A Great Way to Start the New Year

Today was a great day.  Today we legally gained a daughter and sister in full.  No more foster parenting, no more guardianship...today was Adoption Day!  And it is here, that we can raise our "Ebenezer" and tell you how great our God is for bringing us to this point!!  We trust him to continue to make it a full reality in all our hearts... no longer an orphan, but a daughter... it's just so beautiful, isn't it? 

Our judge was great!  He did a superb job.  He even let Benaiah be a judge for a day.  All rise for the Honorable Judge Benaiah Tuininga. ;-)

He signed the papers and then had Denise press the fancy gold seals at the bottom.  It's official!!

The younger members had a great time noticing the courtroom policy.

Especially points two, three and five (thank you Judge Benaiah)...

What a crew... love them so much!

We loved having the cousins around to witness it too.  Only that one group was sick today so they couldn't all come. :-(

I love this picture on so many levels.  These two... if you remember the post of our family pictures, it might remind you of one.

Praise the Lord with us!  He has done GREAT things!!

National Adoption Awareness Month

November is National Adoption Awareness Month.  I'm so thankful that America uses a month to highlight the beautiful institution of adoption and the need for adoption.  I thought I would join in by offering a meager list of things that I've learned about adoption over the years.  This comes from my experience as an adoptee as well as an adoptive parent.  Each situation is, of course, different.  But hopefully this will be a blessing to someone who is (or is thinking about becoming) in the trenches.


...Waiting is hard.  A lot of time is spent waiting when you are trying to adopt.  And it can be downright agonizing at times.  Imagine the last week or two of pregnancy times six months? a year? two years?  Waiting on papers, waiting on government officials, court dates...the list seems endless... God seems to delight to use the waiting though, so it's never wasted.  When we wait on government officials to do their jobs in assuring that our child isn't being trafficked, it is an opportunity to love others like we love ourselves. (We wouldn't want our children to be trafficked if it was us living in poverty, so we don't want others treated that way either!)  God also uses the waiting to dig a fertile ground for attachment, to give us a mama-bear tendency to fight for our child, and to give us the good gifts of more trust in God to move mountains, and more patience and hope...which are always good qualities for one's soul to possess more of.

Finally the waiting was over!  They were in our arms and it felt so so good!

...Attachment may take a very long time.  For some reason this surprised me with our first adoption.  I thought that after a year had passed with not much attachment to show for it, that I had failed.  I thought that it would never happen.  Turns out it just took a lot longer than the timeline I had in my head...as in three years or so (and going).  Adoptive moms, let's throw out our ideas of a nice neat timeline and go with God's.  It's so much more beautiful that way.

Those first smiles were very hard to come by, but this was a precious one that encouraged me during those months.

...Attachment is worth fighting for.  When it begins to happen, it is stunningly gorgeous.  That first hug where your child melts into you, that first note that she brings to you, the first time you put your hand on his back and he doesn't tense up but rather looks to you and smiles... it's worth it.  Don't give up.  And never doubt God's ability to make it happen in his time.  Remember those mountains he moved while you were waiting?  Same God.  He can move mountains in hearts too.

This girl, now my darling daughter, has a whole history, but we are still trusting God as he weaves our stories together.

...Attachment goes both ways.  This surprised me to.  Parents, and I would guess mamas in particular, need to work at attaching to their child.  For some it comes naturally, so I've heard.  For many, it doesn't.  Learn how much God loves you and be a funnel of that love to your child.  Make it your goal that no matter what, your child will know how much he or she is loved and valued by the God of the universe.  Your heart will eventually follow to it's fullest.  No need to fear, but just keep working on it and praying for it.

That smile was weak because of the wind and because of how stinkin hard it was.

