Flashback Friday - Faith

I was thinking about the faith that is required to adopt. If you think that pure chance dictates what child becomes yours, adoption is a frightening process. If you know that God picks the correct family for each orphan he cares for, the process is reassuring. When we claimed little Tori, we only knew that she was a baby girl from the Bush. We didn't know her name, age or see a picture for about a month. In that long month of waiting, I herniated three disks in my neck and was on complete bed rest. JD and the children were forced to take over the daily chores of running the house. The kids had never done much laundry or cooking until this point and were forced to really carry their load. Just when I was starting to get better, I suffered a major relapse and really had to consider surgery and physical therapy. At the end of the month, I decided that it was really absurd to proceed with the adoption. I was afraid I would not be better to travel to Liberia or even be able to lift a baby. I decided that the only reasonable option was to let someone else adopt our assigned baby and have them hold our adoption funds until I was better; then we could proceed with an adoption. I told JD my thoughts and wanted to release her to someone else before we got her information or picture. I knew it would be too heart-breaking if I saw her picture. We discussed it one evening and JD was positive that he didn't want to end the current adoption. He took over the paperwork load for me and told me that he'd go alone to Liberia for the baby if I wasn't better! He repeated that it was all a step of faith and he wanted to proceed in faith. Wouldn't you know, the very next morning an email came with Tori's information and her Liberian name was FAITH! It might seem like a coincidence, but I knew from her name alone that the whole process of adopting her was an act of faith and no matter my condition, she was meant to be our daughter. I have not doubted from that moment on that Tori was divinely chosen to be our daughter and we couldn't love her more!

Here's Tori at the orphanage the first morning with her new Daddy.

Here's Tori and I shoe shopping the day after we got her out of the hospital. That may be another post for another day, but Tori had very serious malaria when we arrived. We hospitalized her and had her IV treated, but found out that it had not been effective when we re-tested her in America. I don't believe she would have lived another month if she had remained in Liberia.

Little faith will bring your soul to Heaven, great faith will bring Heaven to your soul. - Charles Spurgeon

Orphan Statistics and One Little Face

I've read and compared a lot of orphan statistics; these seem to be quite conservative. I've heard over and over, "well, you can't save them all." No, I can't, but if everyone did their part, we could make a huge dent. The reality is that each one of these children are a soul and matter to God every bit as much as our children do. Can you imagine what we would be capable of if our child's very life hung in the balance? You can literally save a life for $20-30 a month. That is the cost to feed, clothe and educate a child on a child sponsorship program. I can highly recommend Mission of Mercy, we've sponsored children with them for our entire marriage. 100% of the funds go to your child, their over-head expenses are covered by corporate donors. Consider saving an orphan today!

Every 15 SECONDS, another child becomes an AIDS orphan in Africa
Every DAY 5,760 more children become orphans
Every YEAR 2,102,400 more children become orphans (in Africa alone)
143,000,0000 Orphans in the world today spend an average of 10 years in an orphanage or foster home
Approximately 250,000 children are adopted annually, but…
Every YEAR 14,050,000 children still grow up as orphans and AGE OUT of the system
Every DAY 38,493 children AGE OUT
Every 2.2 SECONDS, another orphan child AGES OUT with no family to belong to and no place to call home
In Ukraine and Russia 10% -15% of children who age out of an orphanage commit suicide before age 18.
60% of the girls are lured into prostitution. 70% of the boys become hardened criminals.
Many of these children accept job offers that ultimately result in their being sold as slaves. Millions of girls are sex slaves today, simply because they were unfortunate enough to grow up as orphans.


Tomorrow I plan on doing a Flashback Friday on my little Victoria. I am still amazed at how God spared her little life. Here's our referral picture of Tori; she was about 1 1/2 at the time of our referral.

I spent hours in 2006 staring at this picture; it's the only one we ever got before we arrived to get her!

