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.