Friendship

I had a great great reminder of how important friendships are this past Sunday. First, a little background. S is now 7 1/2 and every year, or rather twice a year, our Church has the kids get up front and sing. She has never made it through without crying and it's a little bit of a struggle every year. There is always the question of if we should try and bribe her into staying up there or just hope that she grows out of it. This year we decided to not push her. If she wanted to do it she would do it and if not, that is okay. It is not vital to her growth as a person at this stage in her life to make her stand up there and sing.

So, that brings us up to this past Sunday. She hadn't said she would or that she wouldn't go up there. Scott and I had both encouraged her to go up there and sing and both sets of grandparents were here to watch her and her brother and sister. As we went into the sanctuary during practice she didn't want to go up there and I just stepped back and then something that made me cry happened. She had two friends walk up next to her and grab her hands. I don't think they realized the significance of what they were doing, but it was indeed very significant. With the support of two very dear friends S made it through both practice and the actual performance in Church.

This meant so much to this mother's heart. Our friends mean a lot to us and I can name several times when friends of mine haven't necessarily literally held my hands to get me through something tough, but they were there to support and encourage me and get me through something tough. I am very thankful that my daughter has already started to form some of these meaningful friendships. I am also very thankful to my friends for there continued love, encouragement and support to me and my family through the years. It means a lot to us all!!!

I had to include this one of C-Girl. She had no stage fright and sang through both songs!

C also enjoys getting in front of people.

Birthdays

I've been spending more and more time praying for our child who isn't with our family yet. I think a lot of it has to do with having a birthday, Thanksgiving and now Christmas coming up so close together. It's a time of year where I really enjoying having as much of our family around as we can and we have a child that is not with us and that's hard to think about. So, I do what I can and I pray. I pray for our child's safety and that God will protect her heart and help prepare her to live with our family and leave the only home she's ever known and come live in a strange land with strange people. Lord willing, by this time next year our child will be living with us and we'll be celebrating birthdays and holidays together!

I thought I'd post some pictures or our 3 kids here at home and their birthday celebrations from this last year. It's fun to see how different and unique their personalities are and how that comes out in celebrating their birthdays.

C's birthday comes first in June. He always has a sports birthday, he just always needs to pick a different sport every year. This year it was soccer.

He does love his super heroes!

S's birthday is next in July. She typically has had some sort of animal birthday every year, but her passions have changed a little this last year and she went with a President's birthday party. Everyone had to dress like someone from the period of the Revolutionary war to the Civil war and then they had to give clues so people could guess who they were.

  

 Her whitehouse cake with all the presidents on it!

C-Girl kept changing her mind about what kind of cake she wanted. (I know shocking for a 2 year old to not be able to make up their mind) She finally decided on a Hunter cake (our dog).

She lost her nose!

There it is!

Fun with the tongue!

We are so blessed!

We had the privilege of being able to get together with most of the people who participated in the triathlon with us this last Sunday for lunch. Good food and a good time was had by all. We also found out how much money was raised through the triathlon...and the total is...$5,840! WOW! We had no idea. To top that all off there is a matching fund of $5,000. That means we now have $10,840 more towards our adoption and we're that much closer to being able to bring our child home.

It's hard to know how to say thank you to people who have supported us, prayed for us, encouraged us, donated money to us, and all the other many things people have done for us throughout all of this. We were told when we started the adoption process that we should be ready to see God work in marvelous and miraculous ways, but when it actually happens it still blows our minds. I know we're not done with this process, but each day and each dollar brings us one step closer. God is good!

We survived the tri!

So, two weekends ago we had a garage sale to raise money for our adoption and this past weekend we did a triathlon to raise awareness and money for our adoption. Now, we can relax a little!

The triathlon went really well! We had five teams and five individuals who were doing the triathlon in the support of our adoption. Scott and his team got second in the co-ed relay and Sara Wilson got third in the women's division! I was proud of the fact that I completed and that I actually ran the whole way in the 5k. This was the part that I was most worried about. It was humbling and encouraging to have people their supporting us in our efforts. It was also a lot of fun to get together with other individuals and families to train together and work towards a common goal of completing a triathlon. It might be the start of a new annual tradition for some of us : )

Here's some pictures from the day for your enjoyment!

