Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

I can't believe Christmas is done for another year. I survived. I hosted 2 days of family gatherings and ended up sick the next day , but I survived. I've been encouraged by the news on the Ethiopian Yahoo site. There were 4 referrals already in Dec. That's exciting considering they were only going to start referrals in March. The pictures and posts on this yahoo site are so encouraging. Unfortunately the Ghana yahoo site did not have very many encouraging posts. We are so looking forward to 2010 and can't wait to see what God has in store for us. Blessings on you all as you head into a New Year.

Ethiopia Bound

Yes, you read it right. After much soul searching, tears of frustration and investigating local adoptions, we have decided to stick with Imagine and transfer our file to Ethiopia. This week has been a brutally hard week for me. My heart is still in Ghana with Mariam, but we know that it is not possible to adopt her. We are going to try to set up some sort of sponsership so that her and her mom have food. And in the end, if she can stay with her mom we will be happy. that is how it should be.We then contemplated local but that also has it's pitfalls. Our local C.A.S. has 4 kids available and they are sibling sets. I don't think it's a quick process either. At the end of the day it came down to common sense and our initial desire to adopt internationally. We have already put thousands into this. What is one more year of waiting? As a mother of 4 I have never had the experience of waiting years for a baby. I am now experiencing a small part of that. I can now relax having made the desicion. There will be some paper work to redo. I can then carry on with life knowing that we will probably not receive a referal for at least a year.
Sometimes you don't see the good in something right away. Recently I have possibly seen why God wanted this to wait a while. My mother in law is seriously ill and will need support and help for a while. This now frees me up to be that support for her. She lives next door to us and is very dear to us.
I am confident in my heart that God is good. I have been in pain emotionally lately but have felt a reassurance that God is ther with me through all that has happened. I pray that He is with you as well and wish you all a blessed Christmas.

Unexpected Joys

This morning I woke up to find that someone left the door open to my upright freezer (probably was me) and all of the contents had defrosted. The minute the kids got on the bus, I was busy cleaning and cleaning. After that I was trying to find ways to use the defrosted meat and needless to say I have spent a good part of the day cooking meat, frying meat, etc. The day started horrible but as I was doing this I had a Joyce Meyer show on. Normally I don't watch t.v. while working but my wonderful husband hooked up a small t.v. in my ktchen so I cold remain sane today. Joyce was talking about how you as a person handle unexpected things in your life and it got me thinking. Yes this is not how I was going to spend my day, but this is such a minor thing compared to what others go through on a daily basis. She put it all into perspective for me. Even with this aborted adoption of Mariam crashing down on us. God will carry us through and hopefully one day we will see it more clearly. Well back to work, I am only half through my day of cooking. God Bless you all on this fine day.

Another week gone

Can't believe that it's been a week since I blogged. It has been a long week and one where I really did not feel like talking with anyone. We have let go of the idea of adopting Mariam. If it happens in the future than we will be thrilled. I have given it over to God. Obviously he can move mountains and for some reason he is not moving this one for us. Since I wrote last I received an e-mail from Ghana stating that there would be no adoptions at this time (what does that mean, I don't know).  Now since I know kidnapping is wrong, we are left with no other choice. It's very hard leaving knowing that Mariam is in a tough situation. BUT God loves her and is watching over her. We will more than likely stay with Imagine and switch to Ethiopia. I have nothing against Ethiopia and that was my first choice but for some reason we decided to go with Ghana. It will just mean a very long wait for us. At least 2 years. I will be 43 by then. We will also sign on with our local CAS and see what comes of that. It is possible to adopt here and still be able to adopt from Ethiopia. I'm trying to leave this up to God. Now that our decision has been made, I feel a huge weight lifted off of me. I can still get very down when I think of Mariam and what could of been, but she was never mine in the first place. I am excited to get back to normal and get everything ready for Christmas. Blessings to all until I talk to you again.

No News

I was hoping to come out of my meeting with some specific news. It seems everyone is very nervous when it comes to Ghana. They wanted documentation that Mariam is in fact available for adoption and then they were going to check out the whole immigration thing with Ghana. So back to waiting without any definite answers. They did say they would like to help if they could. Conitue to pray that doors will be opened. I know that there are many hurting children and if its not Mariam that we can help, it will be someone else.

