Are we getting it?

Well it has been a little more than a month since our last post and not much has changed in regards to our adoption plans. Last time we spoke with St. Mary's, we were told we should hear something around the end of the month in regards to being on the official waiting list. That news will hopefully arrive within the next couple of weeks. The next step for us will be to update our home study to include our 5 month old daughter. This should not be a lengthy process like the original home study by any means.

Since writing last, a lot has happened in our church body with adoptions. We have friends that returned from adopting their second child from down south. They have adopted both locally and internationally. We got news that another couple from our church is in the process of adopting a child from Kentucky and that another family in our Sunday school class is adopting a child from Korea. They are completing their basketball team. They have 4 biological kids already and are adopting now to complete the team as well as to fill every seat belt in their van.

As a church body, are we beginning to get it?

Orphan Sunday is coming up on the 7th of November. A few families touched by adoption are making a presentation to the church. When the adoptions first began to happen a couple years ago, there was some resistance from some church members. Unbelievable, but true. It was the same resistance we get when we have done foreign mission work.  As more and more adoptions have started to occur, there is less and less resistance. The church is offering financial support to families. People are bonding together to help out expecting families with gifts and baby showers.  Even some of the members that offered their resistance vocally have now offered their financial support individually.

What has changed?  We are still the same body of believers.  There has been an awesome series of challenges from our interim pastor.  He gets it.  He has said that one of his regrets is that he and his wife did not have more kids.  He would tell you that he is not living for God, but with God daily.  He preaches all the time about the rules, regulations, rituals, and requirements that Christians get so hung up on that we miss out on the blessings waiting for us by simply being with Jesus daily. 

Are we as a church body moving away from our traditional way of thinking?  Are we understanding that Jesus was not a southern Baptist, was not a white guy, didn't speak English, and that's okay?  Are we understanding that Jesus did not spend a lot of time in the church building, but he was the church and went out to the people and spent time with the sinners.  He did not just sit in church and wonder how he could get lost people to come in and get saved.  Our church is slowly moving in that direction.  We are building small groups, getting out of the building and taking the church to people in the community. We are being the church instead of going to the church. 

Are we all realizing that if we call ourselves a Christian that we have been adopted into the family of God.  We were once an orphan, hopeless, destitute, without a forever family, without a bright future.  God takes us into his family, cleans us up, gives us hope, a family and changes our eternal future.

And anyone who welcomes a little child like this on my behalf is welcoming me.  Matthew 18:5

Learn to do good. Seek justice. Help the oppressed. Defend the cause of orphans. Fight for the rights of widows.  Isaiah 1:17

Do you welcome?  Seek?  Help?  Defend?  Fight?  What are you doing?  What will you do?

What do dinosaurs have to do with adoption?

Out of all the mindless shows that are on TV, many of which I am guilty to watching, one that has quickly become one of our family favorites is Dinosaur Train on PBS.  This is one of my daughters favorite shows and being that it was on PBS, we trusted it was okay for her to watch and never really paid too much attention to it until here recently.

As we have been moving through the adoption paperwork and process, we have been trying to talk to her about what is going on and what to expect.  We have told her that the new baby may look different, and depending on age, talk different.  We think she is getting it a little, but she is 4 and I could convince her of most anything.  And then one day, we sat down to watch TV with her and let her choose whatever she wanted us to watch, and she chose Dinosaur Train.  I was a little boy once, dinosaurs + trains sounded bearable to me.  It is better than watching the Barbie Nutcracker movie for the hundredth time.

We sat down and immediately were captivated by the introduction.  The show begins with Mrs. Pteranodon watching her eggs hatch in the nest.  Three Pteranodon eggs hatch (Tiny, Shiny and Don) and then a 4th egg hatches a different dinosaur named Buddy.  This mother dinosaur gives a great response to the other kids and the adventure begins.  Here is the clip below to check it out.  What a great lesson about adoption for kids.

I am 31 and I now drive a minivan.

Well, now that we have gotten the blog started and are anxiously awaiting the introduction of our newest family member, we figured it would be a good idea to tell a little about ourselves and how we got to where we are today.