                Almost the whole group. Todd and Hannah Wilson didn't make it in the picture, but hopefully I can get them photoshopped in later.

Scott's relay team; Amy Schrieber and Lynn Rathjen.

 Todd and Gracie Wilson getting ready to
head out on their 10 mile bike ride

 Kelly Pawley coming back from her ride!

 Lynn Rathjen sprinting to a 18:48 completion time in the 5k.

 Me swimming. This was the only leg I wished I would have pushed myself more.

 Winnie Poland coming in on her bike. She was our only participant who had done a triathlon before. She may have gotten more of us roped into doing this more often!

 I was happy to be almost done and that I had ran the whole time!

 The five of us who had done the triathlon individually.

 Thankful for all the wonderful people who had come out to support us!

If you're still interested in sponsoring us for the triathlon there is still time. Contact Scott or I for more information. We don't have a sponsorship total yet, but that should be coming soon! Thanks for everyone who has supported us through prayer, encouragement and financially so far. We love you all!

Garage Sale

We had our garage sale this past weekend. It went great. It was a lot of work and we're exhausted and still cleaning up from it, but it was worth it. We're one step closer to bringing our child home! We raised about $2,200 from the sale and that is wonderful. I have some pictures of all the craziness. Not the coolest pictures, but just a little taste of what went into making this all happen.

 This is when we're trying to get some organization to happen the night before the garage sale. We were feeling a little overwhelmed by it all and so our Bible study came over and helped! They were wonderful!

 Scott ended up putting up a sign the night before because he didn't want people to stop and shop the night before the garage sale.

 Trying to shove everything back into the garage so we could close it up for the night.

 A rare slow moment on Friday. We had pretty much constant traffic all day Friday.

A look from outside.

Thank you again to everyone who helped. A big shout out to my mom and sister who came up Friday afternoon and stayed through Saturday afternoon helping with the sale and the kids.

We also got our appointment back from USCIS for going to Omaha to get fingerprinted and we hope to talk to our dossier specialist this week and get moving on that. Things are moving in the right direction and we're very thankful for that!

Hannah

Triathlon

Wow, training for a triathlon can be exhausting! We've been so blessed by people who have come along side us in this journey of adoption. Honestly we wouldn't be doing this without the love and support of all the people around us. We have great friends who have put together us using a triathlon to raise money for our adoption. It's been exciting and challenging to train for this event. When this idea was first brought up to me, I thought, sure I'll join a team and do the triathlon. I'm sure I can go around and try and get some people to sponsor me to run, swim or bike one leg of a triathlon. Then as I started training along side some friends who were doing the whole thing I started to think, I really could challenge myself more in this. So, now, possibly against better judgment I'll be doing the complete triathlon.

Going through the steps of adoptiong we don't just get to pick the parts of the process that will be the easiest for us or the most comfortable. We are having to do things that aren't easy and that challenge us, and we haven't even brought our child home yet! So, yes my body aches in a lot more ways now then before, I'm spending time swimming in a lake the second week of September and I'm trying to figure out what bike will be most comfortable to ride for 10 miles...but I'm also reminded of how worth it this is. Bringing a new son or daughter into our home is not going to be a simple, quick process, but God didn't call me to do simple, quick, things for him. He gave up His only son for us to be adopted into His family. I'm being asked to give up time and money, and so as I'm out there running, biking and swimming I remind myself that this is not supposed to be easy, but it is all worth it.

If anyone would like to sponsor Scott or I in the upcoming triathlon you can send a check to us made out to Bethany Christian Services with our name in the memo line. We have a donor who will match all donations up to $5,000. This is an amazing opportunity to partner with us to bring a fatherless child into a home. Thank you for all your love and support. We value your prayers and encouragement through this process.

Hannah

Do I ever ask "what am I getting myself into?"