Ups and Downs

It seems that every day I get 2 pieces of news about the adoption. One is good and the other is bad. The good news today is that I have an appointment with a different agency . They can get a one time license and just help us complete ours. They have not said yes yet as I have still to talk to them. But having said that, if they say yes I feel bad about those others that do not have an agency. And the bad news of the day is a comment by someone saying that it would be extremely hard to adopt from Ghana right now because there is an investigation going on. No details were given to me.My appointment with the agency is Tuesday Nov.17th and then I'll hopefully have more news for everyone.
Tonight we took our kids and some of their friends to see A Christmas Carol. I wouldn't recommend it to kids or to wimpy ladies like myself. There were very graphic scary ghosts on this digital 3d version of one of my favorite Christmas stories.It's hard to believe that CHristmas is just around the corner. Last year I refused to send out family pictures because I wanted to wait until our family is complete. It's now a year later and we are no further ahead. Hopefully there will be some progress soon.

Meet my family

It's 9:30 in the morning and as a stay at home mom of 4 crazy kids and one busy husband I should be doing stuff. I can't seem to pull myself away from this computer and any potential information on our adoption. We have had one person come forward and offer to help us through this adoption but it is still a long road ahead. I am no longer nieve to think that this will happen soon. I was so clueless when we started this whole process. The whole world is too complex to think that you could do something helpful like adopt an orphan. Even is I were to adopt from Canada the process is complex. The question is, am I strong enough to stay the course?

For those of you that don't know me this is my beautiful family. Kyle to the far right is my oldest at 15 yrs. Great sense of humor and enjoys hunting (we are a family of rednecks). Rachel at the top is 13 and is our shy quiet one who could read all day long. Kelsey to the left is 11 and our mischevious one. She is the source of much screaming from her younger brother. Zach in the middle is 9 and is why I have some grey hair. Full of life and adventure. And the most important is my wonderful husband of 18 years, Barry. Whithout him supporting my dream (which has become our dream) of adoption we would not be here. The man has a heart of gold. I am truly blessed and would love another 1 or 2 kids join our family through adoption.

Well it really is time to go and do my motherly things. Thanks for listening.

Emotional Rollercoaster

I sometimes wonder why God gives you a vision , but it is so hard to go through the process of attaining it. Is there something he wants me to learn in this process. Faith has been a lot on my mind lately. Is my faith not as big as a mustard seed? What about the faith of all the ather Christian families goin through this process (and I know there are some strong Christians among us). How much should I rely on God and what can I be doing to get this thing going?

I had just come to the point of saying "okay God maybe this is not the child you have in mind". Maybe it's time to let go and move on. How do I let go of a little girl who I know cannot be cared for physically by her family. Does she have food? Is her family aware of her emotional needs? Does she feel safe and cared for? I knew because of changes in the social welfare system in Ghana that she had been sent back to her mom (family?? -I don't really know who). I know that her best friend -who also got sent back to relatives died whithin a week of being there. Now I found out that she is back at the orphanage. I think that is good thing , but how many changes can one little girl handle in a month? I can now at least keep tabs on her. We have also had someone come out of the woodwork offering to help with the CIC. Is this just offering me more hope or will I it get shattered again (Mustard seed -hmm????)?Why does God not just write letters and send them to you? I like things that are simple and direct. Someone reminded me today that prayer does work (thanks Trevor). God can do amazing things. I'll hold on to that (at least for today and then I hope someone else will remind me again tomorrow).

What to do now

Hi friends and family. This is my very first blog. I'll share a little bit about our situation. In May 2008 Barry and I decided to adopt. Yes we do already have 4 children but feel like we have so much left to give. I researched and researched and decided on an agency that looked strong and a country. We decided on Ethiopia and went to work getting all the documentation needed for this. Talk about hoops to jump through. A couple of months after our decision we switched our country to Ghana. Our agency had just started a new program with many promises of a quick smooth adoption. We continued to work towards finishing all the paperwork and aproval. In Dec. of 2008 our dossier (paperwork) arrived in Ghan and so the wait began. We joined a network of other parents adopting from ghana and started hearing about referals . We continued to wait. The referals stopped and no court dates were set for those that did have referals. In the meantime we fell in love with a beautiful 3 yr old online and put in a request to the orphanage to adopt her. Soon we found that all was not well with the orphanage and the agency. Adoptions were halted because of false allegations against the orphanage. The orphanage director worked hard to set things straight but it was no use. During this time (unknown to us) the agency was having its own issues. We found out in July 2009 that Imagine agency had declared bankruptcy and all our money had disappeared. Over the next few months people worked hard to restructure Imagine and get it up and running. In Sept. we found out that indeed Imagine would be able to run again but with extra costs to those families adopting. Unfortunately, I found out 2 days ago that Ghana would not be part of this. I decided to start this blog to keep everyone up to date on what happens next for our family and to share my frustrations. Pray for our family as we have some decisions to make. Do we continue on with Imagine? Do we try to adopt locally? Do we completely give up on the little girl from Ghana? Some of these decisions need to be made in the next few weeks. Help