Treasure in the Brokenness

Today marks one week since we boarded a plane in Las Vegas and made the long trek here!  So much has happened, it feels like that day was a world away.  The first week here was filled with being on the go to get paperwork completed, the excitement of meeting Toby for the first time, more paper chasing....and now, we wait. We get to see Toby each day, but we are really limited on how much time we get to spend with him.  He continues to go to school each day (which must be AGONY for him when he just wants to be with us!) so we can only arrive around 4:00pm during the school week, then we leave by about 5:20 so that he can have dinner.  This weekend, we got to see him twice on Saturday, but were still restricted on the time.  The whole process of visiting is quite confusing.  On the weekend, it seemed like no one was even there.  A cook had to come open the door for us, we stood on the stairs landing and suddenly heard him bounding down the stairs and r...

Today was such an amazing, pivotal moment not only in this adoption journey...but in our lives...I could not simply throw pictures up on Facebook like I've done up to this point.  I've been considering the words I would use all day...trying to find a way to truly capture the miracle we've seen before our eyes.  God...is...so...good. Today was "metcha day".  We met our boy.  The day we've waited for since first seeing his sweet picture and considering the possibility of adoption.  What a day it was! We awoke at about 4:45am to be ready for our early train ride.  In actuality, I did not sleep.  I could not sleep.  But we awoke the boys, had breakfast and waited for Max to come pick us up.  We arrived at the train station with plenty of time to spare...and were deeply grateful for a porter to haul all of our bags.  Our last missing piece of luggage came in right before we departed...hooray!  The boys LOVED the train!  We all l...

Seven days. We will be leaving in SEVEN DAYS!!!! We will be meeting our sweet Toby on Thanksgiving Day! After only 4 1/2 months - which is quick by adoption standards but feels like an eternity when your mama's heart just wants to hold your boy - we got the phone call that we have our first appointment! It came a lot sooner than we were expecting, so we are in a bit of a time crunch.  You see...we are moving to a new house on the 20th and will have one day in our new home before having to make our big trek to Europe!  But we don't care...we will make it work....we get to see our boy on Thanksgiving!!!!!! We cherish your prayers for our family during this period of massive transition!  We will do our best to keep the blog updated as we travel and meet our new son, but we may be restricted in what information/photos we can share until after we pass court, so please be understanding and patient! Our specific prayer requests: - Safety during our travel and peace ...

Today is Orphan Sunday. Today means more to us than any of the other Orphan Sundays that came before, because we have a little boy of our own waiting for us in an orphanage across the ocean. But the orphan crisis SHOULD have meant MUCH more to us than it did before we began this journey to adopt Toby. Yes, we had a heart for orphans. We worked at Boys Town, we supported adoptions within our family, we gave to Reece's Rainbow's Angel Tree Program. But we also made excuses. Not everyone is called to adopt, right? There are other ways to support orphans. Yes, true. But as followers of Christ, we cannot sit by and watch the orphan epidemic play out before our eyes and NOT RISE UP TO DO SOMETHING. Just saying it is so sad and we will pray is not enough. There are ways to support mothers who are faced with unwanted pregnancies. You can provide respite care or other help to foster families. You can sponsor orphans or donate to adoption funds. And you can adopt. Adoption ...

We are happy to announce that our $2500 matching grant from Lifesong has been matched! IN FIVE DAYS!!! Only God could be so faithful to provide! We had a free weekend and a hotel deal and were planning to take a short family vacation since Josh had missed some of our birthdays this month.  We looked at various places...then ended up deciding on Phoenix. My family is in Phoenix, but it isn't one of our favorite vacation destinations!  :-) But God knew we needed to be there. On Friday we met with the sweet lady who hosted a Premier Jewelry party which helped raise over $200 for Toby! On Sunday, we were blessed with the chance to speak at my parents' church, West Greenway Bible Church.  This church family has been so supportive of our big extended family and has a big heart for foster and adoptive families.  They prayed over us with such love and support...and they gave just as generously.  We came away with $1600 to put toward our Lifesong grant! A...