We've booked our tickets!

Yea God! We have FINALLY booked our tickets! We are leaving on January 26th and coming back on February 15th. It's a longer stay, but because of all of the flights being booked for Chinese New Year, we had to stay an extra 2 days to get out on Singapore Air. I sure hope they're worth it! :-)

At any rate, we're continuing to trust God to provide as our expenses will include a total of 4 extra days of hotels and meals. I guess He'll just sell off an extra cow or two. :-) We'll continue to keep you posted and thanks again for your prayers and support!

Another unexpected miracle

Hi everyone! Thanks so much for all of your prayers and encouraging notes on my FB page! We are so excited to be finally in count-down mode and it's so great to be able to share this with all of you.

To quickly update you, we are still waiting to hear on our airline tickets w/Singapore Air. Our travel agency had followed up yesterday and were asked by Singapore Air to follow up today. Today is when we need to book our tickets so we're really hoping that one way or another, we'll be able to stay on Singapore Air but ultimately are trusting God to work out His plan and not ours. Yes, even w/tickets, God has a plan!

Our current miracle that we are praising God for is we found out yesterday that we will be able to wire our orphanage fee to our orphanage. Why is this a big deal to us? Well, our province wasn't originally one of the few that we could wire that fee to. The fee is a little over $5000 CASH that we would have to carry on our persons with us to China PLUS the other cash that we would need. Jim, especially, has been nervous about carrying all of that cash while we travel so this is a HUGE load off of both of our minds to be able to wire that ahead of time and not stress so much! Yea God! And the other cool thing is that we didn't even ask our agency to ask the orphanage - they did it on their own and surprised us yesterday! I LOVE it when God takes care of things without us even having to ask!!! SOOOOOOOO AMAZING! We are so incredibly humbled and thankful for all of the details that God has taken care of on our behalf! We don't deserve any of this and yet God has gone above and beyond to care for our every need! Praise God for His incredible faithfulness and grace!

So today, we continue to wait and see how God will work out our travel and see how He'll continue to provide the rest of the monies we need to adopt our little girl. We hope that one of these grant agencies will come through so all of our funds will be taken care of but ultimately, we trust God to work all things out.

I wanted to ask you all to also pray for our former church situation. We're continuing to have people come to us with a variety of questions and would ask for your prayers over what we say and how we handle things. We don't want to dishonor God in this process....He's been dishonored enough. His church is hurting and desperately needs the healing it's being denied. Pray for God's will to prevail and for healing over the many who are hurting but don't know why. Pray that we would honor God with our words and our actions and for healing for our hearts also.

Thank you all so much for all of your encouragement and support! You have all played a MAJOR role in bringing Jasmine home and helping us keep our arms raised and we are so thankful for all of you! We continue to PRAISE God for His AMAZING provision, encouragement, love and grace! Yea God!

Consulate appointment arrived today!

Well, we continue to Praise God and laugh aloud at His incredible timing! I LOVE His sense of humor! We got our consulate appointment today for Feb 9th which means that we will be looking to depart for China on 1/26 or 1/27 depending on how the airfare arrangements work out. We've been in touch with all 3 travel agents that were recommended by CCAI and all 3 have made tentative reservations for us to review. As I look things over, I am, once again, reminded of God's incredible attention to detail. We were talking things through last night to figure out what would be the easiest & simplest for Lily & Jasmine and came up with a "wishlist", if you will, of how we'd like to travel. We are hoping to travel out of Colorado Springs as it will be closer to our house and be easier to get transportation to and from the airport. We are hoping for direct flights on each leg, red eye flights as it will work better w/both girls' schedules and finally we're really hoping to find flights on Singapore Air as we're told they're #1 as far as family-friendly. The only problem, we're finding out, is that most airlines are booked to the hilt because of Chinese New Year so flights have been hard to find. Well, 1 of our travel agents has come up w/an itinerary that accomplishes all of those things and prices out at around $3600 for all of us (GREAT DEAL)! The only hiccup is that we're currently waitlisted on the Hong Kong flight coming home and should find out tomorrow if we'll be able to get that flight. We'd greatly appreciate your prayers that, if this itinerary is God's plan for us, He'll work it out for us to get onto that last flight home. Either way, we're trusting Him to work all of these things out for what's best for our girls and are so thankful that He's taking care of us!

We should hear tomorrow about that flight so we'll keep you posted. In the meantime, we continue to Praise God for His faithfulness and His provision...even in the tiniest of details! We are so excited to go get our little girl and can hardly believe that in about 29 days, we'll be going to bring her home! Thank so much for all of your encouragement, prayers and celebration on our behalf! We are truly humbled and so incredibly thankful for all of you. And we are so thankful that our God takes care of our every need! We can't wait to see how He finishes this process!

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year from our family to yours! We had a wonderful time hanging out with my family this year. Christmas Eve, we went to 1 of the earlier services at our church and then came home and had some family time reading the Christmas story and then opened gifts. Christmas Day, we opened our stockings and eventually headed to my sister's house for a beautiful Christmas dinner. The thankfulness that we have felt throughout these past weeks continued to touch us on Christmas Day. We feel so incredibly thankful for God sending His son for us so that we can have a relationship with Him! We feel so thankful for family and friends and really enjoyed spending time with my family as well as my brother, who was able to fly out. The day after Christmas, my family came over to my house and we feasted on homemade chili, cornbread, salsa dip & fruit....yummi! That night, my sister agreed to spend the night so we were able to spend some wonderful time together and then attend church together yesterday. What a wonderful time we all had!

Needless to say, this has been one of the best Christmases the Young family has ever experienced! As we've reflected back over the year, we've been blown away by God's incredible faithfulness to us and His amazing provision. While this has been an incredibly tough year, it has been one of the best because of all that God has done for us and how He's grown us. We are so humbled that the God of the universe loves us so much to be such a huge part of our lives! Yesterday at church, the Pastor asked us all to think about how God had intervened in our lives in 2009. We were so humbled and touched to think of time and time and time and TIME again, of God's intervention over this past year.

We continue to Praise God for all that He has done and for all of you! Since I last blogged, God brought in another $3100 for our adoption! We are estimating that we only need between $4000-$5000, depending on the travel costs, to finalize our adoption! Praise God for His provision and thank you, family, for your generous hearts! We still have 2 outstanding grants that may provide so please continue to pray for that final money to come in however God chooses. We should hear back from the US consulate this week about our appointment date and then be able to make our travel arrangements. Wow! Hard to believe that we're leaving in approximately 30 days!

Well, we'll continue to keep you posted and thanks again for all of your prayers and encouragement! We love you and we'll update again soon! :-)

Travel approval is in!

Hi everyone! So we continue to Praise God for His incredible timing and His provision. We had another person send us a check for $150 so that's almost $2200 raised so far!

Additionally, we got word late yesterday that our travel approval had been mailed and today it arrived! Yaaaaaaaaaa! I found out that we have 90 days from when the travel approval is issued by the Chinese Gov. to travel. The only little hitch in all of this is that right smack dab in the middle of our time frame is the Chinese New Year in which everything shuts down for a week or so. That's on Feb. 14 of this year so we'll either need to go before or in the middle of the Chinese New Year in order to go and get back before 90 days. Chinese New year would be more expensive so we're leaning towards before. We've had to make some very quick decisions but our tentative travel date IS....January 27-Feb. 12th or 13th! Despite the fact that we're still quite a bit short, money-wise, we're going to take a step of faith here and go w/what we feel God laying on our hearts.

What happens from here? Well, I'm glad you asked! What happens from here is that CCAI (our agency) has emailed the US consulate for an appointment time for us. We're thinking we could get that any time next week. Once we have that appt. scheduled, they will then begin making all of the in-China accomodations and we will start to make our travel arrangements and trust that God will provide the rest of the monies needed to bring Jasmine home.

I KNOW! Never a dull moment around here! :-) We're so excited to see how God pulls this all off and can't wait to hold Jasmine in our arms. We appreciate all of your prayers and ask for continued prayers over the 2 outstanding grants as well as the remainder of funds needed to go. We'd also ask for prayers for our health, especially Lily's, during the trip.

Before I go, I wanted to share one more thing. We were at the Doctor's today and on our way out we noticed a TON of pennies scattered all over the floor and parking lot. No one was around that seemed to be looking for them or missing them so we picked them up and counted a total of 97 pennies. Ok, 97 pennies are a lot to just scatter along the ground so we began to "wonder what it means" to each other. Maybe we'll be 97 cents short and this is God's way of providing for our adoption. Who knows? At any rate, I was sharing this with my sister and she said "In God we trust." What? She said that she's heard a number of people who, when they pick up pennies, think of how it says "In God We Trust" on 1 side. Wouldn't that be so like God to let us know 97 times, the day that we get our travel approval, that we can trust Him?! Hmmmmmmmmmmm.

And provides...

God is so good and we continue to praise and thank Him for His provision for our adoption! We had another check come in yesterday for $150 towards our adoption. That's about $2090 raised! Praise God for His faithfulness and grace towards us! We are incredibly humbled that friends and family would give to help bring Jasmine home. It was an incredible week of unexpected provision and encouragement. We continue to trust and pray for the rest of the monies needed and can't wait to see how God brings everything all together.

We had another incredible morning of worship at our new church. Not as intense as last week but some amazing moments once again. One of the songs called "Here in Your Presence", had some powerful lyrics that I wanted to share.

