Playtime with Grandma Beth!

Five months and a growing ministry.

Well, its been 5 months since our paperwork left for Ethiopia. Still have a long time to wait. While our social worker for ET (ethiopia) is telling us that we will fall at the far end of our estimated wait time (8-14 months) but that we will, most likely be in the wait time.... I have a sneaky suspicion that it will be more than 14 months. Either way, if your counting down from 14 instead of up from 0 - then we are now in the single digit months (9) left to wait! We shall see. In other adoption news, we are in the process of officially signing our Concurrent Adoption Risk Statement so that when our foster licensure is finished (probably mid-March) we can begin taking placements!

In other news...

I don't typically write a lot of detail about ministry. A variety of reasons, mainly just because it's such an abstract thing and each persons ministry is so different that it often feels hard to make any concise conclusion on the matter. However, today I just feel like talking ministry.

For example, how does one equate growth or success when it comes to building the Kingdom of God? The Kingdom is such a backwards, upside-down, skewed thing that to those of us suffering in our mortal forms growth seems like shrinking and success feels much like failure. We've been doing a lot of new things lately in our ministry here in Cincinnati. New mentoring programs for youth. New logos and websites and volunteer manuals and policies. New, and wonderful volunteers. New approach to how we collect and prepare food.

So much new. So much that feels like growth.

And yet, ironically all of these different things have done one thing consistently: created a situation where I feel that there is a shrinking. For example, as we created a mentoring program designed to hold students accountable to mentoring contracts and punctuality and appropriate mentee behavior we knew that student would be forced to choose. Choose to participate and receive the benefits of such participation. Or choose to leave. Sadly, a few students have chosen to leave as opposed to be held accountable to appropriate behavior. It has given me so many sleepless nights and so much heartache as I have lost the regular contact I once had with students I've been building relationships with over the course of the last 6 years. While I know that this is growth in the ministry as a whole as we weed out those that have been a distraction to the others who are really seeking to learn... It feels a whole lot more like shrinking.


I know that that is part of Kingdom building. It's the whole parable of the sowing of the seeds. Different soils. Some fertile, some shallow and rocky, some full of weeds and thorns, some too hot and dry, some too heavily traveled and open to predators. It seems that the hearts and lives of our urban young people are either fertile, or a horrible mixture of these other types. The kids face so much struggle: People in their lives who will come and steal and eat and destroy the seed of hope we plant, hard situations that cause a shallowness that simply won't allow the seed to take root, peer pressure springing up and choking out those precious new seeds of hope trying to rise to the surface, or a harsh environment creating too much heat to allow the new shoots to survive. It seems that our kids are dealing with all these things at the same time. It keeps me up nights thinking and scheming how to help improve the soil, how to manipulate the variables to create an optimal growing environment.

I feel this way, and these children do not biologically, legally, or even informally belong to me. I feel the same longing to see them know Christ and succeed that I feel about Z or L. I long for everyone in the world to feel the same passion for them that I feel so that with help we really can save a generation of students that are so bright, so full of passion, so longing to be loved and to love. We can help them become some thing great. I know we can.

But right now, it feels a bit like shrinking.

Good, good day. Picture Post.

Good friend Sarah gave us not one, but TWO beds for our foster/adopt journeys! Can't wait to put them together and get them out of the living room!

Making snowflakes at the nursing home with Grandma Loie

Spending time with Grandma Loie

Foster Care and other adventures in family growth.

Alright. When we were doing, but not doing, but still unknowingly doing this Ethiopian adoption - we started foster care training. So after rejoining the Ethiopia program we thought and prayed about what to do about this process that'd we'd begun for foster care. Well, we decided to continue and get our foster care license and we restarted our training yesterday.

It looks like we'll be licensed somewhere around the end of February if all goes as planned. Our last training class will be February 12th and then the home study worker will come out and do our home study which should not (fingers crossed) take more than a few weeks. So, after our license comes in there is potential for us to get a placement right away! Or, of course, as all things orphan care can always go - we could wait.


All in God's time, and hopefully people won't stand in the way of His will.