Always Cooking

No matter how busy the days are, people still have to eat; therefore, we cook...and cook...and cook. Thankfully, Julia (and Tori) are expert egg crackers. Here's Julia cracking a few for breakfast.

When I make bread, Julia always eats the raw wheat. I assume it's good for her, so I let her. Here she and Tori made "wheat cookies" which were small piles of wheat on napkins. It was a great game, but the wheat ended up being all over the floor before it was over.

I often make chicken noodle soup for lunch in the fall and winter, most of the kids love it. Here I gave Julia the task of peeling carrots. She, at the age of three, can peel a good eight carrots and run them through the food processor. I don't let her chop the ends off yet however. What's funny is that she held a play phone and chatted with her friend, Abby, Dad and Aunt Deb while she peeled. When you listen to her, you would think she really has someone on the phone, as she pauses and laughs.

For dessert....Elijah helped with the oatmeal cookies and sampled a bit of dough.

The other thing that is always in need of attention is laundry, but there's no cute pictures to accompany that.

The Princess Room has Moved!

Here's coming in the door of the new princess room. I bought a few African art pieces for the kid's rooms in Liberia.

I hung the beautiful quilts that the church presented to the girls at their dedication.

Look at that smile on Julia's face, makes it worth the work!


My blogger is still messed up. Until I hit post, the pictures show up as enormous text. Anyone else having this problem? I can't re-arrange the pictures or write anything between them. (Not anymore, thank you, Donna!)

Room moving was a lot of work, but now that the princess room is done, I can move on to painting the sun-room/guest room/Elijah room/whatever it will be room.

I was so sad watching the Orphan Relief video of the children's moldy foam "beds" and then looking at Tori and Julia's princess comforters. I love bedding and I want to see the children at Gold Child orphanage have beds and sheets! That's what I really want for Christmas!

Room Change Again

So, this is hair week. Hair week is hitting about every third week and it adds an additional challenge to my normally hectic week. I decided that Sunday would be Julia take out day, Monday would be braid the front day, Tuesday would be braid the back day, Wednesday would be Tori's take out day and then our friend, Dena, comes Thursday to re-do Tori's hair. So, yesterday, I was sitting in the "guest" room taking out Julia's hair and letting Tori play doll house when it hit me. I should move Tori and Julia into the now "guest" room. I am very unhappy with having them in the sun-room turned bed-room mainly because it is so cold in the winter. Last winter, we even bought a little heater for them, but it increased our power bills significantly. So, here's a nice warm bed-room with a closet that I planned on making Elijah's room someday, but I could move the girls now and have warmth and a closet! I ran down-stairs and ran the idea by JD, he agreed that it made sense. The other perk is that they will be by Moriah and Alyssa's rooms and the girl's bathroom; right now the sun-room bed-room is off by itself. So, Moriah and I started dismantling the guest bed and shuffling things around. At this point, I have one big mess! I have beds in the living room and quite frankly, I'm exhausted and wished I had waited until the weekend to have started this major project,(which is along the lines of what my sensible husband suggested.)

I have tried down-loading my room moving pictures three times and blogger isn't cooperating with me, so I'll try those later and move on to more important things. I would like to recommend a blog of someone I've never met, but I appreciate so much. Ashley is a missionary with orphan relief and rescue in Liberia. This group helps one orphanage at a time with emergent needs like housing and clean water. Right now they are raising money for an orphanage called Gold Child. You can read and see Gold Child's conditions on her blog post here -

http://loveinliberia.blogspot.com/2009/10/making-house-home-for-gold-child.html

It breaks my heart to see the conditions that these precious orphans are squatting in and to imagine the stress on the workers that desperately try to just feed them everyday. Most orphanages in Liberia are make-shift and run by people who just collected orphans off the street during the war. There are no social service programs to help them and they are as poor as the rest of the county!