Found in Your hands, fullness of joy
Every fear suddenly wiped away here in Your presence
All of my gains now fade away
Every crown no longer on display, here in Your presence
Heaven in trembling in awe of Your wonders
the kings and their kingdoms are standing amazed

Chorus:
Here in Your presence, we are undone
Here in Your presence, Heaven and Earth become one
Here in Your presence, all things are new
Here in Your presence, everything bows before You

Bridge:
Wonderful, beautiful, glorious, matchless in every way
Wonderful, beautiful, glorious, matchless in every way
Wonderful, beautiful, glorious, matchless in every way
Wonderful, beautiful, glorious, matchless in every way

We can sing these praises because Jesus came to earth, fully God and fully man. It is because of His life and death and resurrection, that we can have this kind of relationship with the God of the universe. How amazing and humbling! The God of the universe wanted to have a relationship with us and so He sent His precious son. Why? Because a baby isn't scary. We love because He first loved us.

And in Him, all things are made new. Praise God! We hope this Christmas season is one of the most special times you've ever had because of the REAL meaning.

And more provision!

Yea God! He continues to provide! We received 2 more checks today totaling $1075! God is SO GOOD!

God continues to provide!

Ok, so sorry about the long last post but....no, I'm really not sorry. :-) God did so much on Sunday alone, that I just had to share. But wait, there's more! Since, Sunday, God has been up to His creative ways again and has sent us some money for our adoption. On Monday, we received 2 checks in the mail from some friends, totaling $515 to go towards our adoption. Totally awesome!

Then, yesterday, the doorbell rang 3 times and the phone rang. As I was trying to juggle finding the phone and answering the door, I saw a little flash of someone running out of the corner of my eye. I giggled to myself as I was figuring our cute neighbor boys were ding dong ditching and thought I'd catch them in the act. I peaked out the window and to my surprise, no one was there. I did see an envelope on our doorstep w/our names on it so I opened the door. I again looked around and could find no one lurking about so I picked up the envelope and went inside. Inside the envelope was a card congratulating us on our adoption and $300 cash! No signature. I was completely shocked and yet laughing at God for bringing us money for our adoption via a ding-dong ditcher!

So far today, God's brought us another $50 through another precious friend! I am truly overwhelmed by God's amazing grace and provision and by precious family and friends who have wanted to partner with us in bringing Jasmine home. God is providing, just like He said He would! God is so good! We continue to praise and trust Him and can't wait to continue to see the creative ways He works everything out. Thank you all for your encouragement and prayers and support! We love you!

Awesome worship or encouragement assault? You be the judge!

Ok, so once again, God totally rocks! I've been meaning to blog since Sunday but it's taken me part of the week to get some of the info. I wanted to share. So, I think I shared with you that from time to time, we still have waves of grief that hit us about our old church, feelings of anger and bitterness that come up that need to be forgiven again, sadness over the loss of friendships & the lies, etc. Well, on the way to church on Sunday, I was sharing w/ Jim how, I understand that it takes a while to get over things like that but how much I long to be on the other side, completely healed, completely forgiving of all that was done. I was sharing about what a weird combo it is to, on the one hand, feel so much joy and celebration and thankfulness and yet have these waves hit from time to time. I understand the necessity of grieving & re-forgiving as things come up as that's healthy but I'm feeling a little impatient 'cause I really want to fully celebrate right now too. At any rate, we continued to chat about that and then moved on to our adoption, wondering aloud how God was going pull it off, sharing our excitement and fear at the same time.

So, we get to church and once the worship started, it was ALL over for me! I have had God encourage me before but NEVER like He did at this service. The first song was called "Savior" by Ross Parsley and the words go like this....

"I have seen with my own eyes your faithfulness, oh, God.
I refuse to believe the lies that war against my soul.
You rescued me from all my fears, and loosed the chains of
wasted years.

You're my Savior, restorer, rebuilder, rewarder.
My refuge, redeemer, defender, my healer, Savior

Now my heart is overwhelmed by all sufficient grace.
For I have found my weaknesses become your perfect strength.
You rescued me from all my fears, and loosed the chains of
was - ted years.

You're my Savior, restorer, rebuilder, rewarder.
My refuge, redeemer, defender, my healer, Savior

Behold the One who holds me in His hands.
The God who comes and turns my morning
into dance.

You're my Savior, restorer, rebuilder, rewarder.
My refuge, redeemer, defender, my healer, Savior"

Oh, but no, God is not finished yet. The next song was "You Hold it All" by Desperation Band and the lyrics are...

"You breathed and the stars arrived, maching in perfect time into the night.
You spoke and the light appeared, marking the days and years of our lives.

You hold it all together, You hold it all forev - er.
You hold it all, You started it all, You are my all in all.

You loved in the greatest way, giving Your life away for all that was lost.
You conquered the enemy, darkness is trembling, You are alive.

You hold it all together, You hold it all forev - er.
You hold it all, You started it all, You are my all in all.

The Lord is my light and my salvation in life, I will not fear, no, I will not fear.

You hold it all together, You hold it all forev - er.
You hold it all, You started it all, You are my all in all.

I will not fear, I will not fear, ’cause You hold it all."

Oh, but now God's just getting warmed up 'cause the next song is "When I Speak Your Name"

"Jesus, the most beautiful name of all names
Jesus, the only name that brings healing and strength
When I speak your name, mountains move and chains are loosed
When I speak your name, darkness flees, it has no hold on me

Jesus, the most beautiful name that I know, you're the exalted one
And Jesus, you have the power alone. You lift the lowly one, Jesus

Jesus, the most wonderful name of all names
Jesus, the only name that brings freedom and hope
When I speak your name, mountains move, chains are loosed
When I speak your name, darkness flees, it has no hold on me

And Jesus, the most beautiful name that I know, you're the exalted one
And Jesus, you have the power alone. You lift the lowly one, Jesus

Be exalted, Be exalted, Be exalted higher and higher
Be exalted, Be exalted, Be exalted higher and higher

And Jesus, the most beautiful name that I know, you're the exalted one
And Jesus, you have the power alone. You lift the lowly one, Jesus"

Mmmmm-hmmmm. You're feeling it now, aren't you?! Oh, but He still kept going with "Jesus, Name Above All Names"

"Jesus, name above all names
Beautiful Savior, Glorious Lord
Emmanuel, God is with us
Blessed redeemer, Living Word"

And just when I thought my heart would explode, a guy came up to lead us into the offering time and talked about how God has made all things new again. The old is taken away....THEN, they ended the worship and offering with "Amazing Love"

"I’m forgiven because You were forsaken
I’m accepted, You were condemned
I’m alive and well, Your Spirit lives within me
Because You died and rose again

I’m forgiven because You were forsaken
I’m accepted, You were condemned
I’m alive and well, Your Spirit lives within me
Because You died and rose again

Amazing love, how can it be
That You, my King, should die for me?
Amazing love, I know it’s true
It’s my joy to honor You
In all I do, I honor You

I’m forgiven because You were forsaken
I’m accepted, You were condemned
I’m alive and well, Your Spirit lives within me
Because You died and rose again

Amazing love, how can it be
That You, my King, should die for me?
Amazing love, I know it’s true
It’s my joy to honor You
In all I do, I honor You
In all I do, I honor You

You are my King
You are my King
Jesus, You are my King
You are my King

Amazing love, how can it be
That You, my King, should die for me?
Amazing love, I know it’s true
It’s my joy to honor You

Amazing love, how can it be
That You, my King, should die for me?
Amazing love, I know it’s true
It’s my joy to honor You
In all I do, to honor You

In all I do, to honor You,
In all I do, Let me honor You."

Oh, but God STILL WASN'T DONE! THEN, they had a children's choir come up and sing a song that talked about if you do it to the least of these, then you've done it for me. AND then, now that we were BIG SOPPY MESSES, they brought up a family that had been the first in the church to adopt from Foster Care. This family was adopting another little one from foster care and a 3rd one coming in a few months. They spoke about how God knit this family together and had the congregation pray over them.

So, not only did God reassure us over and over that He would be our healer, our rebuilder & restorer but that He had it all, that there's power in His name and that the lowly are lifted up, that He knit our family together w/Jasmine and that if we do it to her, it's as if we're doing it to Jesus Himself. Is there ANY doubt that we are doing what we're meant to do?! You tell me, just awesome worship or total encouragement assault?!

My head is spinning!

Ok - I'm totally cracking up right now, 'cause that God is such a kidder! :-) So, we actually got a .pdf of our revised I171-h emailed to us...already! We're assuming that they'll be sending us a hard copy that we'll need but we also assume that this means everything's moving forward. Yea and yikes at the same time! :-) Yea, 'cause of course, we can't wait to get our arms around Jasmine and tell her how much we love her! Yikes, only 'cause we're still a ways away from having the rest of the adoption funds needed. But again, God KNOWS! My mom and I were talking today about the "ride" that we're on and I commented that I just hope I don't throw up. Tee-hee!

At any rate, Praise God for HIS PERFECT TIMING!!! One way or another, He WILL come through for us and one way or another, on the other end of this, we'll be holding our precious girl in our arms! Praise God!

So, as our whirlwind begins, I'll leave you with the words to the song below by Third Day. It was sent to me by a very precious friend and I thought the words totally reflect our hearts going into this Christmas Season.

