Praise the Lord!

Our blogging break has been interupted by the news that we are out of MOI!

We were really doing pretty good about only being on the computer for essential things like keeping up on our ebay auctions and checking email. But then I realized today was the last day in October so I had to weigh following our internet "fast" or checking to see if we had an update from the orphanage. Guess which won out?

Anyway, Kenson's dossier has been released and is hopefully sitting at the passport office, awaiting printing. No time lines are ever definite with Haitian adoption but we are hopefully looking at 4-6 weeks until we travel. (Or maybe more...or maybe less...) Not a full fledged bawl fest this morning but definitely a few tears of joy.

Blog Break

D and I have decided we need a bit of an Internet break. We are spending way too much time consumed by checking for details about Haiti and adoption. It can't be all that healthy to be neurotically checking the same websites over and over, hoping that something has changed within the last 10 minutes. (And we're spending way too much time on Ebay.) So we're taking a break for a week or so. See you all next week!

Finito!

D has been working on his master's degree for about 18 months or so. I already have a master's so I've been down the road he is on. My master's is in literacy and education while his is in art education so we've taken different classes but some of the classes have been the same. Like Research Design. It's a bear of a class. The goal is to create a paper that scientifically researches a topic. If you actually follow through with the whole class as well as an additional project that counts as another class, you end up with like a 50 page paper. Good times...I did both. D decided to do just the class and not the additional project. So instead of 50 pages you write like a 20 page paper. For my husband who does not like to read or write, it's been drudgery. The articles you have to read are scientific in nature, even if they are written about education. (Translation-they are often boring and can be difficult to read.) And you have to have read like 10-15 articles to even begin writing your paper.

But on Sunday night at 11:00 pm or so, D finished his paper. He actually was finished closer to 9:30 or so but it took like 1-2 hours for me to sit down with him and help him edit it. But it's done! So yeah for my hubby for finishing a real monster of a project! He only has 1 or 2 classes left and his whole degree will be finished. He's getting close.

Blog Fundraising

I have several friends who are adopting and currently have fundraisers going on via their blogs. I thought I 'd take a minute to post those blogs and encourage my readers to consider donating to one or more of these friends. Adoption is not cheap. It costs a birth family the opportunity to parent a child. It costs an adoptive child the freedom from nagging questions like why and what if. It costs adoptive families time, and energy, and money. But despite the cost, families choose to believe that those losses will be redeemed as a child is nurtured and provided for in a uniquely complex way based on the simple concept of love. Anyway, hop on over to these blogs and consider how you might encourage a family through your gift.


Terry is doing an afghan raffle. $5 tickets for a chance to win a beautiful afghan.


Kathy, Christina, Tracy and Dawn all have donation buttons on their blogs. (If I've left anyone who I usually read out, let me know. I thought I got everyone who had a button or special event going on.)

Adoption Fundraising and God's Economy

We have personally had several people at different points in time choose to bless us with different gifts along the way. Those gifts have encouraged us. We have also written about those gifts in our childrens' scrapbooks so that our kids might come to understand how many people cheered for them and cried with them and waited for them and prayed for them, so that they might understand how they were loved before they were even known. Gifts like that reflect a sense of fellowship and community. When Christians choose to share life, to invest in the joys and hurts of one another, that examplifies what God wants fellowship to be like. Sharing one another's burdens is the truest form of fellowship.

Let me also say, we have never expected anyone to give us anything in regards to our adoption. We believe that God called us to this and asked us to step out in faith that the money would come from somewhere. We believe that He may or may not use the generosity of others to help fund this ministry. And we believe that He expects us to be good stewards of the resources He has already blessed us with.

We started both of our adoptions with $0 set aside specifically for adoption. We had savings but nothing that was designated as money for adoption. We have had the benefit of having two full time jobs. We have sold and are selling items on Ebay and half.com . I am currently selling purses on etsy as another way to bring in a bit of extra money. All in all, we have always had what we've needed and managed to have no debt associated with our adoptions. We still have half of Conleigh's to pay for plus plane tickets for at least two more Haiti trips. But we believe that somehow, someway God will provide the money for that. God has continually given us what we've needed. Like the manna and quail the Isrealites ate in the desert, God has given us just the right amount to pay our adoption bills. He asked the Isrealites to gather only what they needed for one day and we believe that is how God has worked in financing our adoptions. He has given us the amounts we've needed, when we've needed it, no more and no less.

God and Me 17-Watching Water Boil

These last few weeks have been difficult. We are fustrated with the lack of progress with Kenson's dossier. It's like watching and waiting for a pot of water to boil...for weeks on end. Any day now, we could have the approval needed to get his passport printed. Or it could be another month. Or another two months. It's nuts.

For me, it's been times of real discouragement interspersed with times of real encouragement. God has continued to be faithful and send out bits of hope here and there. And I am so thankful for that. But there are still quite a few times where I'm left feeling like things are unfair and that things are not working the way I would like. This week, God reminded me to stop and see what He has done through a song sung by The David Crowder Band. The words "Come and listen to what He's done. Come and sit a while with Me." echoed through my head one day followed by the words from another song "God is good." I found myself just sitting in silence and being reminded of God's faithfulness to me, and others both my contemporaries and the people of the Bible. Today at church we also sang several songs that reminded me that "out of Zion's hill salvation comes" and "what have I to fear, what have I to dread, leaning on the everlasting arms." I would ask that you continue to pray for the release of Kenson's dossier from the MOI office so that his passport might be printed. And I would ask you to pray for us as well, that we would not be discouraged, that we would pray from God's perspective as we wait.

Menu Planning Monday

Cabbage Patch Soup, with carrots and celery

Ultimate Grilled Cheese Sandwiches (I use low fat cream cheese and then do half regular cheese and half low fat cheese), canned vegetable soup

Poor Man's Prime Rib cooked with potatoes, carrots, and parsnips, baked apples
Any cut of roast, 1 can beef broth, 1 package dry Italian salad dressing mix-cook in your slow cooker for 8 or more hours. Add potatoes and carrots prior to cooking for a one stop meal. I'm also going to add some parsnips if I can find them.

Leftover Beef and Veggies over biscuits, with corn

Turkey and Noodles over mashed potatoes, with mixed vegetables
I have a cooked turkey tenderloin in my freezer from a previous meal so I will shred it, and add it to about 3 cups of water and 3 chicken bouillon cubes. I boil this, then add frozen egg noodles. Once the egg noodles are tender, reduce the heat. Then, I mix together corn starch and cold water, a couple tablespoons of each. This then become the thickener when you stir it into the turkey and noodles. You then add the corn starch/water mix to your turkey and noodles and stir as it thickents. If it doesn't thicken as much as you'd like, mix together some more corn starch and cold water.
(If you haven't ever used a corn starch thickener, adding it to cold water is really important. If you just dump it into the hot water, you will get clumps of corn starch. )

I rarely make 100% real mashed potatoes but I'm not a fan of the instant flavor so I do my mom's trick of doing a half and half mixture. I boil a couple of potatoes in water with a cube of chicken bouiloon. I then mash the potatoes right in the water and use the hot water/potatoes mixture in place of the boiling water the instant potatoes recipe calls for. I usually measure out the water that the instant potato box calls for before I boil my potatoes so that way I can kind of follow the recipe on the box. After I add the potato flakes, I add the milk and butter. I think adding sour cream or cream cheese can also reduce that instant flavor so I usually add one of those too. I just dump the milk, butter, cream cheese, or sour cream until I like the taste or texture. If it gets to runny, just add more flakes. The real potatoes make all the difference.