...Appreciate diversity.  Diversity on the surface is easy to appreciate.  I love the different skin tones, hair types and accents.  But diversity really happens at a much deeper level.  A biologically related family has the blessing of, well, biology!  Being genetically the same material means that you can often see yourself in your kids and have a small idea of what's going on and what they are doing.  I know, not always...but still, it's in there...sayings like "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree" don't come from nowhere, right?  When suddenly there is a different flavored apple from another tree thrown in, it's easy to not know where thought patterns and preferences come from and therefore subconsciously despise them or be kind of annoyed by them.  But those apples are still so sweet and delicious...just a different kind of delicious!  We must learn to appreciate that deeper diversity.  I love seeing how my kids enjoy things differently, relate to God in different ways, and do things differently.  Appreciating the deeper aspects of diversity has also given my biological kids more courage to be themselves, knowing they will be appreciated.  They know they don't have to be carbon copies of each other or us.  This is also, by the way, a blessing of adopting more than once...it further diversifies your family into a beautiful picture.  (Fruit basket?  haha...just kidding...we won't go too far with the analogies...ahem...)

I love it that these guys love to cook!  That didn't come from our apple tree! Haha!

...Adoption is a covenant.  I'm very well aware that adoptive families disagree here.  If that is you, know that I love you and I know that you have faced very very deep trials and did not make your decision lightly.  While we believe that we can take general truths from the Bible here, we also know that the Bible is silent on this very specific issue.  So I'm not here to condemn you or put you down, but I still want to say what we believe.  When we adopted our children we made a covenant with them, not unlike a marriage covenant.  Just like we believe that divorce is wrong, we also believe that disruption is wrong.  Disruption is the name used for placing a child for adoption again, after he has been adopted once.  Just like we would never place our biological children for adoption no matter what they did, we will never place our adopted children for adoption again.  Yes, there might be circumstances that would dictate a child finding another place to live for a time (I've seen that in biological children too), but we won't ever break the promise that we made to them before a God ordained judge...that we will love them and treat them "as if they were one in the same as if they had been born out of [our] bodies."  This level of commitment has been a blessing through the hard times and given a solid ground to land on both for us and for our children.  

Celebrating the finish line in Uganda.  Celebrations don't last, but this commitment? It's forever.

...Adoption is beautiful and worth being involved in.  It is a beautiful reflection of our adoption in Christ.  Through adoption our families can become a beautiful picture of what the diversity of heaven will be like.  Learning to love and the opportunity to take care of "the least of these." is amazing.  I encourage everyone to take this month to prayerfully consider how you can be involved in the world of adoption and foster care.  Should your family adopt?  Should you donate money towards another family trying to adopt?  What about foster care? Respite care for those in the trenches?  Maybe just commit to praying for a family who is struggling through an adoption!  All of these are greatly beneficial to this important institution.

Adoption is as beautiful as this girl's smile. 

I know I've only just begun with this list.  What about you?  If you have adopted, what has God taught you?  What other ways can Christians rise up to take care of orphans?  How about churches?  What a blessing we can be when we step out in faith!

Final Visa Interview is finished!

We praise the Lord, that God has moved mountains and allowed us to get Denise's visa.  It has been such a long process...taking almost a full year and a half.  But what a blessing it is to be at the finish line now!

She's been worth it!

We are so ready to fly back.  It's been a long time since we've seen our families!  In addition, Benaiah has had another very bad season with his asthma.  He had to be on oxygen and was really struggling.  It will be so great to be able to get him to a pulmonologist in America.

God has been pulling this trip together for us.  Just this past week in addition to the visa appointment, we got plane tickets, a van, and houses to stay in.  It's almost hard to believe that after all this waiting, it's almost time to fly!

We've also been looking forward to some cold weather.  Here are the girls showing off some of the winter clothes we found in downtown Mbale.  But, as I said on instagram... #theyhavenoidea.  haha!

Bullet Post Update

:: We are still in the process of trying to get Denise a visa to travel with us for furlough.  We were hoping that we would be on the plane by now, so it has been a bit difficult to wait.  Currently, the US Embassy is investigating her case in order to confirm that she is indeed an orphan.  Please continue to pray with us that the Lord will grant us the visa so that we can travel soon!  Timothy is still enjoying his time in America, but he has a family here that misses him lots!  We can't wait to go see him, so we need grace to stay as long as the Lord desires!

::I took these pictures when we were eating in the village yesterday.  The girls were happily sharing a plate of food.  They seem to have mastered the art of eating with their hands...

and the art of looking cute...