"There’s a little girl trembling on a cold December morn
Crying for momma’s arms
At an orphanage just outside a little China town
There the forgotten are

But half a world away I hang the stockings by the fire
And dream about the day when I can finally call you mine

It’s Christmas time again but you’re not home
Your family is here and yet you’re somewhere else alone
And so tonight I pray that God will come and hold you in his arms
And tell you from my heart I wish you Merry Christmas

As I hang the tinsel on the tree and watch the twinkling lights
I’m warmed by the fire’s glow
Outside the children tumble in a wonderland of white,
Make angels in the snow

But half a world away you try your best to fight the tears
And hope that heaven’s angels come to carry you here

It’s Christmas time again but you’re not home
Your family is here and yet you’re somewhere else alone
And so tonight I pray that God will come and hold you in his arms
And tell you from my heart I wish you Merry Christmas

Christmas is a time to celebrate the holy child
and we celebrate his perfect gift of love
He came to earth to give his life
and prepare a place for us
so we could have a home with him above

It’s Christmas time again and now you’re home
Your family is here so you will never be alone
So tonight before you go to sleep, I’ll hold you in my arms
And I’ll tell you from my heart, and I’ll you from my heart
I wish you Merry Christmas"

I171-h update

Hi all! So we got confirmation from our agency today that US immigration (USCIS) will have to revise the form we just received to include our new address...again. The good news is that we should have it within the week!

Thanks so much for your continued prayers and support!

We got it... I think?

We got our revised I171-h in the mail today however our new address wasn't corrected. I don't know if this is a problem or not so I've got a call into our adoption agency to find out if they think this matters or not. I originally understood that the reasons we needed to revise our 171-h were primarily due to adopting special needs but also due to our move, it would need to be revised. That could have just been the home study but I'll wait to find out before I jump up and down. :-)

Stay tuned. I'll keep you all posted and thanks for the continued prayers!

Against All Odds

Have you ever been in a situation where you believed God was in your circumstances, yet it seemed like barriers kept rising in your path? When I've gone through those times, it feels like God is forcing me to trust Him by putting me in a situation where I have no choice but to depend on Him.

Tonight, I (Jim) was reading a bible story to Lily before she went to bed. We read about Gideon, who had a remarkable encounter with God. Gideon was asked to lead the Israelites in defeating a superior army. Gideon wasn't a war hero and, in his own strength, was ill equipped for the task. But God's call was clear. After putting God to the test (twice), Gideon was ready to obey. Even though the odds were against him, he believed that God would allow the Israelites to prevail.

God wanted to teach Gideon and the Israelites a lesson they would never forget. He reduced the size of Gideon's army to 300 men, asking them to fight and defeat an enemy probably numbering in the tens of thousands, or more. You've got to appreciate God's sense of humor. However, He was very clear about His reason for asking Gideon to lead the Israelites in a battle where victory could only be achieved against all odds. God wanted to make it clear that victory was in His hands, and not dependent on human efforts.

That was quite a blessing for me. If you've been following our blog, you know that we've been a bit worried about how we were going to raise the money needed to complete our adoption. We were very discouraged to learn that, of the 3 grants we had recently applied for, the one we felt was most likely to help us ended up turning us down. I felt just like Gideon must have felt when he was asked to do a seemingly impossible task, and then God took away some of the human resources Gideon assumed he would need. The truth is, God doesn't need our efforts. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and can provide for our needs in any way He chooses. By applying for grants, we are not assuming that is the only way God can provide, but we are engaging in our own circumstance and choosing to participate in the process. Whether God chooses to provide through that channel is up to Him and remains to be seen. Our job is to stay the course, trusting in Him, and not our efforts, to bear fruit.

With each day that passes, I am growing even more excited, and nervous. Excited because I know God is in this and confident that He will come through; yet, nervous because of my human limitations that can't yet see God's hand, or the method and timing of His provision. I can't wait to join Gideon on the other side of this situation. I long to spend the same amount of time praising God as I have praying for His provision. I can't wait to be able to share my Gideon story about how God came through and met our need against all odds. After all, nothing is impossible for God. The limiting factor is our faith, not God's ability. Please join us in continued prayer for provision to complete this journey. We look forward to celebrating with you when we're on the other side. Thanks for listening, and for your prayers.

Shaking it off

So, now that the initial shock and disappointment has worn off from getting turned down by the one agency we thought would help, we're trying to shake that off and remind ourselves of all God's been showing us these past several weeks. The bottom line is that providing the rest of the monies needed for our adoption is God's job, not ours. We've been faithful to do everything we can on our end but providing is His job and He's NEVER failed to do His job.

One thing I've noticed that God does in my life when He's about to lead me through a BIG trial is, He spends a TON of time reassuring me right and left right before. I've been noticing that pattern with this situation but really hoping that this would not be one of those trials. :-) I have to say that due to all of the stress over the last year or so, my body doesn't handle stress well. I exercise regularly to help manage that but whenever my stress level goes up, my blood pressure will either shoot up or down, depending, and I'll end up w/dizzy spells and/or a bloody nose. Go figure! But God knows what I can handle and what I can't and this is in His hands. At any rate, I've been concerned about going through a big trial like this 'cause this one potentially costs something. The fear of not being able to bring home Jasmine brings me to my knees and yet this too, is something that needs to be given over.

I can't tell you how badly I want to be able to go through this whole thing completely trusting and yes, even celebrating like everything's paid for and it's done! I HATE that I struggle off and on w/doubts and yet I suppose that's human, otherwise, why would we need God?

I HAVE to remember that God is fully present in this adoption and this adoption is fully present in God. That means that as far as God is concerned, this adoption is done and paid for. I only have to worry about my part and trust God to do His. It's easier said than done when there's a time limit on things but how like God to reassure us over and over, knowing we'd have doubts! And He's done that. Every week, sometimes multiple times a week, He's reassured us through a prayer at church, a worship song, an excerpt from a book, an "a-ha" moment, a verse. Praise God that He provides for our needs even before we realize we have them!

We still haven't received our revised I171-h back yet so we'll keep you posted on that. We're still anticipating to get that back any day. We also still have 2 more grant agencies that are considering us so please pray for that!

Other than that, we're all doing fairly well. We've had unusually cold weather here. We woke up to -35 with windchill this morning! Yea baby! Lily had a slight bout w/the flu last week and a little cold this week but is doing amazingly well. We've been all taking a ton of vitamin C, D & probiotics and I think it's helped us all to stay pretty healthy so far. We are very thankful!

Speaking of Lily, she's still doing really well at school. She loves her teachers and her classmates. She's learned to write her name and has been really getting more into drawing and painting. We've reorganized her playroom so we have an easier time playing together...things are more accessible and the space is a little more roomy w/out our old hutch being in there. We've also pulled out all of the old baby toys and clothes and organized and cleaned everything.

Back to the subject of China. So, I'll put some faith into action and say that when we go to China, we'll be in 3 major cities while we're there. We'll most likely fly into Hong Kong and stay there for 2-3 days and then fly to Cheng Du in the Sichuan Province. They'll bring Jasmine to us w/in 1 day of us arriving there and we'll stay in that province for a total of 6-7 days before flying on to Guangzhou. That's where the US Embassy is located and that's where we'll likely be having numerous visits to the embassy to get Jasmine's visa and immigration docs in order. We'll probably be there for another 4-5 days-ish and then either fly home from there or fly to Hong Kong and fly home from there. We're only now slowly checking out information about those cities so that we can try and plan a couple of "fun" excursions while we're in China. For the most part, we'll keep things really low key but we thought it would be fun to try and see a tiny bit of the huge country that our daughter was born into and get some pictures, mini movies & souvenirs to show her when she's older. It really is one-in-a-life-time kind of trip.

Well, that's about it on the Young front. Thanks so much for all of your prayers and encouragement. We really cherish them both, especially right now! We'll continue to keep you posted and hope that you're all doing well!

grant update

Well, I just heard from one of the grant agencies that has kept us in the loop for the last year and they have turned us down. We're devastated but clinging to God to help us. Please pray for us and for provision for our adoption.

Jesus and Skype

Hi everyone! So we've spent this past week getting together references and filling out paperwork for a third grant agency that we've found. As I was reading through the other grant applications that we've filled out (why do things twice and re-invent the wheel?), I realized that I missed something God did in the midst of our match day that I'd like to share with you. I was re-reading one of the testimonies that I had written for one of the grant agencies and in that I shared with them, not only my testimony but my dream for my children. I shared with them how, besides hearing "Well done, my good and faithful servant" from Jesus, to have my children love and serve Him would be the other thing that I would most like to accomplish as a mom. Well, that God in His attention to the tiniest of details! What floored me as I wrote that was the fact that, later on our match day with Jasmine, Lily accepted Jesus into her heart. I thought to myself and was so touched to realize that not only did God match us with Jasmine on October 21 but He matched Lily with Jesus, forever! She has a long ways towards loving and serving Him but she's on her way and she's in God's forever family! It's so like God to give us 2 matches in 1 day and answer some of the deepest desires of our hearts, isn't it?! I just had to share that with you as I was struck again this morning in worship by those amazing events happening on the same day. We are counting on God in so many ways and He is so faithful to answer our prayers. :-)

So, Jesus and skype are not related whatsoever but I wanted to share about skype with you as well. It's a free way for us to communicate w/family and friends while we are in China. You can get more info. on their website but I wanted to encourage all of our family and friends who want to talk w/us while we're in China to check into it. You'll be able to physically see us and vice versa via the computer for free! If you do get it, please let us know and we'll add you into our contacts and make sure that we get in touch with you while we're in China (and after!).

We'll also be updating this blog every day or close to it while we're in China so please stay tuned as we'll let you know when we're going and all of the details while we're there.

Well, I hope this finds you all well and hope that you have a wonderful week! We should be getting our revised I171-h back this week so I'm sure it will be an exciting week for us. We'll be sure to keep you posted! Please continue to pray for these 3 grant agencies that they'll choose us and for God's total provision for our adoption. We love you all and we'll talk to you soon!

