An Overview of this Past Year

Well, I guess we are a bit slow to get into this world of blogging but thanks to good friends we are here. I think it should be good.

So...last summer we were living in a barn (converted to an apartment) on the property of some supporters and good friends with our 4 kids and our 2 young Ukrainian guests, a sister and brother. We had a great three weeks with them. It was fun to see them try new things like riding a bike, and start to open up/relax, giggling as they played together, which there was none of for the first week or so. It was hard for all of us to see them go. Earlier in the summer, we had resigned from our mission to pursue a different direction in ministry, so Robert had to take off to Czech to close out our household a few days before the kids had to go back to Ukraine. Shortly thereafter, I followed him to help out. While saying our goodbyes to our dear Czech friends, God kept putting the kids on our hearts. We knew if He really wanted us to pursue adoption then we'd need a different living situation to pass a home study, and some money. Soon after our arrival back to the States, God provided a suitable home and close to half the necessary funds. It was a GO!

Since we were also changing mission boards, our life was full of finding references, meeting deadlines for a multi-phase application process for the mission or dossier items for the adoption, medical exams, fingerprinting, theology exams, etc. During the thick of it, it was crazy to try to keep track of it all, homeschool 3 kids, raise support and work some side jobs. Of course, there were all the unknown issues of the Ukrainian government accepting a limited number of dossiers, and would we make it into this year's quota? Then came the time to start more paperwork and apply for grants. Wow! But, God is good. He keeps giving grace each day and the next day, so that now we can look back and it seems so long ago that all we saw was paperwork!

Then in late June we got our surprise. (It seems that everyone gets one in this whole process :-) We got a phone call telling us that the brother has twice tested positively for HIV. What a shock. Quickly we had to come up to speed about it - lots of questions flying into our brains all at once. In February, we had become appointees with our new mission board and so there were lots of questions on that end of things. We had a deep awareness that this was not catching God by surprise, but we felt...I would say...wobbly. The elders in our church were great and prayed with us. We felt their support and prayers and God kept calming our souls. In July, we spent 2 1/2 weeks in Pennsylvania in training conferences with our mission. One week the speaker spoke on passages from Job 1-3. It was perfect. The time in God's word was rich. I think during those weeks in PA, God spoke deep to our hearts. What a privilege it is to be adopted when we were sick with sin and dying. What an amazing honor to be called by God to adopt kids and do for them physically what God has done for us spiritually.

The US does not give visas to HIV+ people from what we have read, but you can apply for a waiver. We heard that in Ukraine the waivers can take an average of 6 months, but then we got information from the Consulate that it can be 2 weeks. There are still plenty of questions and things we don't know. The amazing thing is that before this all happened we had been appointed by our mission board to go to South Africa. Coincidence? I don't think so. How will God use all this? We don't know, but possibilities abound!

We still are working on finding $23K. Our dossier has been submitted and we have mixed emotions about getting that call with our travel date. We want it to come, but just yet we lack the funds, so a little later is not necessarily bad.

Please pray for his health. We have been told that he is on medicine although we don't know what type. He had an appendectomy in May. The orphanage has not told him of his illness, but say they are caring for him.

I guess that's about it for my first post.