Adoption is something I've seen myself doing for a long time, so I think that there was was this thought that I wouldn't have any doubts through the whole thing. Not true. The thing is, even when I know I am acting in obedience to God, satan tries to keep me from feeling confident and he fills me with fear at times. So, yes, there are times when I wonder, "what am I getting myself into?" Those are the times that I need to hold on to God's promises. Instead of looking to my future and the unknown, I take time to look to my past and all the ways that God has fulfilled His promises and been faithful in my life already. This is one of my favorite things about some of the great prayers in the Bible. I think specifically of some of them in the Old Testament, David in the Psalms, Nehemiah, Moses, and Joshua to name a few. They take the time to thank God for the way that He has shown Himself faithful throughout the history of His people and sometimes personally in their own lives. Nehemiah 9 is one of my favorites. He starts out in Verse 6 with, "You are the Lord, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them, and you preserve all of them; and the host of heaven worships you." So, he starts at the very beginning; at the creation of the world and then he continues on with laying out a history of how God has shown Himself faithful to them as a nation, even through times of disobedience.

This is something at different times in my life that I have tried to do. I go back through my history, the good and the bad, and I look at everything God has brought me through. There were definitely times when I questioned why I had to experience certain things when I was in the midst of them, but looking back and seeing where I am now I'm able to see how time and time again God showed Himself faithful in my life. Because of that I'm able to say with confidence that what we are embarking on with this adoption is what God would have us do. We are acting out of obedience, and at times I will be filled with fear, but I can trust that God will be faithful with this just as He has been faithful throughout my relatively short history.

There is definitely a time for, "forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead..." (Phil. 3:13), but when it comes to being overwhelmed with thoughts of "what am I getting myself into?" I like to look behind to my past and to God's faithfulness in my life.

Just some thoughts...
Hannah

State Fair Fun!

When the State Fair is in town we spend a lot of our time there. If it was up to our kids we'd be there every day, all day. Last night Aunt Becca went with us and we had a lot of High Flying Fun!

                                   C-girl enjoying the corn sandbox!

        C picked all the apples off the tree.

     Now here's some real high flying fun!

Now this is what S saved her money for. She was VERY excited about getting a kiss from a sea lion.

Hmm...leftover fun from the corn sandbox...

C had to settle for a kiss from daddy.

Riding the shuttle back to the other side of the fair.

The kids enjoyed a camel ride thanks to Aunt Becca.

C-girl enjoying riding the stroller backward.

We love spending time out at the State Fair. Come on out and have some fun too. It's a great time to spend together as a family.

We mailed our last grant application! Now we wait. While we wait we'll continue to raise money. This is difficult for me to do. I'm not great at putting myself out there and asking people for money and for their support. It's something I have to come out of my comfort zone to do, but it's been good and I know God will continue to stretch me and help me to grow. If you're looking for ideas of ways to help support us in this process I have some things listed on the side. I just listed one more that some dear friends of mine are putting together for us. It's a triathlon that is happening in September in Holdrege that they are invited people to come join and use the opportunity to raise support for our adoption. Check out more info. on the right!

Now I need to take the time to focus on some other things in life. Like school, for instance. We have decided to wait until after Labor Day to officially start school this year. We have been doing school all summer until a few weeks ago and the Nebraska State Fair just started yesterday and we spend a lot of time there so it seemed to make the most sense to wait until after the fair is over. I'll have pictures and stories to share from the fair sometime next week. I do have to spend this week getting a little more organized for school to start though. I'm very excited to start on some new curriculum this year, it'll be interesting to see how well it works.

This year I have a section of scripture that I hope to memorize from 1 Samuel. The story of Hannah has been a favorite of mine for awhile for some obvious reasons...we have the same name...but I read it through again a few weeks ago and it spoke to me again. Here is a woman that has been longing and praying for a child for a long time and God grants her a son and she immediately gives Him back to the Lord. In a way this is how we should all view our children, not that we should physically give them away to a Church, but we should view them as the Lord's children that He has entrusted us with to take care of for a time. She then takes time to praise and exalt the Lord. She continues to point out His sovereignty throughout her prayer. As we spend time raising money, filling out paperwork, doing everything we need to do in order to bring our child home to us, my prayer is that I can focus on God's sovereignty through the whole process. He is in control, everything will happen in His perfect time, not in our own imperfect time.  There is much more I could probably take away from this, but sometimes a passage just speaks to me and I'm not very good at fully explaining all the reasons why. Have a great weekend!