Thanksgiving and new pics

Hi everyone! I've posted 2 new pics of Jasmine from 11/20. We were so surprised to get any new pictures so this is such a treat for us. She's standing and sitting up all by herself! Yea God! We can't wait until we get to meet our precious girl and put a smile on her precious face. We still don't know the extent of her needs and are also eager to get her home so that we can have her thoroughly checked out by our pediatrician and therapists and get her whatever help she needs to get caught up.

In the meantime, we're continuing to do our part in bringing her home. We've been working hard on continuing to get organized and baby-proofed at home. We've been unpacking and continuing to try and sell items that aren't needed so as to help w/our adoption expenses. We've identified a 3rd grant agency that will also be selecting families in the month of Dec. to give grants to. We're praying that somehow, some way, between the 3 agencies, we'll get the money that we need to complete our adoption. We're anticipating getting our I171-h back sometime in the next 1 1/2 weeks! We're continuing to try and promote our coffee fundraiser to family and friends. As to the rest, we are continuing to trust God to do His part and raise the money to bring Jasmine home.

It's funny how God, when He's teaching us something, will continually put that lesson in front of our faces. This past Sunday, the message at church had to do with not missing Jesus in the season. But instead of talking about how busy-ness robs us of Him, they talked about how the need to be on the throne and in control robs us of Him. They spoke about Herod the great and how he missed Jesus because He didn't want to lose his throne and was so busy trying to control everything in his life to keep that throne. As he was speaking, it occurred to me that the things I've been trying to control are the adoption expenses and parenting Lily. I've not even realized that I've been missing what God's been doing and the miracle of adoption and being a parent because I've been trying to control and be on the throne of those areas. I don't want to miss these miracles because I'm worrying. I want to be in a place of fully celebrating this adoption because, in God's presence, it's done and paid for. I want to fully celebrate Lily and do my part to parent but trust God to guide her in her own spiritual journey with Him, instead of worrying about the little things. And in both of these areas, I want to fully celebrate this Holiday season in these amazing blessings that He's given us and trust God to work out all of the details. I want my faith to be something that I live and go deep in and not just give lip service to.

Well, I hope you all enjoyed your Thanksgiving! We've so appreciated all of the prayers and encouragement and support. Despite all of the tough things we've gone through this year, it's actually been one of the best for us because of all of the blessings and things that we've learned. The things that were taken away were returned back ten-fold. We have a community that we love w/wonderful friends & family. We have a new church that challenges us and supports us and encourages us to go deeper. And we're about to have a new precious baby. God is so good! Thanks for your continued prayers over our adoption and we'll definitely keep you all posted!

Grief

It's funny how, in the midst of celebrating so much healing and blessings, grief can still hit you. I was driving home from the bank and a wave of grief hit me over our old church situation. I felt so saddened that people I had really respected and looked up to were no longer in my life. I felt saddened for the choices that were made and how all of our worlds were totally changed because of this. I felt grief over how that sin had affected so many and separated so many relationships because of the awful way it was handled. I guess I got a teeny, tiny picture of how my sins separated me from a God who loves me and wants to have a relationship w/me. How grief-stricken God must have been! The difference is, I'd never give my child for someone else's sin and I'm certainly not God. :-)

At any rate, despite that wave of grief, I feel so incredibly thankful for all of the blessings God has given us. I'm thankful for our new community and the friendships that we've made. I'm thankful for a house to live in that doesn't leak and require tens of thousands of dollars worth of repairs. I'm thankful for my precious little girl, Lily, and for the incredible blessing of a new baby, Jasmine. I'm thankful for my husband and for the job that God gave Him. I'm thankful for our new church and the fact that every time we go, God heals a little bit of our heart.

No new updates to report as of yet. We're still praying for the grant agencies to come through with some much needed assistance for our adoption. We're still waiting on our revised I-171h to come back from US immigration and we're finishing our baby proofing and unpacking. We've bought most of the items we'll need for our trip. And we're getting ready to celebrate one of the best holidays yet, w/my (Donna) family and feeling so incredibly blessed and humbled by all that God has done for us. Thank you all for standing with us and praying for us and encouraging us! We can't wait until we can share how God provides for our adoption and we can't wait to meet and share our new precious girl with you all!

God is in the present

It's funny how we can go from, on one day, completely trusting God and then the very next day, having struggles with that trust. I am absolutely amazed that, no matter how many times God comes through for us, I still have those moments of wondering if this will be the time that He doesn't. Crazy, isn't it?!

At any rate, I had one of those moments yesterday. In the midst of that struggle and choosing to trust God despite "how I feel" or "how impossible things look", I was reading "Gone in a Heartbeat" by David & Marie Works. Some of you may have heard about the shootings that occurred at New Life Church almost 2 years ago. A guy named Matthew Murray had gone on a shooting spree at a YWAM location up in Denver and then drove down to Colorado Springs and started shooting at New Life Church. He was eventually shot and killed by one of the security guards at the church but not before he killed 2 girls - both from the same family. The book is written by their parents and their experience and then journey to healing. It's an incredible book and I highly recommend it, if you haven't read it.

At any rate, I wanted to share some of what I read as it was extremely impactful and eye opening for me. This is pages 151-152 and David (the father) is speaking to a group of people and sharing about something He's learning. He starts to talk about how, to Catholics, God is fully present in the eucharistic elements and that they look at communion as more literal.

He continues, "Now as protestants, we may not take it that far. However, Jesus is at least spiritually present in the Eucharist, or Communion, or whatever your tradition calls it. If you take that idea of God being present at the Lord's table and extend it to the rest of our living, then you can appreciate God being fully present in this present moment."

"This is an important idea, for after all, he is the 'I AM.' With God there really is no past or future, because He lives in eternity and has no beginning or ending. He always was, and always will be. Therefore, to him, there is only 'now.' And if we see Him now, in this present moment, then we can enter into an incredible place of peace and rest. We will realize His coming among us. John 1:14 tells how 'The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.' He intends to dwell among us today, too. He is here in the very minutes and seconds of our lives."

"This concept had been growing in my mind ever since the Sunday-night-Monday-morning turnaround in the Hospital. I was coming to realize that I didn't need to organize everything all the time. I didn't need to try to run every show. God could well take care of that Himself, since He was right here, right now, right in each circumstance. Instead of trying to play God, I could just relax and play David. I was finding this to be wonderfully conducive to rest and peace. My anxiety levels were definitely lower. God was as present in my daily existance as He was in the midst of the most marvelous church service or personal prayer retreat in the mountains. His presence made each and every moment sacred-which, after all, is the root of the word sacrament."

"The words of Jesus in Matt. 11:28-30 mesmerized me, especially as rendered in "The Message paraphrase: "Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me-watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything havy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly. How much better this was than to grind away in human exertion and self-doubt. To yield to God in the present moment was the key to relief and joy. I was fascinated with the word picture "the unforced rhythms of grace." God's grace did not need to be jammed into any preset mold. It would simply roll out in its own rhythm, a thing of beauty and joy."

He finishes with, "To believe that God is here in the present moment does not mean that we "feel" or sense Him all the time. Sometimes our antennae have no awareness that He is nearby. We have to go on faith alone. Regardless of our emotional state, the fact remains that God will lead us on whatever path is ours to travel. He is our Guide and Shepherd. We are safer in His care than we would ever be on our own. We can therefore trust Him with the outcomes of our lives."

Long quote, I know, but sooooo powerful! So I began to process this in my mind and I realized that God is in the present in our adoption. Our adoption is not in the future, for God, it's now. The money we need to complete it, is now. I need to let God be God and only worry about being Donna. That means that I do my part and let God do His. His part is bringing Jasmine home and all that entails. My part is getting ready for her by completing the paperwork, packing, purchasing whatever necessities for our trip, etc. I need to do my part and trust that God will do His. I don't have to do God's job! Sounds so "duh!", I know but it's such a relief! I get into this mode, without even thinking about it, and the next thing I know, I'm trying to do God's job as well as mine. No wonder I feel overwhelmed and everything feels impossible! But, if I can remember that God is in the present, therefore our adoption and all that entails, is also in the present and in His presence, I can have peace. God will do His part. Period.

I really wanted to share that with all two of you (ha-ha) that read our blog because perhaps one of you are going through something similar. Perhaps your circumstances feel bigger than you are able to handle and you feel overwhelmed. The good news is that regardless of your timing, it is in the present because God is in the present. Realize that you don't have to control it all. God will do his part, just focus on yours. Choose to believe that regardless of how you feel and trust God with the outcome.

Waiting

Hi everyone! Just when I thought we were finally caught up on paperwork, I found a stack that needs to be filled out before we go to the US embassy so it looks like I have more work to do! Sigh. :-) But other than that, we are caught up on all of the major stuff and have sent everything off. Now we wait. While we're waiting, we continue to pray that this one grant agency will choose us. They'll be making their selections in the next few weeks so please say a pray for us as they can potentially help get us a large chunk of the $10k-$12k that we have left to raise. We've possibly found 1-2 other agencies that might be able to give some small grants so we'll see. Again, we remind ourselves that God is in control and He knows that we have little time left and how much we need. We are trusting Him to provide.

Also, while we wait, we've been getting things ready for our trip. Lily just had her 4 year exam yesterday and, Praise God, the Dr. signed off on her going on the trip. She's even giving us a prescription for some antibiotics to use, along w/her nebulizer, if Lily picks up any kind of respiratory stuff while we're there. Please pray with us that all of us will stay totally healthy while we're there.

