Check, check

I have finished my 8 hr online adoptive parent training course!!! J still has his to do (with all his free time ;)). We finished our 2nd home study and have two more to go, which are scheduled for September, (they were supposed to have been done by now but our home study lady is busy-all in God's timing!!). J got his employment verification form notarized and will pick up his police record on Monday. Once school gets underway a bit for the kids (our 4 yr old is going to Pre-K!!) I will start planning a silent auction/spaghetti dinner. We're still waiting to get our passports-should be another month or so. So there is your brief update-just a few more things checked off our list!! :)

Clean Record

So I am going to get a little personal here but it's all for the glory of God so here goes...As I went to pick up my police report today (which is clear, don't worry) I started thinking about how He had protected me even when I didn't know Him.
Before I was ruined by His grace at the age of 21 I lived according to my will which definitely put me in many an unsavory situation. How many times had He protected me from being in the wrong place at the wrong time? And saved me before I headed down a path of self-destruction? I am so thankful that He loved me when I lived like a complete heathen, that He kept me from taking that one more step which would have made me fall off a cliff, that He had a perfect plan for my life. I am thankful for the things He brought me through so I could look back and see His hand upon my life before I knew it even existed. I am thankful for a clean record.
"I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me."-Acts 26:17-19
"In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding." Eph. 1:7-8
T

Paper Chase

Well I've been gathering documents like a mad woman!! I've gotten my birth certificate, our marriage certificate, picking up our police reports tomorrow, scheduled our physicals, sent for our passports (we'll need copies of those), waiting for our dear friends to write referrals...J's birth certificate was sent in with the other papers to get his passport, so we'll have to wait until we get that original certificate back so we can send that along. Our family coordinator through our adoption agency wants to see all of our documents to make sure they look good before we send in our final dossier. I had to write a "non-employment" letter stating why I don't work (ha!) and we need a letter from J's employer. We also need to get a few letters of reference for our home study lady (I am sure there is a better name, but I like that :)) So it's not actually as bad as it seemed when I first saw THE list of documents.
We had our first home study today. It went really well and she was great to talk to. She's a Christian so when she asked us why we were pursuing Ethiopia we could tell her God led us there and she didn't look at us like we had 7 heads. The kids were fine but were kind of stuck in front of the t.v. all day on this gorgeous day so it made me a little nutty. Also we were babysitting but the boys might as well not even be here because they are so awesome!! 1 down, 3 left to go!
J and I have appx 8-10 hrs of adoptive parent training to get down in the next week or so. I've done almost half of it and J has done a few hours. Soooo much reading but very informative and good for those who may be going into the process with lofty ideas of how it will be. I told my dear hubby who doesn't LOVE reading about the 55 page article in one of the modules we have to read and he said, "Whatever it takes to bring him home!!" Wow, God is good!! Just another confirmation to me that this is indeed HIS will and not ours. Have I mentioned I am SOOOOOOOOOOO excited about this???
The chase continues...hope I don't get frost bite!! (see previous post ;))

COFFEE'S ON!!

Please visit our site to purchase fair trade coffee from Ethiopia and other countries. We receive $5 per bag purchased which will go towards the adoption cost!!! So get out your favorite mug and order some up!!


www.justlovecoffee.com/TheStewartClan

Blessings

I decided to do another yard sale this weekend as our shed was so full of things from our last yard sale in June that you couldn't even walk in it (my husband loved that!) I HATE having yard sales. But this isn't about me, it's about saving a little guy from Ethiopia so I would do whatever it takes to bring him home. On Thursday morning  however I woke up with a majorly stiff neck. I could not turn my head to the left AT ALL. I was babysitting that day and was trying to bake goodies to sell as well, so organizing for the yard sale became out of the question. Oh and I was trying to get the house picked up for our first home study on Friday at 1pm. So I was going to have a yard sale in the morning then go have lunch and get ready for the lady to show up. (I know, I do this kind of crazy thing ALL THE TIME! How much can I cram into one day?? My husband loves it ;)) So God saw my dilemma and had our home study lady call me and cancel our appt for Friday. Now normally I would be stressed out because I like everything to be done NOW, but I was so relieved she probably wondered why she could hear me smiling over the phone. So that was a huge blessing. J had insisted I not do the yard sale this weekend and as much as I am a submissive wife I knew he'd be around Friday to help out if needed :)
So I've sold my last yard, however we still have lots of clothes left so one of my dear friends is going to help me sort and list the clothes on ebay. We also had a lot of "stuff" left over as well, so dear friend's hubby loaded up his truck and took it to Salvation Army for me. He chatted with the guy that worked there and told him where the stuff had come from and what we had been doing the yard sale for. So the guy asked dear friend's hubby how much he thought it was all worth. He said about $1400!! And the guy said, "OK". So we got a receipt for that much which we'll be able to claim on taxes!! Sooo exciting!! We also got to meet some great people from church, one of which is a notary and will notarize ALL of our documents for the paper chase for FREE!!! What an enormous blessing that is!! For those of you that don't know, the paper chase as it's called (I would call of it more a hunt through the Maine woods, in the snow, in below zero temps, with sandals on) is a gathering of 8 million documents that each require a notarization and 3 photo copies. We need letters of reference, birth certificates, marriage certificate, passport copies, physicals. ALL notarized. I am looking at everything we need and would quit except this a human life we're talking about and it will be more than worth it. I love this little guy already and don't even know who he is or what he looks like-but he's our son and he's somewhere in Ethiopia right now. Isn't that awesome?!  Anyways this paper chase takes appx. 4-6 months to complete but I have some amazing friends that have gone through the process and are excited about helping me do it. (They're nuts). The people we've met since we started this process only a month ago are such a huge blessing already. Their willingness to support, help, etc is priceless. I am so touched by these people I really can't describe it. The family of God is amazing. We serve a very real, powerful God who knows just the right people to put into your life at just the right times.