1 Samuel 1:27 - 2:10 

English Standard Version (ESV)

27 For this child I prayed, and the Lord has granted me my petition that I made to him.

28 Therefore I have lent him to the Lord. As long as he lives, he is lent to the Lord.

And he worshiped the Lord there.

Hannah's Prayer

1  And Hannah prayed and said,

“My heart exults in the Lord;
     my horn is exalted in the Lord.
My mouth derides my enemies,
    because I rejoice in your salvation.

²  “There is none holy like the Lord:
    for there is none besides you;
    there is no rock like our God.
³ Talk no more so very proudly,
    let not arrogance come from your mouth;
for the Lord is a God of knowledge,
    and by him actions are weighed.
⁴  The bows of the mighty are broken,
    but the feeble bind on strength.
⁵ Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread,
    but those who were hungry have ceased to hunger.
The barren has borne seven,
     but she who has many children is forlorn.
⁶  The Lord kills and brings to life;
    he brings down to Sheol and raises up.
⁷  The Lord makes poor and makes rich;
     he brings low and he exalts.
⁸  He raises up the poor from the dust;
    he lifts the needy from the ash heap
to make them sit with princes
    and inherit a seat of honor.
For the pillars of the earth are the Lord's,
    and on them he has set the world.

⁹  “He will guard the feet of his faithful ones,
    but the wicked shall be cut off in darkness,
    for not by might shall a man prevail.
¹⁰  The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces;
     against them he will thunder in heaven.
The Lord will judge the ends of the earth;
    he will give strength to his king
     and exalt the horn of his anointed

What's the adoption process like?

This is a question I get quite often. The other question is where are we in this process. I'll try and answer both of these questions as concisely as I can.

First off, the adoption process, I definitely came into this process with some ideas of what it would be like. Some of them were right and some were wrong. I was warned about all the paperwork, but still wasn't prepared by how overwhelming it can be at times. So much of it seems to be the same thing over and over. Our financial information, our work information, what is our home life like, our testimonies...on and on. We have to repeat things a lot, but worded slightly different for different applications, I've gotten better at being able to do some copy and pasting and using what we've already written. Today I'm getting our applications for financial aid and grants put together and sent off. I hope it's all how they need it. One of the things that probably surprised me the most about the whole process was that it's not as simple as wanting to adopt a child from a specific country and automatically being able to. Different countries have different qualifications. Some countries won't let you adopt from there unless your youngest child is at least 5 years older then the child you're going to adopt. Other countries base it on how much money you make per child in your home, including the child you will be adopting. Some countries won't allow you to adopt based on your ages or based on if you've been divorced. The cost didn't surprise me, but having it explained to me did help me to understand. For one there are a lot of people out there that try and adopt children to use as slaves for either work or sex. It sounds awful, but it's true. So, because of those type of people in our world they need to make the process more difficult and as a result more expensive because you need to go through a lot more work for them to know that you are a good candidate to adopt a child. Of course not all adoption agencies are exactly the same. There will be some differences, but not really when it comes to the amount of paperwork and such. We chose to go with Bethany Christian Services because of there reputation and we like what they stood for.

So, where are we in this process? Well, there are basically three parts to this process. We have finished the first part, which is the home study. This consisted of 10 hours of education for each of us, 4 interviews with our agency, a visit from our agency, background checks, and A LOT of paperwork. We're on to the next step which is filing with the government for approval, 10 more hours of education, more paperwork, fingerprinting by the FBI, and being approved by Ethiopia for adoption. Then we'll move on to the last step which is more paperwork : ) 10 more hours of education, having a child chosen for us and two trips to Ethiopia which will of course end with being able to bring our new child home!

