Big Announcement!!!

"Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, 

the fruit of the womb a reward.

Like arrows in the hand of a warrior

are the children of one's youth.

Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them."

Psalm 127:3-5

Before you continue reading this post...please re-read the above verse carefully.

God's view of children doesn't exactly match up with our popular culture's.

Children are seen as a blessing most of the time, 

but only to a certain extent.

I mean, HOW MANY children makes a full quiver??

I think it's different for every family, 

but the truth is this:

Children are a REWARD.

Children are an INHERITANCE from the Lord.

Children are like arrows in a warrior's hand.

And we are blessed to be having MORE!

The reason I start with this is because

this is what God has been teaching me 

through His word the past several weeks.

It has been made evident that He is in control

of our family's size, and NOT us!

And we are to be so excited for the children
He brings our way.

That brings me to our big announcement....

I am 2 months pregnant!!

 

Yup.  Crazy. Scary. Unreal.

But real.

 

Definitely a surprise to us, as we are 

currently trying to bring our son home from Congo.

And it may actually turn out that both children come home within a couple months of each other!!!

 

How I sprung the news on Chris :)

So there it is.  We've been holding it in for over a month,

but with a healthy ultrasound

and hearing the baby's heartbeat every day 

on our doplar at home, 

we decided to share the good news :)

 

7 week ultrasound.  Great growth and heartbeat!

  So as Chris has reminded me,

as long as there is breath,

we praise Him.

I'll fully admit that I was very scared 

when I found out.

I mean, I'm almost 26...how can I all of the sudden

have FOUR children???  

THAT FAST?

I feel inadequate to raise TWO little souls 

at once!

But ya know what....

this is HIS plan, not ours.

The Lord never lets us forget that we 

are NOT in control, and we 

NEED to rest in Him and not on our own understanding.

(cuz let me tell you...I still don't understand it!)

So there it is.  Our big surprise :)

Please continue to pray for us.

We should be able to see our son's face in a matter of weeks now.

It seems like such a long waiting period,

but as you can see, God has kept us busy with other news.

You will now be kept up to date not only with our

adoption progress, but with my pregnancy progress as well!

I pray you all enjoy your weekend!!

I will do my best...with my Seabands on my wrist 

for morning sickness, and saltines beside my bed, 

and my husband who has been an absolute ANGEL in 

helping me through this rough period of pregnancy :)

Adopting because of CHRIST!

"In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved."

Ephesians 1:5-6 

Today, we had our fundraiser at church.  

But before any fundraising started, we were blessed with

a beautiful message by Pastor Paul Anthes.

What was so refreshing about his message was

that his emphasis was NOT on how important adoption

should be to us Christians...

It was about how precious, undeserved,

and true our OWN adoption is 

IN CHRIST!

(you can listen to it here)

We have done nothing in ourselves to 

merit our adoption as sons and daughters of The Father.

 However, at GREAT COST, He still adopted us 

and gave us an inheritance!! 

All of this to the praise of His glorious grace.

Our RESPONSE to this should be very natural!

So our motivation for adopting a precious,

helpless, homeless orphan is

NOT our desire to care for him.

It is NOT our desire for another child.

It is NOT our desire for a beautiful African baby.

It IS our desire to glorify Christ 

and LIVE the Gospel! 

We are doing this for Him and in response to 

what He has already done for us!

Such a precious reminder to us this morning.  

May we always stop and remember this 

any time that we start relying on our 

own strength and initiative.

Noelle was really paying attention...

So with that as a start, I believe it prepared our people's hearts.

We had a lunch, 

some q&a time with Paul,

and then some fun DUNK TANK time!

My dad in the tank!

Chris goin down!

Joy dunkin Daddy!

Noelley having a turn

Through it all, we raised over $1,300!!!

We only needed $200 to send off our I600A, 

so I've got that all ready to mail in the 

morning!!

Now we'll have a head start on paying

for the next steps.

BTW, once we get this form back (3-6 weeks),

we'll be able to be matched with a child!

Meaning, we will have a face and name to our son.:)

 

We are beyond grateful and looking forward to 

what The Lord does next!

We still need about $10,000 more.

We're currently researching other ways 

to come up with that!

So we wanted to share our excitement 

and gratitude to our Lord 

for what He has done so far!!

Stay tuned for more updates!!

 

 

Congo: Not such a safe place...

