BLESSED ASSURANCE

 

Precious Prayer Time

This is a copy of the letter I sent to my yahoo prayer group of the amazing events that happened this morning with my sweet time with the LORD.  Just more confirmation to me that He truly delights in our prayers and our faith!

Good morning sweet sisters,

I just have to share about my amazing prayer time this morning.  I was in the final stages of creating a tape of our family talking to the twins, reading them a few books etc.  I decided to close the tape with a prayer offering.  Now I knew there was not a lot of tape time left, but once I started to pray I never looked at the recorder, it is a small hand held dictation recorder my husband uses at work.  So I start praying, praising the Lord, quoting a few scriptures, then on to praying for IAN, all who work there, Sele Enat, Ababe, Hanna, their assistants, the nannies, the social workers, the judges in ET, all who work coming together to make it possible to adopt our childern.  Then I am on to praying for us waiting families, that we would glorify Him in the wait, be a light to others, etc.  Then for all of our court cases, that all paperwork would be in order, everything needed for court and everyone needed for court would be present, for the judge that hears our case, would find all in order to pass us the first time, that there would be no reschedule of court dates, not power outages, that God would grant us and Abebe favor with the courts and embassy, and that He would then set a swift embassy date so that we may all be able to travel and pick up our children soon, 'sooner than soon' : )  Then I am on to praying for our children, for the Lord's protection over them all, that He would see to their needs; nutrutionally, that they would have enough, to eat, that He would see to the details of their developmental and physical stimulation, their nurturing and their spirits.  I think I then closed with a scripture from Matthew, and proclaimed THE NAME OF JESUS, over all of these prayers and after I said the word, "AMEN" do you know that recorder shut off!  I am not kidding, that very second I closed my prayer was the end of the tape.  God is so good, I am so thankful for the BIG, AMAZING, SWEET God we serve.  I hope this blesses you as much as it has me this morning.

Your sister who is in LOVE with her Father and twin sons : )

Michelle

Care Package on the way

Dear and sweet friends of ours, Eric and Chantelle Becking are leaving Cape on saturday, 5/2, to fly to Ethiopia and meet their daughter for the first time, and then return home with her forever one week later.  Their daughter, Solie Koket, is in the same orphanage as our sons and they offered to take a gallon size bag of items waiting parents wanted to send to their children.  I have packed this bag full of toys and a premie sized outfit for each boy.  You can also see the wall clings I found in African animals for her to decorate the nursery with there.  And what do you think about the posters I made for Phelix and Phisher of their AWESOME family back in the USA who is praying for a miracle to be able to travel SOON and bring them home.  I am also sending more formula for the boys and a dictation tape and recorder with our family reading the boys some of their favorite stories; Good Night Moon, Guess How Much I Love You, Time for Bed, etc., saying prayers for them, just sending little messages of how much we dearly love them and miss them.  The Beckings gave us this awesome idea.  They did this for their first adoptive daughter, Bianca, while they were waiting to bring her home from from Guatemala.  I absolutely love this idea, and Jamie had the idea to send extra batteries along.  Hopefully the nannies will play the tape often, and the boys will recognize the sounds of our voices, and recognize our faces by the time we arrive!  Babies are so smart, and I have no doubt these two darlings will be like their older brother and sister, smartypants : )

Twin Update

I just wanted to quickly post a few nuggets of information we were given from a mom who recently traveled to Ethiopia to bring home her son.  She said the boys are "teenie tiny", she estimates their weight to be 4-5 pounds, another mom there estimated their weight to be 3-4 pounds.  I sent her with an outfit for each boy, Baby Gap size newborn, 0-7 lbs.  She said the outfits swallowed the boys.  She said they are in premie sizes.  She said, Phelix, the smaller one is very alert and doing well, the bigger one, Phisher, is doing well as well, but did not seem as alert as his brother.  She also said that they may have caught him at sleepy times.