We're also trying to figure out some foods that we can bring with us (that won't spoil) for Lily as her sensory issues have caused her to be very picky w/food. We've found some great solutions and feel like even little details like that...God is pulling them all together.

I have to say that it's still really mind boggling to, after waiting all this time, suddenly be in motion and even quickly in motion! It's very surreal, especially to get "the call" only 1 week after we were told it'd be a couple more months. I'm still trying to get my mind wrapped around the fact that this precious little girl is ours and that we'll be leaving to get her very soon! It's wild to think back about when we started to pray for her. Lily was about 2 1/2 years old and Jasmine must have been about 3 months in utero. God had us praying for her, even before she was born. He had us praying for her, probably right about the time her birth mommy found out she was pregnant. Wow! Which brings me right back to how amazing it is to think of how God is in the tiniest of details!

Well, once we get to the next step, we'll let you know. Thanks for all of your prayers and we'll talk to you soon!

I'm counting on God....

God is so good! We have felt so humbled these past couple of days as, despite some fears of "will God provide?", we have had several people give us checks to help w/our adoption. None are big amounts and yet every amount counts and we are so humbled that anyone would give money to help us. Praise God for His perfect timing in knowing exactly when we need the encouragement. To top it off, every time we go to church, we feel God encouraging us in some way or healing our hearts in some way. Today, the very first song was "I'm counting on God" by Desperation Band. Once again, in multiple ways, God reminds us that He has this adoption taken care of down to the tiniest detail. Praise God for His provision. We don't know how He's going to come through, but He does! We are so incredibly thankful and blessed. Thank you all for your prayers and support! You are all making a difference in our lives and we are also thankful for you. :-)

We all had a great weekend together as a family. We're finishing up some horseback riding lessons and were able to go together yesterday. It was great, in the midst of all of the crazy paperwork, to have some fun together also. We're really trying to pace ourselves in all of this so that we don't burn out and get sick right before leaving for China. We were able to get this last round of paperwork off and our China visas applied for so we can relax until the next round comes through. :-)

Prayer-wise, please continue to pray for God's provision for the remainder of our adoption funds and for our good health to continue. I have felt God's hand on us and I KNOW that it is because of Him that we have stayed healthy and strong despite the stress and craziness. Most of all, pray that we will continue to depend on Him for every single step and that we will continue to count on Him for our every need.

Thanks to all of you who are participating in our coffee fundraiser! I think I told you but we have heard GREAT reports about the quality of the coffee and the promptness of delivery. Yea God! Please continue to pass along to all those coffee-loving-wanna-give-to-a-good-cause kind of folks.

Praise God for this season of blessing in our lives and praise God for all of you who have come alongside of us! Thank you all and as always, we'll continue to keep you posted! :-)

We received our LOA!!!

Hi everyone! We want to thank you all for your support and prayers! It's funny because we've been waiting for 2+ years and now all of the sudden, we have our match and everything is moving like gangbusters! It's hard to keep up with everything. So the latest is that we were waiting to get back our Letter of Acceptance (LOA) back from the CCAA (Chinese gov.) which we were told would take about 1 month. 1 week later (which was 1 week ago), we received our LOA!

What happens now is a two-fold process. First, we have to sign this LOA and send it back to our agency who then forwards it to the CCAA. Second, before the LOA can be sent back to the CCAA, we have to get our revised immigration form from the United States immigration called the I171-h. This has to be revised because we moved and it has to be tailored to the exact child that we are adopting because she has special needs. (Confusing, I know.) So, our updated home study has been sent to US immigration to provide the info. they need to revise our I171-h. We are told this will take about 1 month. Once we get that revised I171-h form back, we'll be traveling in 5-8 weeks from then!

In the meantime, we have been filling out more paperwork, applying for visas, washing baby clothes, searching for grants, etc. Please continue to pray for us that we'll be able to raise enough money in time! Pray for us in December as there is 1 grant agency that is reviewing our application. Please pray for God's direction for them and His provision for us. At this point, we could be traveling anytime from December to January time frame! We are so excited to meet our little sweetie-pie and we thank God every night for finally bringing us our new little girl.

On a side note, we have settled on a final full name for our little girl. Her name is Jasmine Yi Jing Young. Yi (pronounced "eee") means art or skill and Jing (zhing) means still or quiet. We will definitely keep you all posted as we get closer and closer to traveling to China! Please stay posted on our blog as we will be trying to update every single day while we are in China, with pictures and stories of our trip. We want to try and share every detail with you all so that you can experience China with us.

We would like you to meet our new daughter!

Praise Jesus! We've got our match and she is pickin' precious! Her Chinese name, which we're still trying to find out the meaning, is Liu Yi Jing and she's 9 months old! She was born on January 8, 2009 and has some developmental delays. We'll have to see what the extent is once we bring her back to the states but we feel confident that after helping Lily through her delays, we're perfectly suited for this precious baby! We have received the "pre-approval" from the CCAA so everything is official!!!!

We would like to ask for all of your prayers as we still have a total of $15-$17k to raise, almost $5k of that we have already. The thing is that we could be traveling as quickly as 5-8 weeks to go get her instead of the 3-5 months that we were originally told! If you or anyone you know drinks coffee, please consider buying a bag from our store. (See the earlier post for the link) We also have 1 grant agency that will be reviewing our file in December so please pray for that as they may be able to give us a grant to help w/the expenses.

The bottom line is that God knew way before the beginning of time, that He would ask us to be obedient to sell our house for much less and knew that the proceeds wouldn't be enough to cover our adoption. He knew that we would have to go through a horrific situation at our church and have to leave the support system we had for the whole 7 1/2 years we've been here. He's known all of this and He has a plan and we are trusting Him to provide. Praise God for His provision and more importantly, Praise God for our new precious daughter, Jasmine!!!!!!

We'll keep you all posted as we move forward as this will probably move very quickly. Yea God and thank you all for your prayers!

Calling all COFFEE LOVERS!

Hi everyone! Just wanted to let you know that we are launching the coffee fundraiser to help bring home Jasmine. If you are a coffee lover or know of people who are, would you consider buying a bag or two from us? Every bag you buy sends us $5 towards our adoption costs (tshirts & accessories as well) and would help us out tremendously! Additionally, a portion of their proceeds also go to assist an orphanage in Ethiopia so you can buy coffee that supports 2 different causes! Please go to our store at http://www.justlovecoffee.com/TheYoungs for more details. All items are affordably priced and would be a great way you can help us bring Jasmine home. Thanks for your consideration and support!

Snow in September...

Hi everyone! What a trip...snow in September & ice in October! Boy, it's been a while since we last blogged! We have had quite the crazy last 2 months or so. Lily started preschool the first week in August and that has continued to go well. She loves her teachers and seems to be thriving w/the students in her class. It's been nice for me as I've gotten a chance to know a few of the parents. There sure are some wonderful families in our neighborhood!

We've also recently left our church home of 7 1/2 years. A serious situation came to the Elders' attention back in the beginning of August that had us on our knees. After a TON of prayer, wise counsel and scouring the scriptures, we came to a definite belief on how things needed to be handled. Once it was determined that things would not be handled in a way that honored God, we felt it imperative to leave. While we continue to pray for our old church body and for God's will there, we are also trying to move forward and heal. We've tried 2 churches so far and hope to try 1 more before we make any final decisions.

We FINALLY have some resolution on our new house! We are due to close on October 21st and are very excited to be able to finally call this house our home. Thank you, God, for your PERFECT timing and your provision. This home and this neighborhood have been such a HUGE source of blessing and healing to us. We are truly thankful!

We continue to wait on our China adoption but know that God is in the tiniest of details in this as well. He has perfect timing for our precious Jasmine to come home and we are trusting Him for that.

I will update again very soon but wanted to share a passage that really hit home tonight. Psalm 91 has been something we have lived through w/this trial w/our church and God has been so incredibly faithful. We hope it encourages you in whatever you may be dealing with. We love you all!

Psalm 91
1 Those who live in the shelter of the Most High
will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
2 This I declare about the Lord:
He alone is my refuge, my place of safety;
he is my God, and I trust him.
3 For he will rescue you from every trap
and protect you from deadly disease.
4 He will cover you with his feathers.
He will shelter you with his wings.
His faithful promises are your armor and protection.
5 Do not be afraid of the terrors of the night,
nor the arrow that flies in the day.
6 Do not dread the disease that stalks in darkness,
nor the disaster that strikes at midday.
7 Though a thousand fall at your side,
though ten thousand are dying around you,
these evils will not touch you.
8 Just open your eyes,
and see how the wicked are punished.

9 If you make the Lord your refuge,
if you make the Most High your shelter,
10 no evil will conquer you;
no plague will come near your home.
11 For he will order his angels
to protect you wherever you go.
12 They will hold you up with their hands
so you won’t even hurt your foot on a stone.
13 You will trample upon lions and cobras;
you will crush fierce lions and serpents under your feet!

14 The Lord says, “I will rescue those who love me.
I will protect those who trust in my name.
15 When they call on me, I will answer;
I will be with them in trouble.
I will rescue and honor them.
16 I will reward them with a long life
and give them my salvation.”

God IS in the details

Hi everyone! It's hard to believe a few weeks have gone by since my last post. We are all doing well and still waiting to hear on our house. The bank had made a mistake w/the owners and forgot to take their 2nd mortgage into account so they initially turned down the short sale. Now that they have all of the correct information, we're hoping to hear something this week.

