Rescheduling

First it was Pink Eye, now Strep Throat! I'm beginning to think we're hazardous to our caseworker's health. Rescheduling on Monday...

I'm Telling!

Does anyone else remember the game show from the 80's "I'm Telling!"? They would take teams of 2 siblings and they would ask one of them questions while the other sat in the "Freeze Zone" where they could not hear their sibling's answers. Then the two would switch places and answer the same questions and see which team could match the most answers to make it to the Prize Arcade.

We have the second of our three Homestudy meetings tomorrow, and it sounds to me a lot like "I'm Telling". Of course, it won't be my sister with me (though we would have cleaned up on that show) it will be my husband. The Freeze Zone will be the Pei Wei across the street and the grand prize will be checking off one more stepping stone on the way to our child/children!

Oh, about the backslash necessitated there, please keep praying about the one child, two children decision. As we've been crunching numbers we are now questioning not whether we could afford the adoption for two, but could we afford to raise two additional children. Pray that we would find a balance between wisdom and faith and that we would not make any decisions out of fear.

Hey, Are You Free on November 7th?

I took back the backyard today. All summer long it has been disintegrating into a wasteland of sun-eaten plastic toys nestled in overgrown crab grass and patio that makes the kids' tetanus shots worthwhile. As the weather has turned, we've been “playing” out there a little bit. “Playing” being the kids running around completely oblivious to the hazards at every turn and me chasing after them saying things like “Watch out!” and “Don't touch that!” and “There might be something living in there!” Friday morning one child was clotheslined by the barbecue grill and an enormous spider skittered out of a box of sidewalk chalk and sent us all fleeing for our very lives. For their safety and my sanity I made it my goal for the weekend to make our yard livable again. A little weed whacking, a little trimming, a lot of sweeping, and one large garbage bag full of junk later, it's back to a habitable environment.

Our calendar has already hit that Holiday season spiral where every weekend until the end of the year is marked up. It's all great stuff, so we're looking forward to everything though we'll have to be sure to schedule in enough rest and downtime. Matthew officiated a wedding yesterday and we have another one this weekend, then it's the seven:ten Fall Retreat, and then the next weekend we come to the November 7th square which reads “CD Release Party”. This is part of the answer to last week's question of how in the world we are going to pay for this adoption.

The musical side of my life goes in roughly 2 year cycles of writing songs, recording songs, and putting out a CD. This will be my forth one and I am more excited about it then any of the others before. First of all just because I'm so passionate about the songs and everything sounds incredible (thanks Ryan), but also because this year two of my passions in life will converge on this one night. We've done a release party for every album, but this year we will be highlighting adoption throughout the night and will use all of the proceeds generated by CD sales to help fund our own adoption. We're not expecting to raise all of the money that night, but we hope to raise a good chunk out of what we need, as well as hopefully a good measure of awareness.

So, please be praying for that night- Friday November the 7th, 7:00pm at East Valley Bible Church. Pray that the CDs would come in on time, that people would show up, that hearts would be stirred for the fatherless, and that we would sell a boatload of CDs. Oh, and one other thing: Come! Bring your families! Bring your friends! Bring your enemies! We'd love to see you there and your support means so much to us. We'll be announcing the date at church as well as by email, but if you still have an open slot on your calendar for 11/7/08, we'd love to fill it up.

Two Are Better Than One

It's amazing... the day I mention "Uganda", two families pop out of the online woodwork who have adopted from Uganda. That is two more families then we knew of before! Uganda is a very new program so it has been incredibly helpful to email back and forth with them.

Still working on paperwork. We have all of our home study meetings scheduled as well as our physicals for the international agency. I try to do one adoption-related task per day, otherwise it just gets too overwhelming. Yesterday I took pictures of our house and head shots of Matthew and myself for the dossier. The day before that I worked on getting bank letters with our account balances. Today I hope to get some time to work on the autobiography they require. So many little things, just one step at a time!

As far as decision making, we are obviously still on course for Uganda, but open to divine detours. When I last posted we were considering whether to adopt one or two children and that seems to be coming into focus as well. We had a common sense theory that adopting two children would be better for the adopted children. Because they would be coming into a strange new country and the will always look different then the rest of their family, having a sibling who can relate to and understand them as well as simply look like them, seemed like a good idea to us. Besides, we talked about adopting again down the road, so why not just adopt two together?

We came in contact with two different organizations that place Ugandan children and both of them will not place children one at a time, only two at a time. The agency we are looking at right now does place single children, but just the fact that these other organizations have that policy confirmed for us that adopting two children is the right path for us at this point. So, thanks be to God for directions and guidance, and thank you for your prayers for those things!

Some of you may be wondering, isn't adopting expensive, especially for two? How are they planning on paying for this??? Ah, a very good question with an exciting answer that I will discuss in my next post.

Treading the Atlantic

We met with our caseworker Wednesday night, the first of several meetings in the home study process. She seems like a great caseworker and we really enjoyed talking with her and as far as we could tell everything went pretty well! We're both emotionally stable (just barely in a few areas) and we feel like we have a little more direction than we did a few days ago.

It feels very odd having so many choices about who your next child will be. With the past three, there's really only been one decision to make (wink, wink) and then the rest has all been decided for us. We trusted God through the pregnancies knowing that whatever child was born to us would be the perfect child for our family. With this process of adoption, it feels like we are more in the driver's seat, which is a very scary place to be. Again, it feels like it, but of course in reality we are no more in control than we have been with our three biological kids. So the past few months have really been a constant plea for God to guide us, direct us, and make a path clear to us. We know that, as with our pregnancies, whatever child we bring home will be the perfect child for our family.

As of now, we have narrowed our focus to two paths. One is a domestic trans racial infant adoption. That is basically where a birth mother from Arizona who wants to place her child for adoption decides that she wants us to be her baby's parents. We would also then have the opportunity to continue that relationship with the baby's birth mom, which is an exciting prospect. The other path is an international adoption from Uganda. This is definitely the scarier more intimidating option, thinking of dealing with a third-world government and with there being so many unknowns, not to mention sorting through the 437 pages of information I received from the international agency. But Uganda seems to be the direction we are heading at this point, although we are keeping our eyes and ears out for domestic opportunities that may come up. Obviously there is a point financially where we would have to commit to Uganda, but until then we are keeping as many avenues open as possible.

Those of you praying for us, thank you! We have felt your prayers as God has narrowed our focus. Please pray now for continued direction as we tread the Atlantic, and even as we think through the possibility of adopting siblings.

Also, might want to throw one up there for us this weekend. Matthew and I are tent camping for pretty much the first time ever while we ride in the Tour of the White Mountains bike race. Judging from the fiasco of killing a mosquito in our kitchen last night, we need all the help we can get!