Big Day @ AWAA

Good News!! Today was a big day for several AWAA families. The Kidd family passed court after numerous unsuccessful and extremely frustrating attempts! The Redferns and the Wempe family both received referrals: Redferns a baby boy and The Wempes a baby girl! Five AWAA families will be leaving next week to fly to Ethiopia to pick up their beautiful children. We are celebrating with these families and are excited about our upcoming news! Hopefully we will share soon! To catch a glimpse of the Kidd Family's very precious new daughter check out their blog....
(http://www.kidd-ethiopia-adoption.blogspot.com/)

A Search From the Heart

As our entire family continues to search for God and seek what his will is for our worship of him it becomes increasingly evident that we are incapable of finding him by our own standard. It is his standard that he requires and his way is not our way.

My daughter revealed her heart to me last night in an e-mail. I will share her insights as it reveals much of what we all feel as a family....

Hi mom,

This is what has been going through my head. I finally just sat down and out it came. Hopefully it makes sense.

Love Anna

May 26, 2008 1:39AM

What are the things of God you say? Who will ever know? No one will ever know the depth of the mysteries of our God. He is a mysterious God, a God who has no end. He is a righteous God, One with no fault. He is a just God, bringing to light the evil and the good. The acts of the righteous will be revealed, the acts of the evil doers will be brought to the table at the judgment seat of God. No one understands how God is, He just IS! He is the I AM… God is not Someone or Something or Anything you can put in the box of our minds. Our minds will never grasp the unfathomable depths of the intricacies of our God and Father, the Beginning and the End, Jesus Christ our Everlasting Savior. As I search for God I find that I am the worst researcher on the planet. I have no knowledge that even qualifies me to call myself a God follower. I am so unworthy. How do I prove myself? I cannot prove myself. It is impossible to make yourself worthy of the things of God. He is too big, too powerful and to mighty to even try. He knew that we were sinful! We were built perfect and Satan infiltrated the perfectness of God and corrupted this world and God's creation with sin. That is why He, in His awesome greatness, sent His son Jesus Christ to die for our sins. He provided a way for us as his children to come to Him even in our imperfect state. He loves us, he loves me. God, my Creator, does not want me, or anyone else in this world, to die a worse death than he bore for us. He does not want us to suffer eternal damnation eternally parted from Him FOREVER!!!!!
I will end this with the call to earnestly seek God with all your heart. If you know Him, find Him more; if you don't know Him you better. Don't live your life for you, but offer it as a living sacrifice holy and pleasing to the God who created you. The Mighty Father of all wants all the peoples of this world to seek Him and He will reveal Himself!!! He wants to show you Himself, but the question is "Do you want to see Him?"
I write this so that all who read it will know that I am a follower of the Everlasting God and Father of my Lord, Jesus Christ!Even though I don't know much in the whole scheme of things, I do know that God is the only reason to live, anything else would be meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and pray to me and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you," declares the Lord, "and will bring you back from captivity."
Jeremiah 29: 11-14a

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"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable-- if anything is excellent or praiseworthy-- think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me-- put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you."
Philippians 4:8-9

Watch and Wait

It is official...we have signed and sent in our referral papers on our daughter!! She is officially matched with us and now we wait for the second half of our referral. International adoption takes patience, endurance, and a faith in things not yet seen. When God first spoke to us about this adoption he put a little baby boy in our hearts, but as the paperwork and the months progressed he opened our hearts to this 10 year old girl as well. The warfare has really just begun for these new kids of ours. The enemy will not relinquish them so easily. The hoops that we must still go through seem daunting...nearly impossible really when you see them on paper: Custody releases must be signed and sealed, dossier papers must be reviewed by a small committee that meets sometimes only once a week, the court date must be set...but only after all documents are in order, a notice must be sent out to ensure that no one will reclaim these children...all this must be completed and all in a country that is experiencing droughts causing food shortages and blackouts. If I look at this from my world it seems impossible, but it was God that asked us to bring two more children into the safety of our family and so I let Him be in charge of these children's lives. So for our children's sake we do everything in our power to move this process..but we know ultimately it will be God that brings it all to completion!!

Referral...Part 1

Today we were given some unexpected, but very exciting news!! We received a referral for a beautiful little 10 year old girl!!! I am not able to give any details, but trust me when I say she is truly a gift from heaven! We will patiently wait for the second half of our referral to be expected in approximately 2-3 weeks. With our hearts full of hope we will patiently wait on God's timing knowing he is in control.

Warfare

With every adoption there is an eternal battle going on for the soul of a child. When you begin the process of adoption, whether you are aware of it or not, you are choosing to do direct battle with the king of darkness. Where is there a more vast potential of recruits for Satan's army than in the orphanages of the world. With our first adoption many obstacles came into play...lost paperwork, a backlog of dossiers in China, and SARS. It took twenty-one months to get our daughter out of harms way. We fasted, prayed, cried and waited...and waited...and waited. But we prevailed with God's help and four years later she holds Jesus in her heart. More than once in our second adoption it looked as if things were not going to work out. We fasted and prayed, and prayed and fasted because we understood what was on the line...our son's eternal future. We knew that at the age of ten he had less than four years before he would be on the streets of Russia....alone to fend for himself (well not totally alone...Satan would be there with him). One year after he came into our family he was baptized in a lake by his father with the understanding that Jesus is his saviour. Is the battle rough...? Of course!! You can expect black eyes and war wounds and sometimes there will be a loss. But in this battle for the souls of the fatherless the stakes are so high that fear is not an option. The enemy knows the value of the commodity he seeks, and as followers of Jesus Christ we stand in the gap with our arms outstretched to defend the fatherless against the clutches of darkness.

The Beauty Queen

What would you think if a beauty queen was born into your family?? Well we have one and she just finished beauty school so she can make everyone else one as well!! Fifteen months ago our second daughter made a decision to end her brief career as a nursing student and check out the possibility of becoming a cosmetology expert (not that she wasn't one already). So with much trepidation and concern I accompanied her to the local school of hair design. I walked in trying to be as supportive a mother as I could possible be considering I had pictured her as a medical missionary nurse in Kenya or something "holy" like that. As we walked in we were greeted not by a pierced-lipped, purple-haired, new-age guru...,but a neatly put together young woman who welcomed us with a warm smile. I was pleased, but still sufficiently sceptical considering the world at large. We strolled around the newly built school, loaded with hair washing basins and multiple cutting stations. Students were milling around and doing various beauty applications to thrift conscious patrons and surprisingly enough most of them looked quite "normal"(whatever that is). But the clencher was when we entered the freshman classroom that was filled to capacity with mannequin heads being trimmed and curled and fashioned in a never ending variety of hairstyles and makeup applications. I was shocked....Anna is the only child in the world that I know that asked Old Saint Nick for a Barbie head for Christmas and then actually used it for the next five years. It was Anna that prepped all her girlfriends for their formal dinners and graduation events and made them look beautiful. At that moment when I saw the "Barbie heads" I exclaimed with all my heart..."Look Anna your home!!" Needless to say she signed up for beauty school that day and has completed her program. Since she began the program the benefits from a mother's perspective far outweigh the father's (considering the cost). I have received any number of hair styles, facials, and personal at home pedicures while her father received only a few trims... and of course the bill. She is now well on her way to making the world a more beautiful place. She has all the potential of a beauty queen and now possesses the skills that accompany it!