One GREAT week

It's been a great week!

We finally got our home study scheduled for this Tuesday. Please pray for us. Not only do I have to clean the house (that's a rarity) for the home inspection, but we will be doing all 5 hours of our interviews on that day as well. It is sure to be a long, but productive day. I can't wait. We're looking forward to getting to know our new social worker. She seems very sweet.

Please pray that I can find the words to express my thoughts and that Rob can keep the sarcasm to a minimum. Huh...makes me wonder how American sarcasm translates into Bulgarian...anyway...

We also got our FBI checks back last week. Four weeks early. THANK YOU Jesus and the U.S. government! Good news, they did not find any arrest records. Not that we were worried.

Also, on a beautiful note...we got our first item for our daughter's room. Patti, Harvey, Landen & Trish Schmeichel are our beautiful friends from McLaughlin, SD. They are so dear to our hearts. Rob has taught Landen since before Rob and I met so I feel like Landen has grown up before my eyes. For that reason, I will cry uncontrollably when he graduates. I digress...

Last week they brought us this gorgeous tie blanket so we would have something girly in her room (currently Evan's) when we take photos to send to Bulgaria. But what made it extra, extra special was that tall, rough, manly Landen went online and researched Bulgaria for a bit and picked out this pattern resembling Bulgarian culture. See...now I'm crying again...

Thank you Schmeichels. You are an amazing family with huge hearts and we are blessed to know you.

All Consuming

The update: Still waiting to schedule our home study interviews for next week.

I was telling someone the other day that this adoption is turning into more than just doing the paper work, traveling over a large body of water and bringing our daughter home. It's impossible to read the blogs, hear people's personal stories of what they are seeing in the orphanages, read about world hunger, look around at our current living situation and not be changed by that. This is what I've learned: 

• There are over 150 MILLION - that's 150,000,000 orphans. 
• 35% of Christians think about adoption, 1% actually do it 
• 15 million children die of hunger related causes each year

Those are the statistics, but there's something about hearing someone's story about it . All of a sudden those are more than just numbers, they are people. I am guilty of hearing about poverty, feeling bad, but mostly letting those numbers wash over me like it doesn't matter. It's not that I didn't care, but little about how I lived said any different. 

It says in Matthew 19:23, "Then Jesus said to his disciples, "I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." 

As Americans, our view of wealth is so mislead and inaccurate. We think that because we don't live in a mansion, don't take expensive vacations, don't drive fancy cars that, of course, Jesus is not talking about us. Well here's a NEWS FLASH...he is absolutely, without a doubt, 100% talking about us. We are rich. 

America says we are not, but Jesus says we are. 

Look at the "we are the 99%" campaign. They say that you have to make 150K a year to be in the top 1% of America's wealthiest. BUT (and it's a really, really BIG BUT) you only have to make 35K to be the worlds wealthiest 2% and make 50K to be in the top 1%. 

He most definitely was talking about us. If you have a roof over your head, heat in your house and shoes for your children, you are wealthy. 

So what are we going to do about it?

This question consumes me all day long. I feel so convicted. I feel overwhelmed at the crisis of children who are hurting and I don't know what can be done. I think about how easily two of those children going to bed starving at night could have been Ben and Evan and I find myself knowing that I can live with less and I can do more.

Logic tells me that the little things we do make a huge difference. We can bring children into loving homes one child at a time. It doesn't have to be 10, every one matters. We can donate unused baby items to a local mission. We can sponsor a child through organizations like Compassion and World Vision so that children can stay in their homes with families who love them.

Four faithful readers, I feel the Spirit moving like I have never felt before and THAT is something to be excited about. Lord, we are ready.

Progress

As you know from the previous post, we had all our reference letters in on Tuesday, January 17. I decided I would sit on my hands and give our social worker one week to contact us to schedule our interviews. Well...I almost made it. I emailed her on Monday of this week. I didn't get an email, but I got one better...a phone call!

Our social worker informed us that she is too busy to do our home study and one of her co-workers from Fargo will be doing it instead. This is the short answer...we are totally fine with this. Actually, we're more than that...we are ecstatic about this.

Because our new social worker will be coming from Fargo, we'll have to do all our interviews and our home visit in one day. This will be one overwhelming day, but we figure it should get our paperwork over to Bulgaria about 8 weeks sooner.

For the love of Martha...I was so excited after I got off the phone that I was shaking. We had asked earlier about doing all the interviews at once to get everything done faster and save ourselves some scheduling issues and were told it just wasn't a possibility.

We are trying to balance the need for speed with the realization that God is working His perfect plan. One step at a time...

“Wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart; Wait, I say, on the Lord!” (Psalm 27:14)

How fun was THAT?!?

I had the best time with the children of Charity last night. I wish I would have remembered my camera. They were so well behaved and asked really thoughtful questions. Those children are thinkers!

We talked about how God's plan is the best plan and how families are made a variety of ways. The younger kids were especially kind as I got to the end of my presentation and started to cry. I'm not much of a public crier, but there's just something that gets me in talking about our adoption.

I was holding up a prayer card I made for each of them to take home and was trying to ask them to pray for us, but mostly to pray for my daughter. I just couldn't....spit...it...out. After frantically looking to Lauri to help me finish my sentence and seeing that she was no better off than I was, I ended up doing a series of awkward motions and getting out about every fourth word of my sentence.

...you (motioned to them)...pray...I (motioned to me)....you (motioned to them) ...big hug (circle with my arms in front of me).

You should have seen their huge eyes and silent mouths. It wasn't the kind of look you give to someone when you're sympathetic to what they're saying or you feel bad for them. It was totally a look of, "what's wrong with this lady?!?"

Oh how I love them.

Moving on

I don't throw the phrase "praise the Lord" around loosely,  but I'm hear to shout: 

PRAISE THE LORD!

All our reference letters are in and we're ready to move on. I'm filled with relief. I know that given the wait we're about to start in a couple months...a wait that's out of our control and will be really, really long (up to two years), that this wait for our reference letters to come back (only a little over a month) may seem to some like comparing a mountain in MT to the foothills of ND. But seriously, it was testing my patience. After all, we had been told to enjoy this part because THESE are the steps we have control over. 

Well throw that out the window. 

Tonight I'm speaking to the children of our church about our adoption process. Thank you to Lauri Desir for the idea and the support. Lauri is a beautiful advocate of adoption. 

So please pray for me tonight because it is really, REALLY hard to explain the concept of adoption to children. I'd much rather spout my soul to adults and talk about the things I've read in blogs and how God's heart is aching for the children who are dying because no one wants them. 

I love the children of Charity though and look forward to telling them about our process and talking about how God's plan is always the best plan. Please pray that God would speak through me and that he might plant a seed deep in their hearts that families are built all kinds of ways. 

I'm sure I'll have some great stories for you later this week. :)