In the meantime, we've continued to try and get unpacked and recover from the move. I love how God is in the tiniest of details. I really believe that He's put us into this neighborhood for a reason, one of which has been the community aspects. We've both seen ourselves slowly recover just by going to our community pool, taking walks, making new friends, etc. that we've not been able to really do since we moved to Colorado. I believe God called us to this community to heal that which was broken and damaged.

Secondly, we've been praying that God would open the doors for Lily to go to preschool despite having missed the "lottery" drawing for preschool spots. We found out just a couple of weeks ago, that Lily got one of the spots at Meridian Ranch Elementary in the afternoon class. And, because of her background, she qualified for one of the tuition-free, 4 days/week slots versus the paid tuition, 2 days/week slots that the other kids have. Praise God for that! Part of our prayer was for Lily to get put into the perfect environment for her. Once again...God is in the tiniest of details! I met a family over the weekend who has 2 children who are special needs - 1 w/Ausbergers (sp?) and the younger, who is Lily's age, w/sensory disorders and speech delays. This family absolutely raved about the quality of the teachers at Meridian Ranch and how this school is one of the best in the area for children w/special needs. Their youngest will be in Lily's class and apparently has seen remarkable improvement under the teachers' expertise. Lily's delays are caught up but it's wonderful to know that if anything does come up from her background, we're at a school who can handle most of these situations. Praise God!

We continue to wait on our China adoption. This past weekend, as I was weeding in the front yard, Lily came up to me and said, "Mommy, I can't wait until we can go to China and pick up Jasmine." I told her I couldn't wait either. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed with longing to hold that precious girl in my arms and tell her that she's safe now. I long to know how she's doing. Is there someone bonding with her? Does she hear God's voice telling her she's loved and that her forever family can't wait to meet her and love her? I can't wait for that day that we get "THE call!" I believe with my whole heart that God is in the tiniest of details and even that detail of WHEN we get the call has a purpose in His plan.

Here's one last detail that happened today. Today was Lily's first day at preschool and everything went extremely well. After dropping her off, I noticed a mom w/a precious little girl who looked like she was from China. I had seen this family before and had noticed that both of their girls looked Chinese and wondered if they had adopted. I introduced myself to her and asked if I could ask her a question. "She doesn't look like me, does she?" Carolyn replied. I said that we were in the process of adopting from China and I was curious if they had. They did and we excitedly exchanged our stories. She informed me that there were several families in Meridian Ranch who had adopted from China and asked me to keep her posted on our upcoming adoption. Once again, I felt God affirming that we are in the right place and that He cares about the tiniest of details..even those of a precious baby who hasn't been adopted yet! I left feeling so incredibly blessed that, who am I, that God would care about the details of my life?!

The new "normal"

Hi everyone! I wanted to write about this for quite a while and I hope I'll be able to articulate it appropriately (and - no criticisms please). I do want to preface this by saying that adoption has been the BIGGEST blessing in our lives! Not only have we been privileged to adopt our precious little girl, Lily, and hopefully soon, Jasmine, as well, but we've also gotten to experience the extra layers of adoption like getting a better picture of being adopted into God's family. Having experienced the blessings and richness of adoption, I would NEVER change a thing, if given the chance. Not even the loss that we experienced to get to this place.

Loss. If I'm going to real, I need to say that PART of adoption is loss. That's something that a lot of people don't really think of when they think of adoption. Many of us gloss over the loss but it's very real. The baby or child's loss of their birth parents, birth family and/or caregivers. The birth parents, birth family and/or caregivers' loss. And many times, the adoptive families' loss...of a dream, of a child through death or miscarriage, loss of their adoptive child's losses. Loss. Loss of "normal." It seems like often in life, things need to be lost before new things can be found. Even God, gave up His precious son, Jesus, so that we could be adopted into His forever family. God experienced loss willingly so that we could have a new "normal" free from sin and death.

One of the things that has been hardest for Jim & I, in our family, has been finding a new "normal." For most of us adoptive families, it's something manifests itself everyday when we try to parent. We have to filter our child's behavior and figure out what's normal for them. For some, it comes up at medical appointments when they're trying to fill out medical history that they don't have. For others, it's birthdays and gotcha days. For others, it's helping their child do their "family tree" project for school. Loss is a part of our new normal and we have to figure out how to help our children grieve their losses as well. It's a tough balance to grieve the loss yet embrace the blessings. I have some days where I crave having a "normal" situation where my daughter hadn't been taken on the run and abandoned and therefore she's not afraid of being left again, she's just being 3. But, having grieved my losses, my cravings don't linger there. I've accepted that our family will always have a new "normal" and therefore I just need to focus on how to best come alongside of my daughter and love her in a way that God uses for healing.

The new "normal" in adoption is one of the toughest things that I've had to deal with but I have to say again, that I wouldn't change a thing! I like tough. My daughter was saved literally from death in a couple of miraculous ways. It was a really tough road to adopt her but to experience the victory on the other side of knowing that she's safe and loved has been amazing. And to see God's hand in all of the details, in a way I wouldn't have seen with just "normal".....priceless!

Horseback riding & expanding our horizons

So over the weekend, my husband had a wonderful idea. We've been wanting, for quite a while, to find activities that we can do together as a family. The problem is, we like very different things. Jim's been interested in golf, tennis and bowling. I'm interested in rollerblading, racewalking and volleyball. We hadn't yet found an activity in common that we were BOTH really interested in trying...until Saturday! Jim suggested horseback riding, which has been an interest of mine since I was a little girl. Lily is such an animal-lover that we knew that would be a no-brainer for her. So, after scouring the phone book, off we went, to try and find a farm that would give all 3 of us lessons. Lo and behold, we found one and had our first lesson on Sunday after church!

We met a number of Mischa's (our teacher) horses, including 2 orphaned filly's, 2 different litters of kittens and several dogs. We had a blast! She taught us how to approach the horse, basic safety, how to groom the horse, how to put on a harness and how to lead. Lily even got a few moments to ride bareback. Next lesson, we'll all get to ride which we all can't wait for! It was pure heaven to have Dixie (our mare teacher for the day) nuzzle my hair and watching Lily who looked like a natural - it felt like a fit for all of us. I have always wanted to be a family that had a "thing" that we all like to do together. It felt like God put this piece of the puzzle together for us and I'm really looking forward to seeing how it unfolds.

No other news on the adoption or our house. While waiting, I've been trying to do some research to track down some good children's books on China and Chinese culture so I can help prepare Lily for the trip, when that comes. Additionally, I've been trying to think through and research what types of toys to bring to help keep her occupied on the long flight, how to help her sleep on a plane, how to ease her through the transitions, etc. If anyone has any ideas that worked for them, please pass them on!

That's it for now - enjoy the pics and thanks again for all of the prayers!

Leak update

Hi everyone! It has been a gorgeous week, here in Colorado! We've still had some storms but these past few days have been almost perfect summer weather so we're extremely grateful.

Well, so far so good on our leak situation. The warranty company is no longer covering John Laing homes due to their bankruptcy so the owners hired a contractor to fix the area that was leaking. He's fairly certain that he found what was causing the issue and so the only things that remain are handling the carpet that had gotten some slight damage and another small fix which should keep this same issue from happening again. We still haven't had any news on the short sale approval but we're trusting God to work out the details in His perfect timing. The good news is that it's looking less and less like we'll need to move again (pending short sale approval, of course) so that is a huge relief! Now we just need to get the basement put back together so we can finish unpacking!

Thanks to anyone who responded to the Orphans Deserve Better petition! Fox news online actually had a story on this today! It was exciting to hear about all of the Adoption and foster care groups that joined together to bring our concerns to Warner Brothers. It's amazing to read all of those adoption stories on www.orphansdeservebetter.org So many of our lives have been forever changed due to the gift that Adoption brings. The losses that many of us suffered - God had a better plan for us. I am so thankful that He does not waste one single tear!

That's the end of the mini update for us. We hope you all have a terrific weekend and we'll talk again soon! Thanks so much for your prayers on our behalf.

Leaks and swim lessons

Hi everyone! Hope all of your summer's are going well. We're still slowly recovering but, as is always the case with us, never without some adventure of some kind. Our Saturn is in the shop and let's just say we're almost rebuilding the engine so...ouch! Thank God that this is happening when we don't have rent or mortgage payments but so much for catching up!

Our next adventure has involved our soon-to-be house. Once again, thank God for allowing this to happen before we've closed! We've had a TON of rain out here this summer which is awesome after many years of drought. We noticed Friday that an area underneath the stairs in the basement was wet and have since determined that we're getting water in from the rains. In fact, we had a pretty hysterical 4th of July w/my family here and us all hunkered down at the rec center while we had monsoon-like rains. Crazy! Leak-wise it's not good considering this house is only 3 years old! At any rate, the owners and their realtor are scrambling to try and have the house fixed under warranty. We could sure use your prayers as, if the water issue isn't addressed and fixed thoroughly, we could be looking for a new house. Please pray for wisdom and discernment in this process. We LOVE the house and the area and don't want to move but we're wanting to be wise. Our prayer is that if this house IS where God wants us, then either the owners or the warranty co. will fix the issue and then we can go to closing. Never a dull moment around here!

On the adoption end of things, we took our last training class almost 2 weeks ago! This one was optional but the quality of classes at CCAI has been through the roof so we wanted to take anything that was relevant. This class was on multi-child parenting and has really helped us make some decisions concerning taking Lily to China. I have to say that I was expecting this class to be more about how to parent several children AFTER we get back however it was about how to handle introducing your existing children to your new child and how to involve them in the adoption process. Excellent class! At any rate, we did discuss whether or not to bring Lily with us to China and the decision is.....we're bringing her! We've both wrestled and prayed about this for months but after discussions w/my dad and then this teacher, we felt God led us to this decision and we both feel extremely peaceful about it. This aspect (to bring or not to bring) really is a personal decision and each family really needs to base their decisions on their family situations. In our case, because Lily was adopted and had been abandoned in the beginning of her life, it's really important to make sure that she doesn't feel abandoned again.