::Tis the season for circumcision.  Our local tribe circumcises their boys as an entrance to man-hood, but only on even numbered years...and predominantly the second half of the year.  This time of year, there are many large groups going down the road with a young man, all decorated, who is to be circumcised that night...with no pain killers (except for local drugs and alcohol).  It's called okusala nbalu.  While many boys are now circumcised at clinics (including most Christians), the traditional ceremony is full of spirit worship, sacrifices, sexual immorality and drunkenness.

So circumcision season calls for this kind of Sunday school discussion.  The text is Galatians 5:6 and the general gist is that God doesn't really care if you are circumcised or not (when we started Sunday school this morning, as general sentiment was expressed that at the very least, circumcised men are more holy than uncircumcised...maybe that God likes them better) but what matters is faith expressing itself in love.

Our church enjoyed lunch together again.  I showed up early to help sort the rice.  Local rice is dried on the ground so it often has small stones mixed in along with quite a bit of chaff still.  When the ladies sort it, they pull out the stones and throw the rice in the air to blow the chaff away.  If you put a picture of me attempting this, next to mama Rachel doing this (pictured below) you could easily label my side a fail.  We had a good laugh together though.  I'll have to practice some more.

A Few Random Happenings...

The other day the kids caught a few little tiny birds.  They are African yellow white eyes.  So sweet.  One of them was healthy and so we let it go.  The other one had a broken wing, the kids tried to rehabilitate it, but to no avail.  Little birds are hard to help. 

There have also been quite a few of these guys hanging around.  We couldn't find an ID on them, however.

And then to our amazement, this beautiful barn owl spent the day in our tree right next to our house.  What a treat to be able to watch him throughout the day!

For a couple of years our back porch has been used to store church stuff in.  Since the church has moved, we are now able to use the space again.  The girls and I built this couch out of pallets, foam mattresses and pillows.  It's a cozy spot in our house now.

For some reason, Katelyn and I decided to take bodas to town when we got the mattresses and pillows.  Here we are getting everything loaded up to go home.

We had two wonderful young ladies come to visit us a few weeks ago.  They were working with church kids, working in the village schools and helping in the community.  Sadly, they had to suddenly head home when one of them lost her brother while she was here.  Please pray for peace for her and her family as they grieve.   

We also praise the Lord that we got our i600a...a very important document that we were waiting for in order to be able to move forward in getting Denise's visa.  We are thankful for all the ways God continues to help us to move forward in this very difficult process.  We are still praying that God will allow us to return for furlough in August.  Please continue to pray for this also!

Bullet Post Update

The month of May flew by with a vengeance.  We took some weeks off of school and lest we grow too lazy on our break, life threw some crazy busy times at us to keep us relying on the Lord and looking to him for strength.  Here are some of the highlights.

:: We had, what we hope, will be the first of many training sessions for the pastors and wives.  The pastors are going through very practical material such as "how to run a session meeting."  The wives are getting encouragement to keep pressing on in their roles as pastors wives.  (The role of pastor's wife is even more difficult here than in the states since the husband will put in many hours of labor for the church with no pay.  Often times the family struggles for food and school fees and yet the husband presses on working for free for the church.  It is easy for Satan to use that opportunity to discourage the wives, as you can well imagine)  

For the ladies, I taught one session and Mama Rachel and her mama (Mama Maria) taught the other session.  It was a real blessing to all of us.

::  Our other big event of the month was that Timothy flew by himself back to America to work for his uncle for the summer.  It's hard to believe that this kid is 15 years old and old enough to even consider such an opportunity!  We are praying that we will get Denise's visa in order to be able to join him in August.  This whole "leaving the nest" thing is killing my mommy heart, but we are so much at peace with where he is staying (With his Uncle, Aunt and 7...soon to be 8...cousins) that we can't help but be very happy for him!  It was quite brutal on my little ones though.  They just don't get the whole idea of "America."  It seems so far away to them...truly a place people go to and don't come back.  ("Does America have playgrounds?"  "Is Timothy going to die there?"  "Will we ever see him again?")  Little Talitha has cried herself to sleep more than once, but she seems to be settling down now.  We were so thankful for how Emirates airline took care of him.  We didn't pay for any additional escorts for him, but as soon as they found out that he was flying alone, they walked him through everything...from leaving here, to a special lobby during his layover, to his next plane, and all the way through customs and out to his waiting grandparents.  We were so thankful for that!