Today I'm finishing up with gathering the papers for some financial aid and grants and getting those sent in. We have been so blessed with the friends we have to surround us with encouragement, advice and help through this process. We experienced some of these same things when our oldest daughter was in the hospital. It's exciting and encouraging to see the body of Christ doing what the Body of Christ is supposed to do. We have wonderful family and friends that are here for us and helping us in any way they can and we feel truly blessed by this! God is faithful and will continue to show Himself faithful through all of this. I know things won't always go as smoothly and quickly as we would like, but if we take time to enjoy the process and learn what God will have us to learn through all of this we will come out of this having seen His faithfulness shown to us over and over.

That's all for now!
Hannah

The Beginning....

I've avoided starting a blog for awhile now not wanting to take the time to do it, but I'm giving in and doing it. The reason I decided to start a blog is the fact that we are in the process of adopting a child from Ethiopia and I've learned from past experiences in my life that a good way to remember all the details of the experience is to write it down. By writing it down here in a blog people who want to keep up with the details of our adoption, and our lives, will have the ability to do that.

Here is our adoption story that we are including in some of our grant applications. I thought it would be a good way to sum up us and why we're doing this.

Adoption is something that has been on our hearts since before we got married. For us it was simply a matter of when. When our oldest daughter was born she had a lot of medical issues and spent her first 6 months in the hospital and came home with some challenges as well. Spending that much time in the NICU gave us an appreciation for the changes in a child's life that can come from something that they had no control over. Our daughter is 7 now and there are still things that we are discovering that she struggles with as a result of having spent those first 6 months in the hospital and multiple hospital stays and surgeries after that. At the same time we know God placed her in our lives and at a time in our life when we were able to give her the best possible care by being able to spend so much time with her in the hospital during her time there. We definitely think that time spent with her attributed to how well she is doing now. We have a desire to help another child have a chance at the best possible life.

              We have 3 children and we desire to have more children. We would like to do this through adoption this time because we feel that God has called us as Christians to look out for the fatherless, and we have the ability and desire to do that by adopting a child into our own home. One of the reasons we have chosen to do international adoption is because even though there is a need here in the States to adopt children there is more of a safe guard put into place to help fatherless children here (not a perfect system, but something). Although the amount of money we need to raise can be daunting to think about we believe that this is something God has called us to do and through that call He will provide for us. It may take longer to go through the process because we will have to patiently work at raising the funds, but it will be worth it once we bring our new son or daughter into our home. We are thankful for places like Show Hope and others who allow people to give money to help support those who are adopting. By applying for grants and financial help it will make it possible for us to bring our child home.

              Right now we have 3 children in our home. Shalom is 7 and a very smart girl. She is into learning about Presidents and anything having to do with history. Her other passion is animals and as a result we havesome interesting pets in our home. She has been a good big sister and desires to teach her siblings things she has already learned. She is excited about adopting a new child. She has more of a desire to adopt a sister, but we have talked with her how when we had her and her brother and sister God chose for us if we would have a boy or a girl. We are leaving this decision in God's hand in the same way. Calvin is 4 and on the move. He is very much into sports and would be content with playing football, baseball, basketball or soccer around the clock. He has a very tender heart and always has a hug, kiss or kind word to give to those around him. He is excited about adopting a child and I think understands the concept well for his age. It helps that we have quite a few families in our church that have adopted and our children have seen it up close. Charis is almost 2 and is always trying to do everything that her older brother and sister do. She's a happy, content girl most of thetime. Scott is a middle school youth pastor and we have been at our Church for a little over 6 years. It is a ministry that he is as passionate about now as he was when he first started. I am blessed to be able to stay home with the kids and be a full time wife and mother. We have decided to home school our kids for now and that keeps me busy. It's exciting to help your child read for the first time and we are honored to have the opportunity to teach our children how to look at the world around them, from a Biblical perspective. I have also been able to continue to work along side Scott in youth ministry. Youth ministry is something from the time we got married we wanted to work together in and having family close has made this possible to continue even with adding to our family. As parents I think some of the most important truths to impart to our children are to trust and obey the Lord. It is through our modeling of this that they can learn it the best. Adoption has given us a perfect way to teach and model this to our children.