So, while we wait, we continue to pray for Jasmine and look forward to the day that we get "the call." I guess the good news is that we have more time to prepare ourselves and now Lily for that long trip to China and all that we will encounter.

The same weekend as our training, our friend, Sabrina, came and stayed with us for the weekend and we had a blast! It was so great to re-connect with her and we're looking forward to having more weekends like that one! Please continue to pray for her safety in her family situation and that God would use us to plant some major spiritual seeds in her life.

On the fun side, we have really enjoyed taking advantage of the amenities at Meridian Ranch (our neighborhood). The pool/rec. center is really beautiful so we've tried to go swimming as often as the "monsoons" have allowed us, go for walks, play at the park, etc. That has been really wonderful. Today, Lily had her very first swimming lesson! It was quite exhilarating for me to watch her, with her float belt on, for the first time start swimming on her own! I got myself ready to jump in after her (despite the fact that the lifeguard was 2 feet away) but lo and behold, she stayed above water! That little turkey gave me quite the scare but it sure was fun to watch her! I'll take some pics. at tomorrow's lesson and post them soon.

Please continue to pray for us in our house (& car) situations! Additionally, Jim's employer is having to do some budget cuts so please be praying for us and the other employees during this time. They'll probably be making those decisions in the next couple of weeks so we appreciate your prayers in all of these things! Like I said, "never a dull moment around here!" I was reminded recently that for those of us who trust in the Lord, He promises to keep us in the palm of His hand for the rest of our days (wish I could remember the reference!). Thank God! We experienced that during our move and we are trusting Him for that in these current "adventures." Thanks for all of your support...we love you all!

Orphans Deserve Better....

Hi everyone! It's been a little while since I've updated. We're still trying to get settled, heal, etc. but we're slowly getting there. Praise God that He is a God of restoration and healing amongst many other things.

We are continuing to wait for Jasmine and do have a slight update for you. We did ask CCAI about our timeline as we're now 12 months into the Waiting child program. According to them, they think our wait will be longer than 12 months because apparently there are a lot of people who are interested in children w/similar conditions that we are interested in. What that actually means in terms of time, remains to be seen. We still believe that it will be this year, at this point, but it's starting to look like late summer/fall time frame now. We will keep you posted, of course. We soooooo can't wait until we get that call and believe me, you will all be the first to hear about it! :-)

In the midst of unpacking, we were given an opportunity to take Lily to the Barnum & Bailey circus when it was in town. Thanks to Bethany Christian Services for the free tickets because we all had a BLAST as a family! I'm going to upload some photos for you to enjoy. We had such a great time and it brought some much needed relief and fun into our lives after all of the stress. Thank you Bethany!

Also, thank you all for your continued prayers for our former foster daughter. While DHS has chosen to do nothing, she is currently safe and we are staying in regular contact with her. Praise God that her family has even allowed her to come stay with us this weekend! We are trying to rebuild that friendship with her and as long as she allows us to stay in her life, we're praying that God will use us to touch her heart and give her the love and support that she needs. Please pray for us this weekend that we'll be able to re-connect with her in meaningful ways and pray that her heart will open to God.

I'm a member of Christian Alliance for Orphans and received an email from them this morning that I wanted to share. Apparently, Warner Brothers is coming out with a horrer/thriller film called "Orphans." I watched the trailer and I'm absolutely HORRIFIED with the messages that this film is sending about orphans and adoption! The story is about a family who adopts an older child named Esther who proceeds to terrorize the family. In one of the trailers it says that "there's something wrong with Esther." In another, Esther says "It must be hard to love an adopted child as much as your own." What a HORRIBLE message to send to both adopted children and orphans in general. They are in their situations due to NO FAULT of their own and they are not damaged goods. I'm sharing this because Christian Alliance for Orphans is asking people to sign a petition asking Warner Brothers to donate some proceeds to orphans and consider adding a message portraying the truth and beauty of adoption. Additionally, they are asking those of us who have an adoption story to share so that the truth could be heard. If you interested in either signing the petition or sharing your story, please go to www.orphansdeservebetter.org

New friend or Divine appointment?

So on Tuesday, Lily and I decided to walk to the park around the corner and play while we actually had some decent weather. It's been pretty rainy/stormy here in the last several weeks so playing outside has been a little sporadic for us. Anyway, we had such a great time swinging and playing! There were quite a few kids w/families there so we slowly made the rounds (Lily is completely fearless when it comes to meeting new people. I, on the other hand, am a complete chicken!) As I was watching her play, I noticed this precious little girl kind of playing by herself and I noticed she was watching the other kids play. I could tell that she was longing to join in and so I started to hope that Lily would run over and play with her. I also started looking around because I was extremely curious to see if I could find her parents. Being an adoptive mom, I have to say I'm always excited to meet other adoptive families. There's something so incredibly special about the journey to adoption, the victories and battles, the amazing stories of God's protection and provision, the moment we fell in love w/our child, the spiritual aspects of adoption, etc. Not to sound like I'm profiling but this precious girl was Asian and I was curious to see if her parents were Asian or if perhaps, like we will soon, she was adopted from China.

Soon, Lily found this precious little girl and the 2 of them began to run around chasing each other, laughing and having a blast together (don't you wish you could make friends like children can?) I was so caught up in watching the 2 of them have a blast together - it was truly precious. Soon, a lovely lady walked up and asked me if I was the mother of "that gorgeous little girl?" Which, of course, I am! :-) At any rate, we began chatting and come to find out that she is a Christian and they adopted their precious Naomi from China through CCAI (also our agency), she's just a few months older than Lily and her official adoption day was the day before Lily's! She even had the same caseworker that we currently have! We exchanged our stories and hopefully Cindy felt as blessed as I did. It truly felt like a divine appointment for me. God NEVER ceases to amaze me with His continual twists and turns and surprises that He seems to have at every turn. I LOVE how He is in the tiniest of details! We did exchange information and hopefully we'll be able to do a play date sometime soon. For me, what was exciting aside from all of the obvious reasons, was sharing some of Lily's story reminded me of what a precious miracle she is and what a privilege it is for me to be her mommy. I'm hoping other parents go through this as well but it's easy to forget some of the miracles when your child is constantly acting up, testing boundaries, etc. You don't wish you had made a different choice in being a parent but you definitely feel that Bill Cosby "I brought you into this world and I can take you out..." kind of an attitude from time to time when things are rough. I felt like I was given a gift on Tuesday of being reminded of the miracle of being a mom and if that's the only thing that comes out of that, I'll be forever grateful.

Digging out of the boxes...

Well we are slowly but surely digging out of all of the boxes. I have to say that I'd forgotten how utterly exhausting it is to move and I'm kinda glad I forgot otherwise I might not have obeyed God when He led us! :-) Lily & I are slowly trying to get into some new routines and figure out our new schedules. I have to say that overall, we really LOVE our new location. It's much more peaceful and the people even seem a little nicer out here. Go figure! :-)

While we wait to see if this short sale goes through, God continues to remind me that He is our protector, our healer and our restorer. I have to depend on Him daily to even get out of bed, let alone get boxes unpacked, play w/my precious daughter - all of those things take extra effort because of how wiped out I am. Praise God that He doesn't let us go through anything alone. We felt forsaken by much of our church & small group and yet God was and is still here. Praise Him for that! Praise Him for leading us to a place of peace and I believe ultimately, restoration.

Adoption-wise, we just got our extensions back from U.S Immigration which is great! Now we basically just wait for "the call!" We'll start applying again for grants now that we're getting settled but for the most part, we are now waiting. June 20th will be exactly 1 year since we entered the Waiting Child program and it still looks like we could hear something any day! What's also amazing to me is to see how God is preparing Lily to be a big sister. She prays for Jasmine every day and talks all the time about going to pick up her sister. It's so cool to see God working in your child's heart and life! What an amazing facet of parenthood that I never really thought about before.

I've also FINALLY heard back from our former foster daughter and it sounds like things have settled down at her house for now. PRAISE GOD that she's safe! I was so relieved to hear back from her - we talked for about an hour! We're going to try and have her come and stay w/us some weekend soon (if it's ok w/her dad). She's trying to get a job (hard to believe she's 15 already!) and is trying to stay out of trouble. I made it clear to her that no matter how she behaves (although she needs to own up to her part) it's NEVER EVER ok for anyone to hit her. I guess the social worker told her and her teacher that unless bruises are left, there's nothing they can do to help her. Nice! I understand that from a perspective of not wanting to un-justly punish a parent however when a family already has a history of violence, it seems to me that allegations should be taken more seriously. The good news is at least for now, she is safe. I'm planning on keeping more closely in touch with her and appreciate your prayers on her behalf as well!

I'm still planning on uploading some pics of the house, hopefully soon. Thanks so much for all of your prayers for us! Please continue to pray for our healing and restoration as well as provision for our upcoming adoption. Pray for me as I work daily on forgiving and letting go. I'll try and update you all soon!

We're in our new home!