::Today there was a Fun Run in town.  Anna (our current visitor) and I decided to go for it.  It was announced as a 7 km race, but in reality it ended up being 5.5 km.  And it only started an hour and a half late this time.  :-)  

They had people going around taking pictures and then when we finished, it turned out that they had printed them and were selling them for 30 cents.  Here's our "snap."

::With the start of June, also came the start of our new school year.  We are trying to get 6 weeks done before we hopefully head to America.  After our crazy month, I'm thankful for a bit of settling into a schedule.

:: We don't have much to update concerning Denise's adoption.  We are still waiting for a very important document called an I600a (from the American side of things).  We are also still waiting for the judges written ruling.(From the Ugandan side of things).  We need both of these documents before we can ask for a visa appointment at the embassy.  Please continue to pray with us that these things will come together in time. Even once we get the appointment, it could take a bit of time as we have heard that the embassy has started doing their own investigations on each case.  We really want to go on furlough in August.  Having Timothy there waiting for us puts even more pressure on that August date.  Please continue to pray for our hearts: we don't want to make an idol of getting on a plane in August.  We know with certainty that God's timing will be perfect regardless of when it is.  At the same time, it is becoming increasingly difficult to hold the date on an open hand.  We want to plan.  A family our size can't just show up with no plans in place.  We also want to know when we will see Timothy again.  This is especially true for the littles who tend to struggle a bit more.  Pray also for Denise's heart...whether or not she gets into America (although we presume she will, we won't know for sure until it happens) is a HUGE deal for her life...it's a fairly large weight for a 13 year old to carry.  We appreciate prayers for this!

Thank you friends!  Hopefully June won't be as quiet as May was in bloggy land.

Great News and...a little baby...

We have legal guardianship of Denise!!!!!  Praise the Lord with us!  We are SO thrilled with the work that God has done!!!  We did not make it public, but it was not a smooth road to gain this guardianship.  I wrote the following post right after our second court case, but was too afraid to publish it. But since all is well, I thought I would still put my ramblings on here.  Here is what I wrote:

Court Again: 2 Corinthians 1:9

"As you may remember, a couple weeks ago, we went to court in Kampala.  We had a blast with our big kids and assumed that court had gone well.

We couldn't have been more wrong.  Apparently, the judge hadn't liked us at all and was ready to fail our case.  In fact, as soon as we had left the room, he had turned to the clerk and told her to go through our file and find all the reasons that our case should fail.  Our lawyer found out what was really going on and on the day that we were supposed to get our ruling, went in and asked for more time to bring further evidence in our favor.  The judge had many questions including how we provide for 9 kids, why homeschooling, and what would we do if Eric ever lost his job.  He also didn't understand how it was that we didn't have a house and land in America.  (This is coming from a Ugandan perspective where owning land and building a home is a cultural priority.)  He was also very concerned that we were going to use Denise as maid or someone to "carry our luggage" rather than viewing her as our daughter, equal with the other children.  Many of his questions were fair; many were hard to hear.

"Indeed we felt that we had received the sentence of death..."

When we first arrived in his office, he spent almost an hour telling us how our case was a "dead patient."  He said that there was no life and that there was no good reason that we should be granted our petition.  And in a situation like this we should let Denise go and should not worry, God would take care of Denise.  It was very difficult for us as adults to hear. Perhaps the most emotionally trying experience my husband and I have ever had.  It was exceedingly difficult for Denise, Katelyn and Rebecca to hear.

"...But that was to make us rely not on ourselves..." 

After an hour, we were crushed and were just praying in our hearts for God to intervene and grant life...abundant full life.  The judge seemed to not want to hear anything we had to say in our defense.  We could only listen and pray.

"...but on God who raises the dead..."

About an hour and a half  into everything, our lawyer told the judge that I had been adopted at age 3.  Suddenly, that changed everything.  The judge really is pro-adoption and in his view, the fact that I have been blessed through adoption and wanted to share that blessing with another child, made him ready to grant our case!  At that point, he finally let me stand up and testify to that fact.  And once I did, he said, "Now life has come to this case!  This case was dead, but now it has been resurrected!"