My wife and I both grew up in central Kentucky, just miles apart in similar kinds of families. We both grew up in church, went to VBS and did all the stuff “religious” families were supposed to do. We had the foundation of faith growing up so making the transition from “good kid” to “good kid with Jesus in their life” was an easy one. We both grew up with God, took Him to high school with us and then off to college. My wife went to college to become a speech language pathologist and I graduated with elementary and special education degrees. She works in the school system of the community we live in and I work in the school system in the neighboring community I grew up in. While we were dating, she first mentioned her call to adoption. I did not think much about it and said that sounded good. Fast forward about 8 years, 6 years of marriage, 2 girls, 2 miscarriages, and 1 call to adopt later and here we are.

But these things don’t define us. It’s not who we are.

My wife and I are both followers of Jesus Christ. We are by no means “religious” people, but two people that actively seek a daily relationship with Jesus. We are not bound by the rules and regulations that religious people and institutions have set up for Christians. We are pursuing a life that is free. We are by no means perfect. We fail each day. We will continue to fail. But the pursuit continues because of the past, present, and future forgiveness promised to us. This lifestyle has led us on various mission trips both here and abroad. We have travelled to Poland together on 3 trips with our church, Cynthiana Baptist. I have been a total of 5 times. The dark past of this nation is still evident today. But the purity and beauty of the children will melt your heart. Having worked with children each time we have been over there, one can’t help but fall in love with them. Despite the language barrier, these kids are hungry for attention and affection.

Shortly after the miscarriages last year, we were reminded of my wife’s call to adoption and began praying hard about it. After surrendering to the call, we found out she was pregnant and that she has some blood clotting issues and needed to be on medicine for her sake as well as for the sake of the pregnancy. So here we were, with a 3 year old girl, pregnant, and starting the adoption process. Should we continue, should we postpone, forget it all and a thousand other things were going through our minds. We continued to pray and decided that God had placed this calling on our lives for a reason. It wasn’t so that we would think about doing it, or talk to others about doing it, but God wanted us to do it. We serve a mighty God and we know that he is in control of this adoption. We can’t pay for it out of our pockets, but God has been working that out through friends, family, our church, and mystery donors. It’s probably not the way we would have drawn it up. Who wants to trade in an SUV for a minivan anyway? Praise God we are not the artists in charge of our lives.

We answered, will you?

On Tuesday, August 24th, our dossier papers were sent to Poland to begin the translation and authentication processes. It is estimated that it will take about 8 weeks to do this and then we will begin waiting for a referral. It is hard to imagine that we could have a new addition in our family by Christmas. Of course there is no way to predict when we will receive and accept a referral.

Some people we have spoken with told us to be prepared to say "No" if a referral comes in and it is not what you requested. The orphanages want the older kids to be adopted first and will sometimes recommend an older child than requested. How do we say no to a child that needs a home?

God has been blessing us throughout the process. We have had financial blessings from friends and family. Our church has supported both financially and most importantly in prayer. We have some friends that recently adopted who have been great supports as well as some other people who just “get it.” We have encountered people that don’t get it. One day, seeing an adopted child misbehaving, we were told, “Look there. That’s what you get.” How sad to think like that, especially if you call yourself a Christian.

Yes, we know there are plenty of children in the USA that need a home. We know it. We get it. God has called us to adopt from Poland. Poland has been a major part of my life and of our marriage. Our family roots come from Prussia, which split and part went to Germany and part to Poland. If all the people who say that there are so many kids around here to adopt, would actually do something more than talk about it, so many kids could be taken out of the orphanages and placed in Christian homes. God calls us to take care of orphans, are you going to answer the call?

James 1:27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Hosea 14:3 In you the orphan finds mercy.

Matthew 18:5 And anyone who welcomes a little child like this on my behalf is welcoming me.

If God tells us so specifically that we are supposed to take care of or offer support for orphans and widows, why do we do so little? If those people that profess to be a Christian gave just a small portion of their time and resources, imagine what a difference we could make in both these children’s physical and spiritual lives. Unfortunately, a lot of us assume that someone else is going to do that. “I’m just not called to do that.” A lot of times God calls us, but we don’t bother to answer the phone, or even hear it ring, and assume the call never came. God is calling you, are you going to answer? How will you answer?