Approved!

We got the first draft of our home study yesterday and we were approved for two children. We're so excited to be moving on to the next step.

So now our home study agency will send the draft to our placement agency and they will comb through it making sure all the pieces are there and nothing is missing or worded incorrectly. There will likely be several exchanges between our agencies and each exchange can take two weeks. After our home study is approved, we will be able to apply to the US to adopt.

PRAYER REQUESTS:
* Pray that everything gets checked and corrected quickly in as few transfers as possible.

Fundraiser - April 15

The fundraiser is scheduled for the evening of April 15 at Charity Lutheran Church so SAVE THE DATE! 

The plan is to do a dinner and silent auction. Now what to serve? My mom is deciding between the always-popular spaghetti OR what she really wants to do is German pigs in the blanket.  What do you think? Comment below please. 

Thank you to Sam and Sarah Coleman for offering to take our family photos for publicity. We also will have to send current photos to Bulgaria.  The last photo we had taken as a family, Evan was tiny.  It's this photo. An update is necessary. 

Also, thank you to Chelly from Elegant Designs for offering to do our posters for the fundraiser. People! She is very talented and very reasonable. She does the League's magazine, but also does smaller projects for individuals like business cards and wedding invitations. I'm just sayin'...

And thank you to high school classmate, Michelle Zajac, for sending us our first item for the silent auction...one of these super cool spinners. We grew up together and have found ourselves together on this path to adopt. I'm so thankful we reconnected. 

We feel so blessed to have so many people support us through this process. So many people have asked us how they can help that I've lost count and I've lost track of who.  

If you are interested in helping with the food, silent auction or publicity, please let me know. We have team leaders who have offered to help, but they would love team members. You can email me at nicole@ndlc.org.   

Thank you for your prayers and thank you for your help. We feel the love. 

Home Study - Part I

Thank you for your prayers. Our home study was uneventful.  I suppose that's good news, really. We met with our social worker and did the first half of our interview together, Rob did his individual interview and then we broke for lunch. Afterward, she talked with Ben a little, but didn't ask too many questions. She mostly observed the two boys together. They were quite cute though. I'm a little bias. Ben had spent the night with the Gerlachs the night before so he and Evan hadn't seen each other all night. Ben kept laying down on the floor and wanting Evan to sit on him. They were giggling and giggling. See...that IS cute.

Afterward, I did my interview and we made arrangements for her to come back in two weeks to finish our interview together. That's the fun one...where we get to talk about our parenting styles, our marriage and how Rob is the disciplinarian and I never pick up after myself.

After that we should be done. Until then, we have a few things on our list. We need to finish our will and have our children checked out so the Dr. can sign a form saying they don't have any communicable diseases. Sounds pleasant enough.

Speaking of the Gerlachs...as part of our home study, Bulgaria requires that we have an evacuation route posted in our little girl's room. Don't even get me started about how ridiculous this is. About how it would be impossible for a 3 year old to even read an evacuation route or about how we sleep on the same level. Alas, we add it to the growing list of hoops we jump to bring her home.

We are blessed with great friends. Our friends the Gerlachs moved to SD a couple months ago, but we in town for work. They spent the night at our house last Sunday so they got in on some of the cleaning on Monday. (Thanks guys!) As part of their payment for staying with us, Aleycia was charged with the task of doing our evacuation map. After spending way, way, WAY too much time thinking about how a 3 year old Bulgarian would exit our house in an emergency, she came up with the plan to color code the rooms. Like Aleycia said, "if a child can understand anything, it's color."

Here is the result of her work. Isn't it pretty AND functional?

Our social worker is coming back the first week in March to do the last interview, but she says that within the next month the first draft will be ready to go to our agency. Then there is a game of back and forth until the home study is written exactly how the Bulgarian government will want it. We hear our agency is one of the most picky, but if that means that the process will be easier later when our paperwork is in Bulgaria, we are all for it.

Thank you for your prayers. Seriously. You are moving mountains and we can feel it every step of the way.

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.