Who knew all these many years, as I was loved and cared for in a foster home, adopted for life and through love by my family, often wondering why my life was the way it was, that God was preparing the way for yet another beautiful story of redemption and resurrection.  In my life, I have often counted the many blessings of my adoption...but this one particular, direct blessing came out of the blue.  I never would have thought that my crazy life story would one day be used by God to redeem another life.

Yes, it is God and God alone who raises the dead:  a dead Christ Savior, my dead heart and now the "dead file" of my sweet dear daughter.  This is only the work of his hands and his grace.  This is God looking down and saying, "I want that girl for myself...so that she can have a future and a hope...so that she can know me, so that she can learn and grow.  She is worth far more than being "just a maid," in fact, she is worth more than rubies."

God is very good to us!  There is no end to his grace!  We will hear his official ruling on April 15th, but he seemed to indicate at the end that everything would be okay.  He even shook the girls' hands and told them to "have hope."  Our lawyers felt confident that all was well.  But please continue to pray that God will grant our petition and request!  And pray for the young hearts that were present, that they would "forget" the things that lie behind and look forward to what lies ahead..."

And we found out this morning that everything is INDEED well!  We praise God for that!  Our next step will be to get a passport and visa for her.  Please continue to pray for a smooth process.

So!  In other news...

On Wednesday, we got a call from a church member that she had found a baby that had been abandoned in a bush next to a field just up the road from our house.  She had called the Police and was wondering if we could help.  So I walked up to see what was going on.  I was introduced to the Police as the woman who would take the baby, which I was very happy to help out with.  So we went to police to file reports and then we came home with him.  We will have him for 1 week while the police investigate and see if they can find the family.  Regarding his future, we don't know what the Lord has in store for him.  If his family is not found, we pray that one day a Christian family will come forward to adopt him.  (I know my audience has a huge big heart for adoption...so I feel I must throw this in lest I get a ton of blessed emails asking similar questions... :-) First, we cannot adopt him right now since we are in the middle of Denise's adoption.  Second, Uganda adoption law is changing so that Americans can no longer adopt while living in America.  And third, since he is a healthy newborn, there is great hope that a Ugandan family will come forward for him at some point.  All of that, of course, is in the Lord's mighty hands!  The best thing we can do right now is pray that God will direct his life in a mighty way with the best, most God-glorifying solution!)

I grieve for his mom.  She must be in such turmoil right now.  "Throwing babies away" is a sad sad occurrence here...not unlike abortion in America.  Often babies get thrown into latrines so as to assure their death.  Because this little boy was placed under a tree in a semi-populated area, I believe his mom was hoping that someone would find him and save him.  So we continue to pray for her that God will use this in her life to draw her to himself and show his love to her.

And we just are so thankful that God saved his life!!  No wild dogs got him...no snakes, rats or bugs!  Two days prior, we had a torrential rain and hail storm that surely would have drowned him.  On Wednesday, it wasn't that hot and it got cloudy, but never rained!  Praise God!  He was very weak after his birth and day out side.  It's only just today that he's really begun to open his eyes and cry out for his needs.  The first day, he was almost limp in our arms.  He's only 4.5 pounds right now!  So tiny!! So precious!!  He has an eye infection.  We aren't sure if it is from dirt from being on the ground or a STD.  It is being cultured and we will find out soon.  Otherwise...he's perfectly healthy!  Amazing GRACE!!

So, here he is...

...and yea, despite the circumstances surrounding how we got him, we are in baby heaven...loving every minute God has given us!

Thanks for all your prayers, friends.  We are so grateful!!!

Pro-Life, Pro-Adoption T-Shirts For Sale!

Did you know that the average cost of an international adoption is $15000-$40000?  Due to Uganda's unique adoption laws (having to go to court twice...once for legal guardianship and once for full adoption) and our situation of living overseas, ours is on the higher end.  

Our good friends in America blessed us by designing these t-shirts and starting this fund raiser for us!  What a gift!  

Would you consider buying a pro-life, pro-adoption shirt to support us?  We have a goal of selling 100 shirts in 18 days.  So far we have sold 19!  That is enough to cover the cost of her passport! 

Thank you for all your prayers and love as we walk this journey to match Denise's legal status with the status of our hearts.

Here is the link:

Click here to buy a shirt!