But, I have to say, after feeling discouraged about adoption and feeling like maybe I've been reading Him all wrong - I really feel like he's working things out. Every time there is a weird road block, he takes care of it.

For example, we needed a new fire inspection for the foster care home study. So a guy comes out and freaks out about the smallest problems with our house. Our outlet covers are off because we started painting the kitchen a year ago and haven't finished we're painting. Our fire extinguisher sits on the counter instead of being mounted on the wall. Our basement is a mess of VW parts that a "child could get hurt on" (why would an infant be in the basement unsupervised??). So, then, after all that he never called back and would not return our calls. So I called a different inspector, she came out that same day and approved us!

Well, show up to training yesterday and look through our forms again to realize she didn't sign the back of the form! So I called her today and she came back out and signed the form. She told me that it was weird I called her today cause the other guy was talking to her about us and saying we were going to "have to call him back" to deal with our issues (specifically he was not happy with the disarray of a green house Abe is building in the yard). She just told him, "I went out and approved them. They do not have to call you back!" She told me, "I'm not concerned with your yard, I'm trying to make sure you are safe in a fire in your house not in your yard!"


So, that's worked out. She even approved sleeping arrangements on the third floor, which means this weekend I get to start setting up a bedroom for what will hopefully be new additions soon!

Inkredible Shrinking Me

I've added a new tab at the top of this blog linking to my weightloss/healthy living blog. I'm gonna get healthy for real this time.

Thank you MLK

An adoptive mama I know posted this quote today and even though our adoption isn't final and in reality L isn't legally part of our family my whole family life and ministry is a testimony to the change that MLK helped in bringing about in this country. I'm so thankful for his legacy and the beautiful life he's contributed to me having because of his obedience to Christ in fighting for justice and equality.

I have a dream....that one day little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers. 

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr

Provision

I've been thinking a lot about the word "provision" lately. I think that sometimes I spend so much time praying and asking God to provide for the things I want or need that I forget to actually watch for the ways in which he's already working on it.

For example, I've been praying constantly for God to provide for our ministry both in provision of workers as well as funding and material resources. At every turn it feels like, "HELLO, are you there God? Are you going to provide?" Then something crazy happens and say, our treasurer quits. Meaning we have to find a new one. I'm shaking my head saying, hello? Is this provision??

But wait...

RANDOM phone call from a friend who will be our treasurer, has experience in non-profit record keeping, and will do it for free?

Ah, now that's provision. Not just what we need, but MORE. And not when we wanted it, but that when it happened - He worked it for good.

So then, I'm thinking. This whole adoption business is not happening as I would like it to. I know not all of you are as up to date with Ethiopian adoption processes as I am - but suffice it to say things are moving SLOWLY. There are some current changes happening and right now it feels as if we're at a stand still. This is frustrating.

But wait...

All of a sudden there are workers for ministry, coming out of the wood work! Now I'm thinking, this adoption waiting business is not as I'd like it to be. I'm not even positive that it's "all in God's timing" as a lot of folks would say (although of course it might truly be, as I will not pretend to know the will of God) as I find it hard to believe God desires orphans to wait long periods of time in orphanages when loving families are waiting... but....

I do believe with all my heart that God is using this waiting period to work all things together for good in the life of our family. I believe that as I pray for provision he may not be raining manna from heaven the instant I ask, but as I wait and watch I can see a process of provision unfolding.

Workers for the ministry to allow me to focus more on mothering. (An essential when bringing home an internationally adopted child.)
Funding to allow the ministry to continue, grow and thrive that will eventually mean Abe doesn't have to work two jobs.
Time to put all of it together and be READY when the time comes to travel.

I do think that God is providing these things as we wait. So that's exciting!

I'm trusting that on the other side of things (and the other side of the world), God is providing for our child what they need to be healthy and strong; and for their first mother the things she needs to heal; and for Ethiopia the systems and resources they need to care for their children and families.

God truly is a God of provision. I'm praying for him to provide these things and I'm praying for him to work in a way that allows us to bring a child in need of a family into ours.

But still waiting....