As wonderful as this update is, it leaves us with questions.  At the time of referral, we were told that Phelix was 7.5 lbs and Phisher was 10.5 lbs.  We are currently waiting for an accurate and current weight on both boys, and to hear if they are tolerating the premie formula we sent (with this kind mom who just traveled) for the boys.  We would ask for your prayers for the boys, for their nutritional and physical and mental development.  God has sweetly reminded me of how dearly He loves our boys, and that He is seeing to their every need.  Would you praise HIM for His faithfulness, His enduring love for all.  Would you stand with us in prayer that we would be assigned a court date soon, that we pass court the FIRST time and then assigned a swift embassy date to bring the boys home?

Hope to share some new images of the boys soon, I think new photos should be coming soon.  Families who travel before you, are so generous with their time and resources while they are in ET.  I hope to post a picture of little feet soon!

Orphans of God

Hi there, I would encourage you to watch the following video.  Some people still do not understand why we are adopting and why we chose ethiopia.  i saw this video and these statics on another ethiopian adoptive moms blog and it just may help to answer your questions.  people who know us, know we have two of the most well behaved, biggest servant hearted kids, a son and a daughter, we are an extremely busy family why would we add more to our full plate?  see that is where they go wrong, it is not about us, it is about HIM, IT IS ABOUT BEING HIS HANDS AND FEET TO THE WORLD.  HE ADOPTED US FIRST, WE HAVE BEEN ADOPTED INTO HIS FAMILY, THE KINGDOM OF GOD.  WE ARE JUST BEING OBEDIENT TO HIM AND HE HAS CALLED US TO ADOPT.  WE ARE SO BLESSED, so very blessed in so many ways.

luke 12:48  from everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.

STARTLING STATS ABOUT ETHIOPIA

* One out of every 20 children born alive die in their first month of life

* One out of ten die before reaching their first birthday

* One out of six die before reaching their fifth birthday

* There are 4.6 million orphans in Ethiopia

* The median age in Ethiopia is 18

* 1.5 million people in Ethiopia are infected with AIDS

* Per capita, Ethiopia receives less aid than any country in Africa

Special Delivery

This sweet bouquet came shortly after we accepted the referral of the twins congratulating us on our 'DOUBLE BLESSING'.  Thank you, Newcomer family, you certainly know first hand about the blessing of an adopted child.  Thank you to all of our friends and family that have sent cards, prayed prayers and rejoiced with us over our boys.  And a big shout out to our AWESOME GOD for HIS plan for these boys in our family!!

FRIENDS the family you give yourself

I am blessed to have a circle of wonderful friends.  The day after we received our referral Chantelle organized a celebratory luncheon.  These friends brought their own adopted children and gifts for me and the twins.  Gosh, I was taken by such surprise!  I am usually the party planner, gift giver and I was so humbled by the love poured out to me and my new little guys!  Friends are truly a divine gift, I hope I am as good of a friend to my friends as they are to me!  Jamie called when we first arrived and asked where I was, he wanted to stop by for a second.  Unbeknownst to me, in his excitement he had been shopping for his new sons at the hospital gift shop.  The world's greatest husband showed up with a ceramic FROG bank for the boys and two plush FROG rattles!  I feel like the most blessed person on earth, twin boys, fantastic friends, and the world's greatest husband and father for all FOUR of my children!!

Love at first sight

Referral Day, March 30, 2009

I had been expecting a call from our coordinator for an update on things.  Denver had been hit with a big snow storm so the agency had been without power/phones for 5 days.  When she called me at 4:15 pm and said I do have some news for you, I immediately knew it was more than the update.  She started to tell me she had our referral, that it was for twin boys, they appeared to be healthy and only 1 1/2 months old.  Did I want her to send me their referral over the internet so we could take a look at their medical form and their pictures.  I yelled at Parker, who was upstairs, to call his Dad and tell him to come home.  I hung up the phone with Leah, knowing that as soon as Jamie made it home we would be seeing our double blessings from the LORD.  