His ways are not our ways...

Well my first blog post was more of an update as to what is happening with the adoption. I just wanted to share some of how this started for me. Even as a child I always thought adoption was such a neat thing. Giving a child a home that didn't have one, what a privilege!! Fast forward to after J and I had the two older kiddos. I wanted a 3rd (and perhaps a 4th and 5th) and J was content with our boy and girl. At 24 I knew I couldn't be done having kids. I LOVED children. I always babysat while I was in jr. high and h.s. I was going to college so I could get my degree in early childhood education when we got married. I taught Sunday school when we first started going to church. We could not be DONE having children!! I looked into adoption and after much, well, grumpiness, J decided we could have a third child. Phew! Shortly after we had littlest one, we KNEW we were done having children naturally. God quenched that desire when she was about 6 weeks old!! Adopting children wasn't out of the question though but definitely on the back burner. I had been enjoying the freedom of their ages, 4, 6, and almost 8. We are diaperless and have been sleeping through the nite for 4 years. Bliss!! My plans for this fall included homeschooling all 3 kids, babysitting a one year old and another almost 4 year old, 3 days/week, hopefully teaching ballet again at the school, and perhaps leading another study with the girls. But alas, God knocked, I answered, He said we were to adopt, OK, on it Lord!! The tug though started last fall when a couple came to speak at my in-laws church about Haiti, and their adoption of a little boy from there. Oh the tears!! This kid was precious, the story was heartbreaking. So we started sponsoring 3 children from Haiti last Christmas. In January a friend posted about a child who was aging out of an orphanage in the Ukraine (16 yrs old!!) and needed a home. Oh the tears again!! Why did this touch me so? I knew we couldn't do anything (we had zero things in order as far as adoption went). More of these situations came up and just pulled my heartstrings.  J and I had both been reading a book a dear friend wrote called "We're sons of God...so what?" and it talked about how as Christians WE have been adopted by God and the ransom has been paid for us by the shed blood of our Savior. Whoa, never thought of it THAT way!! We knew God was preparing us for something big and didn't know what...We looked into adoption from Haiti but we didn't fit the age requirements. One early June day, the sermon at church was for me :) He talked about how when we're called to do something we need to do it. To trust the Lord, and that He's not using us because we're worthy. I'll share more of this in detail later. So I started filling out our adoption application and after a yard sale we were able to send out the application fee. God led us to adopt from Ethiopia so we're looking to get a little guy from 0-4 yrs old. So that's my story. We don't know all the details of how this is going to work out but He does. So we're sitting next to our Captain and trying to enjoy the ride because He is in control.

And so it begins...

Well here we go at a blog. Yikes. So here is the latest. We've been accepted into the Ethiopia program with our adoption agency. We raised the fees for this first step through the pancake breakfast we held at Ruby Tuesday. We begin our home study this coming Friday (the 13th) and will be finished with it on the 23rd. The home study is basically a visit (4 visits actually) with a social worker who asks us every question under the sun regarding our family, etc. After this is completed we'll have to get a bunch of documents together (called the paper-chase). This process can take 4-6 months. Once all the documents are together it will get sent to Ethiopia and shortly after that we'll receive a referral of our little guy. If we accept the referral then we'll move forward to getting a court date and then J and I will both have to fly there. We'll be there about a week and get to meet him. But then we'll have to leave :( One of us will fly back a month or so later to pick him up. So that is a very short summary of what our next year or so will look like. There will be lots of paperwork, praying, waiting, praying, money, praying and waiting involved. Adoption was something we planned to do "someday" and God has told us someday is here. We're excited, scared and amazed all at the same time. This is so much bigger than we are-everything about it is. This isn't something we planned to do this year, this isn't anything we prepared for or even could prepare for. God doesn't work the way we do, He is not limited by resources and if He wants His plans accomplished, He accomplishes them. He even uses people like J and I. People who have the faith of a mustard seed who are telling this mountain to move. (Matt. 17:20)