If you are a mom reading this, 

I'm sure you can relate.

Do you remember the feelings you had when you were first pregnant?

Like, 

"I'm so excited to be pregnant!!...but....wait...

do I need to do this now?"

"I've wanted this for so long....but now that it's here, I can wait longer..."

"Do I even KNOW how to be a mom???"

"Will I be a terrible mom?"

"Will my kids hate me?"

"I don't think I can handle going through labor!"

"I'm sure I'll drop him and give him brain damage!!"

 I really hope I'm not the only mom that had those feelings the first time I was pregnant... 

They all went away though.  

I was so happy to be pregnant.

I was so excited to be a mom.

It was just scary...the unknown was scary.

Well, I've confessed to my husband that those feelings were starting to creep up on me with our adoption.

It's new.

It's unknown.

And it's a little scary for me right now.

I'm SUPER excited.  

Things are just getting a tiny bit closer,

a tiny bit more real.

Our girls are in great stages right now!

Things are going great at home!

And I think I got a tiny bit selfish in my thinking.

So I've been praying about it,

and Chris reassured me that he only has 

feelings of pure excitement and joy thinking of bringing him home.

Well I came across an article today that speaks of the current and previous situation of Congo.

It is not good.

It is not a safe place.

Children and adults are not protected very well by their government.

Rape is absolutely rapant.

I will admit that I am not the best expert on the history

and current condition of 

The Democratic Republic of Congo.

I am still learning about the home country of our son.

But this assisted me in realizing my own selfishness.

Our son was born (if he's been born already) in a 

place where there is not enough food or money

to provide for him.

If he stays there, his chances of survival are very slim.

52% of children DIE before the age of 5 in Congo.

52% is a STAGGERING percentage.

Only 1% of children born in America die before 5 years of age.

Will it be an easy road bringing our little son home?

NO.

Will it be a piece of cake getting him and our girls

adjusted to living with each other and us?

NO.

But Christ did an amazing work for us.

He died.

He suffered. 

More than I EVER will.

I'm pretty sure I can handle some rough months

in order to protect just ONE child from what may 

happen to him without an

adoptive family. 

So I needed to share.  

And maybe assist anyone with their apprehensions about adoption.

We haven't gone through it yet, but we will, Lord willing.

And I can't wait to share this journey with anyone reading!

If you have a second, you can read the article here.

Also, follow Compassion for Congo on Facebook here.  

That's who posted this article.

Anyway, long post today.  

Just needed to share from my heart :)

Still getting ready for our fundraiser!!  

July 8th!

Church at the Cross

Pine Grove, CA

Q&A with Co-Founder of Compassion for Congo,

Dunk tank, lunch, and some handmade items for sale.

All profits go to our adoption fund!!

 

 

The Waiting....

So our home study is COMPLETE!

 

Now we enter a waiting period.  We understand there will be lots of these along the way, so I need to learn to be content with them.  And I do understand that this waiting period is short....sometimes I just feel that I need to actively DO something to get our son here quicker!!

 

We should receive the home study report in the mail tomorrow, and then we can file our I600A with immigration!!!! 

 

HOWEVER, we do not currently have the funds to do so.  The cost is $890, and we only have a small portion of that saved.  

Instead of borrowing, we have decided to wait.  Our fundraiser is coming up on July 8th at our church.  We are praying that we'll at least receive enough to send off this form.

 

The reason we're so anxious to get this part done, is because once it's filed and complete, we will be MATCHED with our son!!! We'll get to see his face!

 

So we're praying for His providence....we know He will provide.  In the meantime, He WILL provide us with peace and I need to rest in it and be content.  

 

So that's the latest little update for now!!

 

If you're interested, our fundraiser is after the service on July 8th.  It will be a large salad bar and Paul from Compassion for Congo will be giving the message that morning, as well as providing a Q&A at the lunch.  We also were just informed that the Women's Ministry will be putting some Teagles into a DUNK TANK!!!  Big surprise to us!  So if you want some food, info about adoption, and would like to see Chris in a dunk tank, then join us! 

 

 

Always praying for our son...

Goodnight for now!

Compassion for Congo Video!

This is a video that was played at the benefit dinner we attended in April for Compassion for Congo. 

It is a little lengthy, (15min) but it gives alot of info as to the background of the ministry and how it works.  There are testimonies of families that have already adopted through Compassion for Congo!