Jamie called and said that he was on his way home, and said, "Parker didn't say if it was for a boy or a girl?"  I said, "Well that is the funny part. . . pause, it is for TWIN Boys!!!"  Jamie is like are you kidding me?  What do you think of twin boys?  I said, "I think God has a great sense of humor and HE thinks we can do this."  Parker and I are in shock, waiting for Jamie to get home.  Paeton is outside soaking up the sun, doing her homework.  Parker keeps asking me if he can go tell Paeton to come in.  I said no, I did not want to tell her until Jamie got home.  Even though we all had been praying that our desires would be HIS desires in this adoption, I just was not sure how she would react to twin boys, she really wanted a sister.

Jamie arrived, we called Paeton in and set up the video camera, to record us seeing the boys for the first time, and then Jamie pulled up the files.  Paeton, sitting on my lap, thought at first it was a boy and a girl, we told her it was twin boys.  We all knew immediately they were ours!  It has taken a week to really sink in that we have twin sons waiting for us to bring them home.

We called my mom and dad who were both very excited.  Jamie called his parents who had plans to go out to eat to celebrate his dad's 1 year of retirement, we asked if we could join them.  So we met them out for dinner.  Parker had one medical/picture in his pocket and the plan was that he would tell his grandparents we received our referral.  So as they were ooohing and ahhing over Phisher's picture Paeton says, "We have another surprise for you!"  She takes out the medical/picture of Phelix and presents them with the reality that we will be adopting TWINS!!!  This was a super fun surprise!!

We got home and printed off pictures for the kids to take to school to show off their brothers.  I do not think any of slept real well this night, too much excitement for one day!!  We just feel so blessed!  I will post soon about the CELEBRATION LUNCH dear friends treated me to the next day, and about the gifts Jamie bought the boys and brought to the luncheon! 

GOD is GOOD!  

A TWIN Blessing!!

We are blessed and announce with joy we were given our referral this week for twin boys!!  The boys are around two months old and they are darling!  Ethiopian law prevents us from posting their pictures on the internet, or we would love to share.  The above photo is of Phisher's hand.  The thumb in the photograph belongs to Dr Kee Park, a colleague of Jamie's from Cape.  He is actually in Addis, Ethiopia and went to the orphanage to visit the boys.  What he reported back to us was that Phelix has been in the hospital for an upper respiratory infection for about a week.  Dr Park went to the hospital and checked on our little guy, Phelix, and he reported that he is doing well on his IV antibiotics and has been fever free for three days.  He is expected to be released back to the orphanage in a few days.  We are very thankful that Dr Park was able to check in on the boys for us.  He also said that they appear healthy and, "are super cute!"  Phelix has captivating eyes doesn't he?

Most people want to know what is next?  When can you go and get them?  Well we have to wait for a court date.  It will probably be in about 4 to six weeks.  I will post when I get the date.  There is a man who works for our adoption agency who will go to court on our behalf.  Pray with us we pass court the first time(it is not unusual not to pass court the first time for a variety of reasons)  After we pass court, we will be assigned an Embassy date.  We will travel around this date, make our embassy appointment and then return home with the boys.  This process can take a while, if everything goes really well (which is unusual!) we hope to travel in July to get them.

We can all use your prayers as we wait to bring them home.  It is very difficult to sit and look at photographs, in Parker's words, "Photographs, I don't want any more photographs, I want my brothers!"  Please pray for their health and safety.  Please pray for the staff at the orphanage, the nannies who care for all of the children.  I was told there is usually around 18 children there, there is 38 children there now!  We are still in a bit of shock . . . TWINS. . . but know God is the author of this whole journey and He knows we can handle it, so we are keeping our trust in HIM!

We are not ready in the least!  Of course, I did make a stroller purchase a couple months back, a SINGLE stroller.  That will have to be returned, and we will be looking for double in all the necessary equipment.  We are all very excited and praise God for this double blessing!  I will post more details soon.