muddy as God hones us and reveals more of Himself in our lives. Actually I am avoiding the admission of my initial reason of having a playmate (or another ear) for our daughter (who needs two mouths as my brother in law put it “One for eatin’ and one for talkin’”). But God has taken us way beyond that initial motivator of a playmate, beyond saving a child, beyond expanding our family and beyond a multi-generational perspective, Now we simply ask, “Lord, show us what you have for us. Bring us the children that will build us further into your likeness, that we might endure, through your grace and mercy as we walk with you and not only pick up the cross daily but live with you ON that cross.”

School Starts!

(This table needs a few more students around it, don't you think?)

We started second grade on Friday! I had spent the last few weeks getting it all organized. Usually I get two 3" binder notebooks, then I make 34 index tabs, one for each week of the school year and label them "Week 1, Lesson 1-5" etc. Then I take all the work text books and rip them out of their binders, hole punch them and put them in stacks. I then collate all the lesson 1's, 2's, 3's 4's & 5's and put them in the first week tab etc. all the way to week 34. That way when I'm ready to do each week, I pull that week out, put it in a small 1" binder (since the 3" binder is now full of the first half of the years work, Lesson 1-17, and a little bulky to haul around) and though it took me a few days to organize...it's done. I don't have to hunt for papers all year. Schuyler made me promise she could work out of at least one book so I left her grammar/language books in tacked, though I am still trying to convince her to put those in as well. Anyway, they were done and sitting there and Schuyler asks "Can we can start school?" I figure "sure" since I know we'll get behind closer to adoption, travel, adjustment time anyway. So maybe now we can still finish by June and not have to go all summer.
I am so impressed with how well she is doing. She hated to read and was slow. It was as if during the summer break somehow she improved! She is spelling words I didn't think she knew and reading words I thought would be to hard and sounding them out with ease. Thank goodness kids learn in spite of us! I switched our curriculum this year and it is more activity than drill. We are having so much fun with it. I also decided to set up a schedule rather than work on a subject till she completed it. Some days she was working till 4PM having started at 9AM. But now we start at 9AM do about 20 min per subject and what she doesn't get done she does on her own in the afternoon and she is learning real fast to get it done in her allotted time! So now we get done by 11:15 or noon depending on the day. Mon & Wed we have Heritage studies and Dan has agreed to do Science on Tuesdays and Thursdays when he comes home. So T,Th & Fri we get done by 11:15 unless we do an art project too.
We will go to family camp again August 20-24th, so we will take that week off. I had started the 2nd week in August last year too as with my mothers terminal cancer thought we would be going to Florida sometime during the year. It turned out we bought our new house in November and school was put on halt till after Christmas break. So we ended up being about 2 weeks behind.
As for my mother...what a trooper! Even though her doctors gave her 18-24 months to live with treatment over 3 years ago she continues to defy the odds. Last summer after several months with no signs of cancer following intense chemo/radiation, it appeared again. She has sustained (I think) three separate rounds of chemo since and the last MRI a few weeks ago showed the tumor in her lung had reduced by 30%. So she is doing another round of 3 weeks of chemo (once a week), one week off, then 3 more weeks with another MRI to follow. She is tired all the time and had to get two shots last week due to low white blood count and those tend to make her bones hurt and give flu like symptoms, but she will be 80 in December and has proved to be a tough old Cajun broad!!! YOU GO GIRL!!!

His Timing is Perfect!

Our home study is complete! It was sent to the USCIS office and Acres of Hope yesterday. In a nutshell it means we wait for immigrations to approve us as adoptive parents that we can bring children into this country without them ever becoming a burden on the social welfare system of this nation! What we are waiting on is the I-171 approval letter and that can take anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months. I have come to find out it is the waiting on every step in the bureaucratic process that is the hardest. It is the unknown. At least when you are pregnant you pretty much can guarantee within a 2 week time frame your delivery date. Here you wait on others; it is out of your control.
I look on the Acres of Hope website and have watched the children available list dwindle to just a few. While I am excited for those children getting their forever families I wonder “When will my children appear on that list?” So we wait.
We have learned in the last few days that there is a change in policy at the US Embassy in Monrovia, Liberia due to a new US Consular. Wither it is her way of establishing her position or directions from higher up is unclear. But she has decided that she will only allow visa appointments on Thursdays. That means they will be taking one fifth of the amount of appointments as before which wasn’t enough at that. There are over 100 children with Acres of Hope alone waiting for visa appointments; and if only 5-6 visas are issued a day…you do the math! Acres of Hope’s orphanage is filled to capacity and they can not take in any more children until some of those waiting go home to their forever families. It looks like it will be a longer waiting period till children are added to the list of available children.
My heart goes out to those families who are so close to bringing their children home and now…it is so uncertain when their visa appointments will take place. Again…they wait.
My heart has been saddened this week too by the realization that we will not be able to take two of the children we were originally interested in. They are special needs. And due to our new insurance since May we realize we can not take on their needs. It was with a heavy heart that I had to tell the office we could not take them. Once I surrendered to my husbands concerns (and he had other good reasons) I felt a peace that God would provide two little girls that will fit perfectly into our family. I know that His timing is perfect even in light of this new slow down, I still trust that. I serve a big God who is able to move mountains (and a US Consular), who knows when someone will be sick and out of the office for a day or a week at the immigration office that will hold up my approval letter because He is working on the heart of the family half way around the world who will bring my children to the Acres of Hope office at just the same time as we are ready to begin receiving information on available children. My God can hold back waters in a mighty river, as well as calm the heart of a hurting soul. I serve a mighty God and in that I can rest, for I know one thing…HIS TIMING IS PERFECT!