If you have a few minutes...or 15 of them, please watch!

Click here to watch it on YouTube! 

It's moving along...

Sooo....it's late.  I just finished putting together some more hair clips to sell this weekend in Ione (all proceeds go to the adoption fund of course ;)

I should be in bed, but I thought I'd jot down a few notes first.

So, as I said before, we have enough money for our Home Study!  In fact, it's almost DONE!!!  

Yup, all paperwork is finished and turned in, interviews are complete.  Now we are just completing the online adoption education.  

What we THOUGHT was our first big hurdle really wasn't much of a hurdle at all!  There was no sitting around, waiting for money to come in or anything like that!  I got the paperwork filled out, and within days, the money was provided in different ways.  HE is our Provider.  

Just wanted to share.  

Our next step will be to file the I600A form with Citizenship and Immigration.  That cute little form will cost us $890 to file!!!  

Do we have that?  No.  

Will we?  Yes. 

How?  No clue.  

But we will work our little booties off as much as we can and see how The Lord chooses to provide for this next step.

AND after this expensive form has been accepted and filed, (which takes about a month-ish), we will be matched with our little boy!!!!!!  

We are REALLY looking forward to that!

So pray for us.  

We'll see how He works.

ALSO, my husband was ordained on Sunday.  Wow, what a morning.  I was incredibly humbled and a little emotional witnessing that.  For any of you who may not know what that means, it means that our elders, with the assistance of some elders/pastors from other churches evaluated Chris on his spiritual walk, growth, calling, and doctrine.  Based on that, and his ministry here at our church for many years, our elder board ordained him to be fit for the ministry of the Gospel.  It was pretty special...but like he has already said..."nothing really has changed!"  haha

But it was so neat to see our church in such support of him and our family.  The Lord was glorified as His Word went forth in affirming what God has called Chris to do.  

We are humbled, thankful, and very excited for our family's future!

I never know who reads these things, but thanks to any of you who do :)  I hope you have been encouraged.

K, enough.  Time for bed :)

What a Week!!

So this has been an incredibly busy, joyful, exciting, yet very tiring week!

Saturday was Compassion for Congo's benefit dinner.  Wow, what a blessing that was!  

We were able to see 5 sweet Congolese children that have new homes with Christian parents here in Northern California!  They sang a couple songs...and I shed a couple tears :)

We got a better understanding of how Compassion for Congo came into being and how it is being sustained.  I have to say that it was a little emotional for me (if you know me, you understand this is not surprising).  We had sweet fellowship with other followers of Christ and had lots of good conversations.  Everything we heard that night left Chris and I feeling more and more confidant that this is what The Lord is leading us to do.  Such a precious example God the Father has left for us.  He adopted US!  Filthy sinners!  And now we are so eager to bring home a little boy (YES, a boy!) and share with him WHY we adopted him.  Because he was helpless, and we were even more helpless than him without Christ!!!

So the bright shining light in our evening was the time spent with a very sweet couple that we are getting to know better.  Before we went home to our girls, they took us aside and gave us $100 to contribute to our adoption fund.  Very specifically, they knew this would be enough to pay for our home study!!!  WOW, how the Lord provides!!!  This, of course, made me burst into tears :)  We were overwhelmed with gratitude.  

Sunday morning, we announced our adoption plans to our congregation!  They were very supportive...and confused.  Chris used the term "my wife is with-child" to get their attention.  This wasn't completely cleared up and many people came up to me asking how my pregnancy was going!  haha!  Chris will need to clarify this next Sunday...I am not pregnant :)  But another sweet soul gifted us with another $100 that morning!  

THEN, that afternoon we had lunch for my sister-in-law's birthday.  She requested that any gifts for her, be redirected toward our adoption fund.  Bless my husband's family, we received ANOTHER $100!  SO, in two days we received $300.  

We mailed our home study paperwork off and now have enough to get our fingerprinting done as well.  Our God is our Provider.   And you'll hear me say this many more times, but I am ever so blessed to witness The Lord provide through His people.  It comes from HIM, yet it also comes from the generosity of others.  Such a sweet truth this is!!

Wow, this is long...but our weekend didn't end with lunch, we actually MOVED Sunday afternoon!  We are now in the home that we will bring our son home to.  And we are now all sick with colds as well :)  Gotta love God's timing, right???