Hi everyone! Thanks so much for your prayers as we have made it through our move (barely) and are now in our new home! Yea God! This has been one of the roughest weeks for us yet so we greatly appreciate all of your prayers on our behalf! I'll try to post pics soon of our new place. We "e-vited" a number of friends to come help us move on Memorial Day but only 3 friends from church and our retired neighbors showed up. We were extremely happy to have those awesome people show up but heartbroken because our entire small group blew us off. All but 1 didn't even respond. Thank so much to Kim, Don, Erin, Jack & Phyllis! You guys rock! We muddled through the day and ended up having to additionally rent a moving truck on top of the 2 pods! (And we had sold and donated a lot of items prior to our move!) Yikes - it's amazing how much stuff we accumulated in our last 7 1/2 years! We were packing that truck w/our 2 incredible neighbors until 2:30 on the day of closing but praise be to God, we finished before closing on Wednesday, with the house nice and clean to boot! Closing went really well and we were able to chat w/the new owners who were very nice this time! Thanks again to God for that! :-)

Yesterday, we moved into our new place and this time decided to hire 2 movers to help us as most people work during the week and that turned out to be a great move! Between my sister, brother-in-law and the 2 movers and us, we were able to get everything moved in by 1:30 yesterday! In the midst of all of this, one of our cars broke down and Jim got in a minor accident in the moving truck. Holy cow - what a week! But we are all safe and sound in our new place and thanking God for His hand in every single detail. We are additionally thankful to all of you for your prayers and your support. We will try and update you soon with something more than moving stuff!

3 days and counting!!!

Wow - I forgot how much I hate moving! Hi everyone! We are in the midst of getting packed up and getting ready for Monday's move into our pods. I'd be totally overwhelmed if I didn't make a list of which rooms we're packing on which days! Completely anal, I know but it's really helping us take things one step at a time. I'm just so incredibly thankful for God's hand in this whole process and for His strength right now as we could not do this without Him! Everything is going much more smoothly w/our buyer since our realtor let their realtor have it for trying to change things around last minute. He advised them of our back up offer and that has kept them extremely quiet since the inspection! :-) Yea God for back up offers! Even though we weren't able to take it, it's really helped to keep this buyer in line so we're extremely thankful!

In the meantime, Lily finished her last day of preschool at Chipeta yesterday with a picnic in the rain...sort of. It was raining but fortunately the park had a pavilion so we were fine. I've been so impressed w/this preschool and I am sad that we won't be able to attend next year because we'll be in a different district. God has really used them in Lily's life and as a result between the preschool and her therapies, Lily is completely CAUGHT UP!!!!! Last week, she graduated from P.T. and a week from Monday, she'll be graduating from Speech! I'm so excited for her and yet a little sad as these wonderful people have been a part of our lives for the last 3 years! Wow - yet another thing we are thankful to God for!

Well - this may be my last post until after we move so in the meantime, I just wanted to thank you all for your prayers for us. We are exhausted but excited about our mini "vacation" (ok - we're not going anywhere but we'll be staying in a hotel while we wait for our closing - still, it'll be a break.) and are looking forward to finally unwinding and unpacking in our new home! We'll post pics soon! Feel free to email me @ racewalkn@juno.com if you want our new address. Our phone #'s will all stay the same. Luv you all and we'll talk to you soon!

6 days & counting!

Hi everyone! It feels like forever since I've last posted but I guess it's only been a few days. We are about 6 days away from completely moving out of our house and into our pods! We decided to go the pods route instead of a moving truck because we didn't know if we would have enough help. This gives us the flexibility of moving stuff into the pods over a week or so and as a result, the pressure is off for having volunteers. Our closing is now the evening of the 27th (1 week from tomorrow!) and we've been trying to kick it into high gear. Because of the flaky-ness of this buyer, we've literally had to wait until the last minute before packing & changing addresses for the new house. I can't tell you how much we are all longing to just get packed up and settled in the new place! We are both so incredibly tired - please continue to pray for us as we both feel so overwhelmed w/all that needs to be done.

I don't have any news regarding our former foster daughter. She had told me she would call me back last Thursday after school and I did not hear from her. Please continue to pray for her and especially for the DHS caseworkers who are supposedly investigating. Unfortunately for the children here, our county is seriously one of the worst in the state as far as the services go. I've spoken w/the caseworker who is investigating and am trying to follow up, w/out being too annoying, to let her know that I take our foster daughter's charges very seriously and am concerned for her. Please pray that they will take her seriously and for her safety!

No news yet on our China adoption. We just completed updating our fingerprints for our 1-I7I and continue to wait. We're still thinking we'll hear something the middle of June but it really could be any day. I was listening to some worship music yesterday while walking and was brought to tears when I started to imagine what it will feel like to get "the call." I wonder all the time if Jasmine is being loved and cared for or if she's just one of many in the orphanage. I pray that God or His angels are whispering to her to hang on 'cause she has a mommy & daddy & sister who love her very much...almost as much as Jesus loves her. We pray for her every night and every night Lily prays for Jasmine to "know much how I love her." I imagine what it will be like to hold her for the first time and what it will be like to have 2 precious girls playing together at last. It will be so hard but we can't wait!

Thanks again - all 2 or 3 of you that read this blog (ha!) for all of your prayers and encouragement! We love you and we'll keep you posted!

Please pray....

Hi everyone! Please say a prayer for our former foster child who called tonight. We haven't spoken w/her in about 2 years and it looks like she's being abused again by her parents. We've reported this to the appropriate authorities and have given her our #'s in case things escalate but please pray for her safety! We are hoping that DHS will intervene quickly and get her to safety. Depending on how things work out, we may become her foster parents again so please pray for wisdom and direction for us as well. Thank you and we will keep you all posted!

Latest and greatest...

Hi everyone! Well, we're still waiting to see if our 1st buyer is going to stick w/us. They had a contractor come out today to give them a bid and they're now aware that these are pretty minor fixes but apparently the guy is still balking. We have until Friday to strike a deal and if there's no deal by the close of business, we are done with buyer #1! And get this! We had a request for a showing today that we turned down because we're wiped out. Turns out they were going to make an offer as well! That God, what a kidder! So, our realtor will keep them posted just in case something happens w/our first 2 buyers! I LOVE it. When God opens the floodgates, He really opens the floodgates, doesn't He?!

So, in the meantime, we wait. Story of our lives right now. ;-) No new news on the adoption front. We still could hear any day but we're hoping we'll be settled in the new place before that happens.

I do have a new prayer request regarding Lily - well 2 actually. The first is please pray for peace for her as we begin to pack up and get ready to move. Yesterday, she had a really bad day at school in terms of acting out and being very whiny. I sat her down and began asking her why and come to find out that she was afraid that "mommy and daddy would leave her." It BROKE my heart that my precious girl was worried about us ditching her somewhere! We have been talking w/her about this move for almost 9 months now but she saw 4 file boxes yesterday when she woke up and was afraid we were leaving her. I reassured her that we are a forever family and that we are not leaving her. She's been doing better since then and we're keeping an eye on things but we'd greatly appreciate your prayers for her as we get ready to move. The second is that we can find a quality preschool program for her after we move. She's on a waiting list for the district but it's not likely that she'll get in this year and we desperately need to keep her progressing. She's close to being discharged from her last 2 therapies and we want to make sure that she keeps moving forward in her development.

Well...the saga continues at the Young house but we sure do appreciate all of your prayers and are thankful that God continues to be our protector. We love you all and we'll keep you posted!

House updates....

Hi everyone! We got all of our signatures back from the sellers we're trying to buy from so it looks like everything is lined up on that end! Now we wait to see what happens with these 2 buyers of ours. We did get the inspection report and the items that our buyer wants fixed. The inspection was actually really good - mostly very minor items as we thought. Regardless of that fact, we will not be fixing anything for this first buyer because of the incredibly low price that they got our home for. We'll be signing the paperwork to that fact and hopefully we'll learn very quickly if they're going to stick with us or go elsewhere. We're having a contractor come tonight and take a look at the list to give us a bid for the items requested by our buyer. In the event that they bow out, we'll be able to quickly get those items fixed for our back up buyer. Either way, we are trusting God to work things out to completion with one of these buyers and feel incredibly grateful for His presence and leading during this process. We are continually thankful for all of your prayers as well! We have all managed to fight off whatever we were coming down with so we're extremely grateful for God keeping us healthy during this time.

We will keep you all posted and please continue to pray for God's will for the selling of our house and the details that need to come together.

Happy Mother's Day!

Hi everyone! Happy Mother's Day to all of you moms out there! I was thinking about how awesome it is that God came up with this whole plan of adoption! Once again, it's only because God loved us first that we even know what real LOVE is. He showed us what adoption is really like by giving us the opportunity to become His kids forever! He knew before He even created us that there would be precious children who needed forever families and knew that there would be mommies and daddies who couldn't have kids the traditional way. And He put us together before the beginning of time. I absolutely LOVE how God is in the tiniest of details and I have to say that after going through what we've just been through and seeing His amazing provision, I'll never again believe that God doesn't care about the smallest details of our lives. How amazing that the God of the universe cares about the tiny things in our lives as well as the big ones! I think that our house is a tiny detail compared to Jasmine & Lily and yet God is continuing to work things out for us to buy this house that will make a huge difference in our budget and possibly help us in our adoption. I LOVE that God cares enough about us to affect these tiny areas as well as the big ones. I can't wait to see how He brings Jasmine home to us! I also can't wait to see what He does in our family as a result of taking a high maintenance home out of the equation so that we can have quality time with each other and Him together!

As a mom, today I've just been reminded of the importance of my calling to love my kids and raise them to love Jesus. And to not just teach with my words but with my life just as Jesus taught through His life. I feel so incredibly thankful that God has allowed me to be a mom through the amazing journey called "Adoption."