I also urge you to watch the short video on orphan relief and rescue. It is on the left side on their blog here -

http://www.orphanreliefandrescue.org/content/donate

It takes me back to my trips to Liberia and exactly what you see is where my three little Liberian treasures came from!

Yesterday Today

Today a friend informed me that yesterday's post teaser's actual event (did you follow that?) is this Wednesday. Hillsong's We're All In This Together is in theaters all over the country this Wednesday only. The web-site that shows the theaters is:

www.i-heart.org.

See if you can go, unfortunately, I don't have one anywhere near me.

Hillsong's We're All In This Together

We need to realize how truly blessed we are! If you own a computer to read these words, you are among the wealthiest in the world!

Make sure you pause the music at the bottom of my blog, to be able to hear the video.

Julia!

Just a few shots proving that Julia isn't to be trusted alone with markers, especially black ones. I don't know why black is her preferred color, but is seems to often be her first choice. She frequently sneaks markers and colors her finger and toe nails; she calls them her tanglenails. Yesterday, I made her scrub her own artwork, from herself and the wall.

Tomorrow begins National Adoption Month. I have a lot swirling in my brain for the month of November in real life and blog-land.

Harvest Party

Our church had a harvest party last night. As usual, the kids had a blast. It has been coordinated and worked by the church youth the last two years and they have done a fabulous job. Here are my youth workers, Gabriel and Alei. Do you like their costume choices?

They did receive a bit of attention from the crowd. Only one little girl cried when she looked at Alei in the Michelle mask.

Tori was a cow-girl and Julia was a ballerina. I didn't get good pictures of either of their costumes. Here they are on the hay-ride. Although we do hay-rides fairly often, they are still quite a thrill to Julia.

The high-light of Elijah's evening was drive-driving the tractor. He is really, really fond of riding lawn-mowers.

Aunt Deb popped in at the end of the evening to see the kids. We miss seeing her on a daily basis, but it's so nice to have her living locally!

Since our Harvest party isn't on the 31st this year, we are having some friends over that night for a pot-luck and camp-fire. We don't have trick-or-treaters in the boonies!

New, Used Furniture

I am the blessed owner of new, used furniture. I am so excited about it because I absolutely hated my old furniture (the word loathe comes to mind) which I am embarrassed to admit I chose new at the furniture store a few years ago. I started hating it the second week after I purchased it when I realized that it constantly was coming "untucked" and the only way to make it look decent was to remove the 101 cushions, re-tuck it all back in and then replace the cushions. Since we are doing the Financial Peace rapid debt reduction program, I had just resigned myself to living with the dreadful furniture another three years UNTIL my friend Wendy and her husband saved the day. They had a connection that allowed my to buy this fabulous-only six months old-Lazy Boy furniture for a whopping $250. The down-side was my poor husband had to make a six hour round trip run to pick it up; apparently he thought it worth the trip to not have to listen to me for three more years. So, I quickly put my untucked messy furniture on Craig's list and sold it the first day for $150, so I got new furniture for $100!

Here it is, nothing to tuck or pick up off the floor.

You have to love that Charlie and Slurpee like the new furniture. Nine children, two little dogs and a few cats are a great reason to buy used furniture; it keeps the stress down.

As for Slurpee, we caved and are letting him in. He is my 7-11 find that is supposed to be a barn cat. He apparently has some special needs; he walks like he is drunk and doesn't move for cars! He spent much of his time sneaking in the house anyway. So, after JD bumped him with the car one day, he just decided that Slurpee can become an indoor cat. So, here he is in all his glory.

So, here's the "other side of the living room." The lady is coming for the green furniture on Friday, so it is stacked here until then. (Man, I hope she comes like she said she will!) The walk-way that was left between the furniture was filled with little doll-houses today. Tori and Julia won't play down-stairs without "big kids" so unless I rotate toys upstairs, they want to just sit in front of the TV during school time.

I'm off to dictate cleaning tasks to several children. The living room isn't the only room that looks like this!